The Milwaukee Brewers return an offense that scored the third-most runs in Major League Baseball. Their team .329 wOBA ranked second in the National League behind the Colorado Rockies, their 202 home runs topped in the NL, and their 158 stolen bases were the best in baseball last season.

Combine that prolific offense with minimal personnel turnover, and it’s not difficult to see why the Brewers have very few positional battles in camp this spring. That extends to the infield, which has entrenched starters around the diamond. A preseason injury to Corey Hart throws a wrench into the depth chart to begin the year, but he’s only expected to miss approximately a month. After his return, the Brewers will feature the same infield they trotted out throughout the final two months last season.

Missing Opening Day is nothing new for Corey Hart, who will miss the start of the season for the third time in the past four years. His absence creates a void at first base for the Brewers for the first month, and perhaps longer. The organization wants to focus on internal options this spring, and the leading candidates for playing time at first base with Hart on the DL appear to be veteran Alex Gonzalez and 26-year-old Taylor Green.

Read the rest of this entry »

Breaking news out of Cincinnati: Joey Votto is awesome. He was awesome in each of his four full seasons leading up to 2012. He was awesome before he injured his knee last year, taking a ridiculous .354/.476/.639 line into the June 30 game in San Francisco that saw him leave after five innings due to the injury. He was a different kind of awesome in 25 September games after returning from surgery, failing to hit a homer but still managing to compile a .316/.505/.421 line. That’s not a typo; Votto had 105 September plate appearances, and despite being on the shelf for two months, he reached 57 times.

I’ll take your standard disclaimers about small sample size and varying September competition and I will reply with, simply, Joey Votto is awesome. That’s not to say he’s infallible, because there’s a conversation to be had about the fact that he never did hit another homer after taking Scott Diamond deep on June 24, which led to his somewhat disappointing total of 14 on the season. That’s fair, but his powerless September showed that he’s more than capable of being a very dangerous hitter even if he’s not going deep; that is, even if he never matches his career-high mark of 37 from 2010, he’s still going to be contributing in the other main offensive categories. It would sure be nice to see him showing some of that past power in the spring, now that he’s so much further from surgery, but at a first base position that is no longer as strong as it used to be, Votto belongs in an elite trio along with Albert Pujols & Prince Fielder. Read the rest of this entry »

Pittsburgh has one of the younger bullpens in the league… outside of their newly-anointed closer, of course. There isn’t a ton of fantasy upside beyond the ninth, but pitching in the National League for a team that may be able to hang out in the middle of the pack means there should be some nice rates/holds plays from a few up-and-comers if you are so inclined.

The closer:
Jason Grilli

Read the rest of this entry »

Projected Rotation

Matt Garza
Jeff Samardzija
Edwin Jackson
Scott Baker
Scott Feldman

Waiting in the Wings

Travis Wood
Arodys Vizcaino
Casey Coleman
Michael Bowden

Rebuilds happen. Eras end, the great players leave or retire, and the team has to move on. The goal of any front office is to prolong periods of dominance as long as possible and to shorten the inevitable rebuilding phase. The Cubs haven’t been to the playoffs since Barack Obama won his first presidential election and haven’t won a playoff game in nearly a decade, so it seems fair to say that the Cubs are in that rebuilding phase. The question now is how much longer they’ll be there. Read the rest of this entry »

While the corners remain the same, the Cincinnati Reds made a big change in center field with a major three-team trade with the Diamondbacks and Indians during the offseason. They gave up a fine, defensive shortstop prospect, but obtained an outstanding 20-20 outfielder to cover center and possibly opened the door a little wider for one of their most-hyped prospects down the road. There’s some interesting flexibility that the team has right now, so let’s take a quick look… Read the rest of this entry »

The Pittsburgh Pirates squeezed about as much value out of A.J. Burnett, James McDonald, Kevin Correia, and Jeff Karstens as possible in 2012, yet their team ERA- was still worse than league average. Correia is out, and Francisco Liriano is in, and now of course they get Wandy Rodriguez for a full season. So things look kinda alright for Pirates fans. But from a fantasy perspective, there are a couple opportunities, a couple landmines, and maybe a position battle still to be watched.

A.J. Burnett is the ostensible leader of this crew after his impressive re-emergence as a good fantasy option after the debacle in New York. His strikeout rate crept back up over 21%, the first time in three years, and his walk rate was just about the best it has been in his career at a fairly stingy 7.3%. In standard 5×5 leagues, Burnett was really quite valuable – he had a decent ERA (3.51), he won games (16), and he had a respectable WHIP (1.24).

Read the rest of this entry »

We are entering year two of the post-Albert era in St. Louis and after an 88-win season that resulted in a wild card berth and a trip to the NLCS that fell just one win short of a World Series appearance, the Cardinals are returning with a largely unchanged infield configuration. For better or for worse, the St. Louis brass opted to leave things as is and let other teams play the free agent market this season. The “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” philosophy is in play here and for fantasy purposes, it’s not bad, but the upside is just as limited now as it was just a year ago. Read the rest of this entry »

The St. Louis Cardinals’ rotation is in great shape in spite of losing their second best starter to free-agency. Kyle Lohse may be gone, but the team boasts a bevy of qualified candidates for the rotation. While everything looks strong on paper, at least three of their pitchers are dealing with significant questions as the season approaches. Adam Wainwright is entering the last year of his contract, Jaime Garcia is coming off a shoulder injury and Shelby Miller has already been shut down with shoulder soreness. Two of those situations will drastically change the value of multiple players during the season.

Read the rest of this entry »

Maybe it’s just the optimism that spring brings, but I’m starting to believe the Cubs could have some surprises in them this year. Between two young infield stars, an improving starting rotation, and a surprisingly adequate outfield, Chicago should take nice steps away from last year’s dumpster fire as Theo Epstein & Jed Hoyer continue their rebuilding project. Is that enough to get them into the playoff race? Probably not, but nor should one expect another 101-loss disaster.

Let’s dive deeper into that outfield, where despite numerous efforts to move him, Alfonso Soriano remains the incumbent in left field. (This is me praying the Yankees don’t trade for him to help replace Curtis Granderson before this post goes live.) Soriano has long been saddled by the massive contract that looked foolish from the day he signed it prior to 2007, but that has been somewhat of an unfair burden on him. Soriano has been good-to-very-good in four of the six years he’s been a Cub, and while lousy campaigns in 2009 & 2011 don’t help, he’s averaged 3.3 WAR/year with the team. If not worth the contract, he’s at least been a valuable contributor. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s the prince and the pauper of infields on the north side in Chicago. You have a bonafide early-round young star shortstop, and a super sleeper first baseman, and then… the Cubs might not produce a third baseman or a second baseman worth rostering in any league.

Read the rest of this entry »