With the exception of catcher, the Rays bring back the entirely same infield unit from the 2013 season. It’s a fantastic group defensively, but for all intents and purposes there are only two strong fantasy factors.

The Starting Unit

1B James Loney (2014 Steamer Projection .271/.328/.398 | .316 wOBA)

Loney is not one of the strong fantasy factors, though his rebound last year was nothing short of, well, what the Rays do with guys like him. To that end, re-upping with the Rays might have been the smart move. The .299/.348/.430 line from last year is nice, if a bit short on thump for a first baseman, and doesn’t quite tell the whole story. Loney was awesome in the first half (.315/.366/.466), and rather pedestrian in the second (.276/.322/.378). More befuddling yet is that he had a .291 wOBA at home (.261 BABIP), and a .385 mark on the road (.391 BABIP). Projection systems seem to think Loney’s slated for a bit of a bump, but to me there are a lot of entanglements here. My guess is the Rays view him as a +2.5-3.0 win first baseman — largely because I think his defense is viewed in a more positive light than metrics suggest — and that a little regression offensively can be withstood as long as he doesn’t fall back into the 2012 abyss. For my money, he has to hit more like 2013 — or his 2014 Oliver — to even merit back-end consideration in deep leagues. Read the rest of this entry »

Jacoby Ellsbury takes his shiny new ring and shiny new contract to don what are ostensibly shiny new pinstripes, leaving the Boston Red Sox with a differently named center fielder on opening day for the first time since Coco Crisp played there in 2007. But the old out/new in truism certainly applies here as Ellsbury leaving creates new opportunities for fantasy baseball enthusiasts at a position I’m not finding particularly deep in 2014. Read the rest of this entry »

Now would be a good time to talk about the Mets outfield, both because spring training convened in full this week, and because manager Terry Collins made comments last Friday that may throw a wrench into otherwise well-laid plans.

A week ago, before the team made any concrete decisions regarding 2014, the most sensible solution looked to be defensive whiz Juan Lagares in center field, big ticket free agent signing Curtis Granderson in one of the corner spots, Chris Young in the other, and some combination of Eric Young, Jr. and Lucas Duda serving as reserves or injury replacements. That was before Collins met with the media Friday afternoon and offered this:

Collins on leadoff: I’m going to talk to Chris Young about leading off Sitting here today Eric Young is the guy you’d like to see at the top

— New York Mets (@Mets) February 14, 2014

So where does that leave things as we head into spring training, and what does that mean for fantasy owners?

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I didn’t spend the time to click through each team in the Steamer projections, but I’m guessing the Red Sox are one of few teams, if not the only team, to have the five guys projected to pitch the most innings each be projected for 2+ WAR. They may not have an elite starter, but their rotation has nice depth.

Although not elite, Jon Lester isn’t a bad first option. He’s going on six straight years of 190+ IP, and he topped 200 IP in five of those six years. From 2008 to 2011 he coupled the workhorse inning totals with a sub-3.50 ERA. But the wheels came off in 2012. He lost velocity, and his ERA ballooned up to 4.82 while his strikeout rate fell to league average. Luck also played a part in the down year as his HR/FB rate was about four points higher than his career average, which contributed to a career low strand rate that was about seven points below his career average.

Not that we should have seen such a blow up coming, but the signs were there in 2011 that Lester was in decline. His strikeout rate had hovered just above 26% in the two years prior to 2011, but it fell to 22.8% that year. That contributed to the highest ERA (3.47) of that four year stretch and the first time in three years that his SIERA was above 3.50. At that point it was probably safe to assume that a slow decline had begun. Given that Lester’s ERA finished at 3.75 last year, maybe we should have expected to land in the 3.60 range in 2012 if all else had been equal. Read the rest of this entry »

The Yankees have cobbled together a strange team, and the infield most strongly personifies this strangeness. New York is seemingly counting on three players who scarcely played last season due to injury and another who is new to his position (aside from 118 innings last season). Stephen Drew remains on the market and would seemingly solve a lot of problems, but it sounds like the Yankees are uninterested.

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Love ’em or hate ’em, they are the New York Yankees and they are still the face of American baseball. They are about winning, they are about hardware (or bling if that’s the word you prefer) and they are all about the big market spending. But we’re not here to judge right now. Whether you think this year’s plundering of the free agent market was more Brittney Spears “Oops, I did it again,” or more Urkel “Did I do that?”, it doesn’t matter, because this is the fantasy baseball section of FanGraphs and that’s what we’re talking here. Our assignment is to tell you who is in this team’s outfield and what that means to fantasy owners, so let’s bypass the small-market, crybaby tantrums and let’s talk game. Read the rest of this entry »

The answer was probably not “stand pat.”

The Toronto Blue Jays had an incredibly disappointing 2013 season, coming in well below expectations. While part of it was statistical anomaly – not often will so many players have sub-par seasons simultaneously – it turns out that parts of the team had been overrated entering the season. Hindsight, and all that.

So when the Jays rotation ended up 26th in total value based on Wins Above Replacement, 29th in ERA, 28th in FIP and 28th in innings pitched, many expected the Jays to fortify the sizeable investment they made the prior offseason.

But one of the longest MLB Trade Rumors tags has borne little fruit. Josh Johnson is out and replacing him is…still to be determined. Any improvement from the staff will have to come from in-house, a scary proposition considering that the team’s would-be-appreciable depth is really just a large competition at the back end masquerading as a plethora of options. After the top two names, it’s a whole lot of question marks, leaving the excellent Andrew Stoeten of Drunk Jays Fans to throw his hands up at the entire mess:
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The Nationals starting rotation was already pretty good last year and they may be even better this season. The top four features one of the best young (and overall) pitchers in the game and a trio of strong veterans. It’s that last slot that will provide all the drama during spring training. And given the contenders, it’s one worth watching, even for shallow mixed leaguers.

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In the recent past, the Rays have played a lot of mix and match with their outfielders. This year, the starting three might have a firm grasp on everyday starts, so there could be less scope for useful fantasy platoons. In the event of injuries, the Rays possess a number of secondary options that could be useful as spot starters.

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While I can’t speak for the rest of the writing staff, I must say that I enjoy doing these Depth Chart Discussions. Our fearless leader, Eno Sarris tells us what division we’re looking at for the week and we sign up for the depth charts we want to cover. More often than not, we end up choosing one that we either really like to discuss or one that we want to actually learn more about, but every so often, one comes along where someone has to take one for the team. Valuing my ability to be a team player, the Miami Marlins infield is my sacrifice. Read the rest of this entry »