Chat time!

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Now that football season is over, it is time to really prep for baseball drafts! Read the rest of this entry »

American League

Orioles

• James McCann and Adley Rutschman could see some time at first base.

McCann, who was traded from the Mets to the O’s on Dec. 21, recently shared that in his initial call with the team, he was told that both he and Rutschman could get time at first and/or DH. That may still be a possibility in some lineup combinations even if Díaz or Cordero makes the team.

Just looking over the roster, I think the first base job is Mountcastle’s as long as he’s healthy. He’s started 144 and 145 games the past two seasons, so the catching pair would just need to give him a combined 20 days off during the season. Read the rest of this entry »

1/9/23

The latest episode of “The Sleeper and the Bust” is live. Support the show by subscribing to our Patreon!!

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• @sporer – Host
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1B RANKINGS

• The 1st rounders: Vladimir Guerrero Jr. & Freddie Freeman
• Should Paul Goldschmidt be right there w/those 2?
• Is Pete Alonso the single best bet for 50 HR at 1B? Leaguewide?
• Will Matt Olson’s AVG rebound?
• Split on Vinnie Pasquantino & José Abreu is similar
• Is Nathaniel Lowe’s upside entirely R/RBI-related or can he pop 30+?
• Should C.J. Cron be a home-only player?
• Did Josh Bell tank his market value w/the struggles in SD?
• What are we missing on Andrew Vaughn?

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Here is the transcript from my chat today:
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Second base is short on top end talent, but incredibly deep in middling options as there isn’t a ton of difference in the 24 guys bookended by the Urias brothers, Luis and Ramon.

Notes on some select 2B:

Marcus Semien fronted the league 43 games before hitting his first homer and still wound up with 26 thanks to an excellent summer. He hit .268/.324/.492 with 20 SB, 72 RBI, 85 R and those 26 HR from May 28th on. While his extreme volume is a big part of his game (4 straight 700+ PA seasons; led MLB in 3 of them), he still had a 20/20 pace over 600 PA in 2022.

I’m not projecting another 18 SBs for Jose Altuve given that he had just 13 in his previous 1436 PA from 2019-21, but the 33-year-old doesn’t need a repeat there to remain a premium option at the position. The offense remains loaded, and his skills are aging brilliantly.

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The New Year cometh (cameth?) and now so too does our last rankings stop on the infield. We’ve now seen in hindsight just how good we had it at catcher and first base, as shortstop is deep but gets shallow fast, and third base is mostly a pit of danger after the first eight guys, or so. Well, bad news, chuckles – second base is no picnic; unless you like yours with bears and half-eaten Jean Segura’s. Read the rest of this entry »

There has been some recent news about A.J. Puk (link) and Seth Lugo (link) joining their team’s rotation. Both were full-time relievers in 2022, so it would be quite a transition. The question I wanted answered was not if they would make the transition, but if they did, what are the most reasonable number of innings they should be expected to throw if they make the transition? After looking into some comps, it was more than I expected.

To find my sample, I didn’t want any tweeners, guys who started 15 games and had 20 relief appearances. Both Lugo and Puk were only relievers last season and could be going to the rotation. Read the rest of this entry »

The New York episode of the Beat the Shift Podcast – a baseball podcast for fantasy baseball players.

Guest: Danielle McCartan (WFAN, NY)

Latest on the Carlos Correa saga

Injury Guru’s Trivia of the Week

New York Mets

• What are the Mets still missing for 2023?
• How will the Mets catching situation shake out in 2023?
  • What are the plans for prospect Francisco Alvarez?
• How will Tylor Megill and David Peterson fit into the Mets plans for 2023?
  • What will be their roles?
• Kodai Senga
• Could Shohei Ohtani sign with / be traded to the Mets??

New York Yankees

• What are the Yankees still missing for 2023?
• How will the shortstop playing time shake out this year?
  • Who will be the opening day SS?
•  Who will be the Yankees’ closer in 2023?
  • How will the saves shake out?
  • Undervalued for 2023: Tommy Kahnle
• What will the Yankees do with Aaron Hicks this season?
• Will Gerrit Cole’s HR rate rebound?

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If a player hits the ball in the air often with power, it should go out for a home run often, right? Sure, certain ballparks, weather, and environmental conditions will add unpredictability to that statement, but we can generally follow the guideline of “hit ball hard in air, ball go far”. The first step to hitting the ball far would be to get the ball up in the air more often. This is nothing new. While a hitter can, and has, done damage with hard hit line drives (Juan Yepez, 2022) and even hard hit ground balls (Chris Taylor, 2022), in the air is better.

