There is a difference between a bad year and a disappointing one. Plenty of players were terrible this year, but since no one expected anything less, no one was disappointed, and that’s not really where the confusion lies. When a player is expected to do great, amazingly wonderful things and instead only does good, above-average things, it’s not uncommon to hear that he had a bad season when the reality is that his production was adequate, it was just not as good as expected. (There is, of course, the third category of player who was expected to do well and in fact does very badly. At that point, either branch of criticism is fair game; take it away, Dr. Zoidberg!)

Given the expectations heaped on him after 2011’s tour de force, Alex Avila definitely had a disappointing season, there’s not much disputing that, but did he actually have a bad one? That largely depends on whether or not the driving number of your league is average or OBP. In any holistic sense, Avila was an effective enough offensive player. His wRC+ of 104 isn’t going to win him any awards, but it does mean he was slightly above average offensively speaking at a position where it’s still acceptable to hit poorly provided the player defends and/or commands the pitching staff well. So, given that he stayed healthy enough to qualify for the batting title and finished with an above-average wRC+, why is Avila ranked 20th out of the 26 catchers who qualified in Zach Sanders’ rankings? Read the rest of this entry »

Of all the predictions I made heading into 2012, there was not a single one I had more total confidence in than “Javy Guerra would lose his closing job in Los Angeles to Kenley Jansen.” After all, Guerra was an unheralded prospect who collected 21 saves in 2011 largely due to being the right place at the right time on a Dodger team which had already lost Jonathan Broxton, Hong-Chih Kuo, Vicente Padilla, & Jansen to injury. Jansen, meanwhile, was merely coming off a season which he set a record for highest K/9 rate (min. 50 innings).

It didn’t take long before we saw that prediction come true; Guerra blew several April saves and lost his job to Jansen by the first week of May, never to regain it. Jansen became one of the more dominating closers in the game when healthy—and more on that in a second—and so you’d think that he’d enter 2013 secure in his role racking up saves. Well, think otherwise, at least if GM Ned Colletti’s comments to Ken Gurnick of MLB.com about Brandon League can be believed… Read the rest of this entry »

On Monday, I took a look back at the hitters who I boldly predicted would lead the league in each of the 5×5 fantasy categories. Well, I made those same predictions for pitchers as well in the pre-season. So, let’s see if I did just as poorly or had some better luck.

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As the RotoGraphs fantasy awards trickle out, there are many interesting debates. Was Jake Peavy or Chris Sale the better bargain in the American League? Just who was the best buy-low in the National League? However, a couple votes needed far less deliberation — one of those was the National League’s Bull Cy; the relief pitcher for your fantasy squad who cost you the least but brought you most. As such, let’s jump right to the staff voting.

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For as great of a season as Fernando Rodney had it doesn’t seem like enough was written about him. Add that to the list of sentences I never thought I’d write. Before the season the Rays signing of Rodney for $2 million seemed strange. His ERA and FIP were above 4.00 the previous four years and he was coming off of a season in which he walked more batters than he struck out. Cash strapped Rays + wildly ineffective reliever = head scratching move.

The Rays have a good track record of turning out quality relievers, resurrecting the careers of Joaquin Benoit, Grant Balfour and J.P. Howell. Rodney is now the crowning jewel of that group and the best reliever in the American League in 2012.

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Freedom from shame at least. They were supposed to be bold. So let’s revisit those predictions.

[Sorry no chat today, gotta get my stuff done before heading to the city for the Bay Area meetup. And sorry for abrupt ending last week, got an important call.]

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Depending on how close a race you are in, whether it’s a roto league or head to head, this is your last-ditch effort to finish on top. If you need strikeouts to scratch out a point, then you load up on potential strikeout pitchers. If you need to add a few ticks to your team OBP, then so long as it isn’t a keeper league, ditch everyone that isn’t contributing and get someone else in there who is. This is obviously nothing new and I’m not offering up some secret advice. I’m just trying to encourage you to keep the fight goign for one more day. Do everything you can and walk away from the season with your head held high. Read the rest of this entry »

• Andrew Bailey wasn’t too effective this evening, letting five batters reach base and giving up two runs en route to a blown save against the Yankees. In fact, since returning to the Red Sox from surgery on his thumb Bailey hasn’t really pitched well with a 5.05 xFIP in 15.1 innings pitched thus far. However, with only one game remaining in the season, I don’t think Bailey is in danger of losing his job in 2012 and should receive a save opportunity if one arises tomorrow night. Also, based on the Red Sox roster, it should be Bailey’s job to lose in 2013.

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• Well, it looks like Tyler Clippard’s run as Nationals closer has hit the skids just before the end of the regular season. Yesterday, it was Drew Storen who was called upon in the ninth. Of course, Storen blew the save by serving up a couple hits and a sacrifice fly, but the key fact was that Clippard was deliberately used in his old eighth inning role. I covered Storen’s positive trends last week (velocity up to pre-injury levels, great K/BB ratio) so I won’t rehash here. Clippard has struggled significantly over the last month or so and while his 4.13 xFIP isn’t terrible, it isn’t elite either. Given Washington’s hesitance to move him from setup into the ninth inning earlier this season, it seems more than plausible that the new pecking order has Storen locked into the closer role, especially with the team about to embark on their first playoff run in D.C.

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• After splitting save chances with Jared Burton for a month or so, Glen Perkins has quietly taken over the ninth inning all to himself in the second half of the season. He finished off save number 16 on Friday, throwing a 1-2-3 inning as the Twins upset the Tigers. Perkins has been as steady as relievers come this year, not flashing elite numbers, but putting up monthly xFIPs between 3.02 (April) and 3.67 (July). While his K% has dropped from the high-20% area to the mid-20% realm (possible a result of a slight downtick in fastball velocity), his BB% has plunged from near 10% before the all-star break to a shockingly low 2.5% after. The move the Twins made to buy out a few years of Perkins post-arbitration free agency is looking especially shrewd and he seems to be a near-mortal lock to be the team’s closer come April 2013. He’s only owned in 36% of Yahoo! leagues so run and grab the stat geek if you need saves — keeper league owners would be wise to stash/hold him– a guy with a guaranteed closer job and a plummeting walk rate should sneak into the back end of the top 15 closers on draft boards next year.

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