Archive for First Base

Wow. We sure as heck didn’t see this one coming. If your computer crashed/you lost power/aliens abducted you for a day, and this is the first article you’re reading since, you missed one head scratching signing by the Oakland Athletics. That, of course, was Billy Butler. He figures to be the team’s every day designated hitter, and perhaps play a couple of games here and there at first base. For future Butler owners, hopefully those games at first come as starts in National League parks. Let’s take a gander at how departing Kauffman Stadium for the awesomely named O.co Coliseum may affect his performance.

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Mauer ranked 24th among fantasy first basemen this year according to Colonel Sanders’ rankings behind Mark Teixeira and ahead of Mike Napoli.

On the surface, Joe Mauer’s 2014 season is anything but impressive. In fact, it’s borderline identical to his last injury-marred season back in 2011.

The circumstances were a little different though. In 2011 Mauer was shut down with pneumonia and upper respiratory issues. This year Mauer played out the string, but did miss 34 games in the middle of the season for an oblique issue. Read the rest of this entry »

Somebody had to write about Billy Butler, and I do kind of enjoy finding creative ways to say “this guy really sucked,” so let’s get to it, shall we? Here’s the long and short of it, as told through breakfast analogies: Country Breakfast was a full meal for even the heftiest appetite back in 2012. Last year, he played more like Continental Breakfast, albeit one that still had a waffle iron and maybe even some sausage links under a heat lamp. This year, Butler amounted to little more than a bowl of store-brand corn flakes and an overripe banana. Or, say, a crusty croissant. With no butter.

I’m not even sure where to begin, because Butler regressed in so many ways. His nine home runs were his fewest since hitting eight — in a whopping 243 fewer plate appearances — as a rookie in 2007. His isolated power was a career-worst .107. His 6.8% walk rate was a career-low. His 15.9% strikeout rate was 0.4% shy of being a career-high.

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Miguel Cabrera was the third-best first baseman this year by our end-of-year evaluations, but his owners paid first-best fantasy player prices. Take a look at his isolated power — the main missing component this year — over his career, and last year actually looks familiar. Has Cabrera returned to being the player he was earlier in his career?

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Paul Goldschmidt was having a great season until he got hit by a pitch and broke his wrist in August. He was hitting home runs, had an .300 AVG and was still getting some steals (nine). It was just another All-Star caliber season until the broke wrist ended his season.

The main issue with him going into 2015  will be if his wrist is still bothering him. To see how player’s performed after wrist issues, I looked at hitter production the season before, of, and after a similar wrist injury.

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Mike Napoli didn’t have quite the campaign in 2014 fantasy baseball players hoped he would. But, given the mid-round price they paid in mixed leagues, they were clearly prepared for some downside. He batted .248 with a .370 OBP in 500 plate appearances, but it’s the 17 home runs (and largely resultant 55 RBIs) that were a bit disappointing and largely the reason he was basically a replacement-level asset in roto leagues this season.

There aren’t any glaring signs of an immediate rebound, either. Napoli will be 33 next year. He has a bad body type. He’s already dealt with various health issues for the past few seasons. He has platoon-split issues. He strikes out pretty frequently. If he isn’t going to hit 25 bombs, then he’s probably not going to be much good in the fake baseball game.

Perhaps there’s some salvageable value, though. Those negatives could drive down his cost significantly. Fantasy owners tend to steer clear of hitters like Napoli. Will he fall, and how much will he, if he does?

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It was a fantastic season for Edwin Encarnacion, but his owners are left wondering “what if?” What if he didn’t miss 30-some games with injury. He could have been the top first baseman in baseball. Zach Sanders tabbed Encarnacion’s 79 runs, 34 home runs, 98 RBI, two steals, and .268 average as worth $20. Per FantasyPros, he cost about $28 to draft. While he didn’t return a profit for his owners, it was a good season to hold shares of Encarnacion.
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First base has a disproportionate number of hitters who are left-handed and hit for power. As such, there is no position in baseball that has been as impacted by the defensive shift. Pretty much every team has bought into the shift on one level or another, and while some players with extreme pull tendencies escape notice because they do not fit the stereotype (hello Jimmy Rollins!), teams are going to err on the side of shifting players who look like Matt Adams and Lucas Duda.

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Jose Abreu was the newest of a group of Cubans arriving in the Majors Leagues in the last couple of years. The most recent and notable of that group, Yoenis Cespedes and Yasiel Puig, made successful enough debuts that expectations were understandably high for the new kid on the block. Abreu certainly posted eye-popping stats in Cuba. And they were even better then the aforementioned pair. Even his translations were off the charts, but the difficulty in calculating those means we had to take those equivalents with a grain of salt. But now after the completion of the 2014 season, it is fair to say that any concerns scouts and fantasy owners may have had have officially been silenced.

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Cardinals first baseman Matt Adams entered 2014 with some lofty expectations. In a part-time role in 2013, Adams displayed all the skills that pointed to him being a potentially elite option at first base. He hit for average, added plenty of power and walked at an acceptable rate. First base was a deep position, though, leading to the RotoGraphs experts ranking Adams 17th coming into the season. That proved to be perfect. Adams actually finished 17th among first baseman in the End of Season Rankings. There were plenty of reasons to be concerned about Adams entering 2014, so let’s take a look at what went wrong.

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