Take a look:

2022 MLB wOBA on Hard Hit…

• ground balls .377
• line drives .633
• fly balls .867

That cute wee stanza shouldn’t excite readers too much, clearly, it doesn’t even necessitate the clean look of a FanGraphs table to hold it up. But, if a hitter puts the ball in the air, it doesn’t mean he will automatically do damage. If we take away the Hard Hit part of the splits above, it’s clear how important the Hard Hit aspect is:

2022 MLB wOBA on…

• ground balls .215
• line drives .685
• fly balls .354

As we prepare for drafts, it may be worth our while to look at players who have started to both put the ball in the air more and hit those fly balls out more often. That combination is key. While that combination does contribute to increased home run totals, it may also lead to increased strikeouts. A single season’s K% and HR/FB% don’t necessarily have strong correlations, but when we break down HR/FB into percentile groups and aggregate K%, we see some pattern:

The bar chart above simply points out that targeting hitters with high FB and HR/FB rates could make you draft a player like Keston Hiura (2022: K% 41.7%, HR/FB 29.8%). But, even with a .226 batting average he did hit 14 home runs in only 266 plate appearances last year. While there are many more than five players who qualify under this analysis, I’ve cherry-picked the five I find most intriguing. If you want to see all the players who I’m analyzing you can merge hitters who accumulated at least 100 PAs in both 2021 and 2022 and make comparisons between their fly ball rates and their home run per fly ball rates. There were 354 hitters total who accumulated 100 PAs in both 2021 and 2022, but 75 of them increased their FB% and their HR/FB% from year to year. Here are five that I am particularly interested in:

Jazz Chisholm Jr.
When I went to see how Jazz’s back was recovering, I found that he also had knee surgery? I’m not sure how I missed that but regardless, he’s penciled in as ready for Spring Training. One of the biggest knocks on young prospect Chisholm was his high K% which remains high, yet decreased in each of his three major league seasons:

30.6% (20) –> 28.6% (21) –> 27.4% (22)

While his K% has been going down, xwOBA, SLG, Barrel%, HardHit%, and launch angle increased. He is a pull-power hitter, so I wouldn’t expect him to keep dropping his K%. In fact, with a full season it may increase closer to his career by 28.4%, but if it comes with the steamer projected 28 home runs and 26 stolen bases, I personally would be willing to bump him up a few spots on my rankings.

Gleyber Torres
Is he really only 26 years old? Does he really have back-to-back stolen base double-digit seasons? He’s projected to be a 20(hr)-10(sb) player, Paul Sporer gave a hot take on his power for 2023, and he’s putting the ball in the air more often. What made his power dip so much in 2020/2021? It’s hard to say. But he did clearly start hitting the fastball again from a Pitch Info Pitch Value perspective:

-3.1 (20) –> -9.5 (21) –> 8.8 (22)

Those numbers are backed by Baseball Savant’s Run Value on the 4-seamer. Do you want a really quick glance theory? I think in 2020 and 2021 he tried to change who he is and he tried to get on base more often by swinging less. In 2022, he swung more often, and struck out more often, but hit the ball harder with a higher launch angle.

Luis Arraez
A few weeks ago I wrote about Arraez’s pull power, or, lack there of. While the contact-king isn’t likely to hit 20 home runs, he could add a lot of value if he were to first, sell out just a little more and second, hit the ball harder. Their is no doubt in my mind that Arraez has the batted ball skills to change his approach slightly. The real question is does he have the skills to add more power?

Rowdy Tellez
Some fantasy managers seem to be pretty high on Tellez this offseason and it makes sense. Like most of the players that hit fly balls with power, they strike out a lot too. But, Tellez’s ~20% K% the past two seasons isn’t all that bad. His batting average, however, is. A sultry .219 in 2022 should regress closer to his career average of .236, but steamer has it doing even better in 2023 at .247. But, it’s not average you’re after here, it’s power and steamer thinks that will increase as well. Rowdy finished 2022 with a slugging average of .461 and steamer pegs him at .485 for 2023. However, steamer also projects his home run totals to come back down from 35 in 2022 to 30 in 2023.

Anthony Santander
A healthy Santander is a good Santander. His 647 PA’s in 2022 marked a career high. Let’s go down the list of good things that happened for the O’s outfielder in 2022:
– Increased BB% (…and a better OBP because of it)
– Decreased K%
– Increased slugging
– Career-high home runs (33)
– Increased launch angle and barrel rate
All of those gains coincided with a slight increase, though a career high, fly ball rate. Steamer believes in the skills as well, projecting him for 30 dingers next year.

Bonus Round:

I intended to write about these two players before I saw an excellent, full-blown analysis on both in Nicklaus Gaut’s 2023 sleeper article. Both Cal Raleigh and Anthony Rizzo could be great power targets in 2023, Rizzo being more of a sleeper than Raleigh. Here are some quick notes on both players but I encourage you to read Gaut’s piece as well:

Rizzo
A change of approach to take advantage of Yankee Stadium’s short porch?
– 2023 tied career high homeruns (32) but he’s hit that exact mark (32) in four separate seasons.
– OBP is down, SLG is up
– pulling the ball more
– higher launch angles
– hitting it harder
– striking out more

Raleigh
– A young catcher with great power
– Max EV of 114!..and a launch angle above 20
– High, high K%, but could be improved on
– Projected for 521 (FGDC) PA’s in 2023