Once upon a time (aka 2009), Kendrys Morales was a breakout first base prospect at the age of 26. He popped 34 home runs, drove in 108 runs, and hit for a .306 average in 611 plate appearances. He was on pace to do much the same in 2010 until a home run celebration prematurely ended his season. And the next one.
Miguel Cabrera hasn’t just been one of baseball’s best hitters over the last ten years, he has also remained amazingly consistent. As fantasy owners, we’re used to our top picks disappointing us, but Cabrera has never posted a wOBA below .374 in a full season. And yet, this was a season of firsts for Cabrera, which despite an above his career average .413 wOBA, resulted in a loss for all those who paid top dollar for his services on draft day.
Check out the first baseman end of season rankings. Brandon Belt hit .280 with 18 homers and nine stolen bases. He was the 15th first baseman, worth almost ten dollars. Freddie Freeman hit .276 with 18 homers and three stolen bases. He was the 21st-best first baseman, worth under five bucks. Huh.
You know why they ended up on different ends of the spectrum, of course. Partially because Freeman was hurt a bunch this year, and partially because the Braves offense was Lilliputian, the Braves’ first baseman had 128 runs plus RBI, while Belt had 141. It may not be fair that Belt was worth twice as much as Freeman because the Braves offense was no good, but it happens.
Eric Hosmer turned 26 this past Saturday. He completed his fifth season earlier this month and starts his second straight World Series tonight against the Mets. The 2015 season was his best yet, though that was due largely to the team around him as opposed to skills growth within his game.
His .297/.363/.459 line looks a lot like his 2011 (.293/.344/.465) and 2013 (.302/.353/.448) lines, but the 93 RBI and 98 R were easily career highs. Previous highs of 79 RBI and 86 R were both set in that 2013 season. Every other part of his game looked like something we’ve already seen.
A look at the Rotographs preseason positional rankings makes Adam Lind look like a moderate bargain. Our experts had him as the No. 21 first baseman, and he finished 2015 at No. 14. However, our experts were much higher on Lind than most fantasy players.
Lind was — rather astonishingly — the No. 40 1B selected in Yahoo drafts in 2015. He was drafted in 90 percent of leagues, but his average draft position made him an absolute steal in the 22nd round. He outperformed his 242.7 ADP in dramatic fashion, finishing the season as fantasy baseball’s No. 109 overall player.
Anthony Rizzo ended up as the #3 overall first baseman according to Zack Sanders end-of-season rankings. Looking over Rizzo’s stat line about everything lined up with expectations. The 31 home runs and .278 average are well within expectations. A few additions around him in the lineup boosted up his counting stats. The only change in his stat was a huge jump in stolen bases to 17. In his previous four seasons, he only had 16 stolen bases total. I am going to examine Rizzo today especially the chances of his stolen base total staying up.
Not Stolen Base Information
The 26-year-old’s stats were in line with expectations, if not a bit better. One item which improved was his 19% K% in 2014 (and it is near his career average) dropped to 15% in 2015. Rizzo went with the approach of swinging more (44.5% to 46.8%) and making more contact (79.7% to 83.1%). If a few more of these batted balls fall in play, he could push a .300 AVG.
I could even expect his Run and RBI total to increase as the rest of the Cubs grow and mature. The team’s wRC+ has gone from 81 in 2012 to 96 this season. The 2012 to 2014 teams averaged 609 runs a season with the 2015 squad scoring 689 runs. With Rizzo hitting in the middle of the lineup, he could easily top 100 Runs and 120 RBI.
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For the next few weeks, the RotoGraphs staff will devote an entire week to each defensive position, including spotlights on particular players as well as trends throughout the 2015 season. This week, we’re highlighting first basemen.
I don’t claim to be a Tableau (or data visualization) whiz by any means, but I thought it would be cool to visually represent the first base landscape in 2015 — with some analysis sprinkled in.
Steamer and ZiPS represent premier player projection systems; FanGraphs’ Depth Charts combines the two, and the writing staff allocate playing time accordingly. The playing time part is less important relative to the combined projections, as aggregated projections tend to perform better than standalones.
Previously, I compared actual WAR (wins above replacement) to projected WAR. This is not entirely helpful in a fantasy context, however, given WAR is a catch-all component metric for offense and defense. Defense doesn’t do us a whole lot of good for fantasy purposes.
Thus, I figured out a way to compare projected wOBA (weighted on-base average) from the preseason to actual wOBA (1) by team and (2) by player within team. Unlike WAR, wOBA is a rate metric, so it does not need to be scaled according to playing time.
First: the difference between a team’s wOBA generated by first basemen and their projected wOBA. Blue represents the highest expected wOBA; yellow represents lowest expected wOBA. The size of the bar above (below) the line represents actual wOBA above (below) expectations.
The 2015 fantasy baseball season has come to a close, so it is time to look back at the season past and determine which players were the most valuable at each position. After looking at catchers last week, we start moving around the diamond and focus on first basemen.
The players were ranked based on their 2015 production, using the evaluation system explained and updated on this site some time ago. The valuations are built for $260 budgets and standard 5×5 roto fantasy leagues, where only one catcher is started. Players are listed only at their primary positions from 2015.
One important thing to note is the premium (or lack thereof) placed on the position a player occupies in your lineup. For example, while a first baseman may be able to accumulate superior overall numbers, the availability of such production lower in the rankings severely dampers the amount the player was worth. These rankings are meant to reflect a player’s value should he have occupied this spot in your lineup for the entire year. A player who missed time due to injury but put up great numbers during his time on the field would be worth less.
Mike Trout hurt his wrist in late July. Since then, in the 101 plate appearances headed into his game last night, the Angels outfielder has hit .224/.347/.388 with two home runs and a caught stealing. He’s been 11% better than league average, but that’s like 50% below average on the Trout scale. Is he still hurt?
As we have learned more about what drives hitter BABIP in recent years, we have talked a lot about batted ball type distribution. Joey Votto is always the example of what the ideal profile looks like for posting an inflated BABIP. It’s not necessarily the profile that leads to the highest wOBA (that’s more an individual ideal), but what would typically result in the highest rate of balls in play falling for hits.