Lucas Duda entered the 2014 season not ranked particularly high on anyone’s list, in large part due to his spotty track record, but also because of a logjam in the Mets outfield coupled with the presence of Ike Davis at first. Indeed, Duda came in ranked 37th overall at 1st base and in most formats was left until $1 dollar flyer time, last round bottom feed, or in many cases, to the waiver wire. And it turns out he would have provided a heck of a pickup if you took the early risk.
On a weird level, there are certain baseball players I consider “my guys.” No real rhyme or reason to it. Of course the most known and poked at guy of mine is easily Andrew Cashner, but I also love Neil Walker, Xavier Avery (don’t ask) and of course Adam LaRoche. Read the rest of this entry »
Adrian Gonzalez was pretty fantasy baseball valuable this year. The Los Angeles Dodgers’ first baseman wasn’t, in the preseason, expected to be quite so fantasy baseball valuable. That made him a good deal. He was 11th on the RotoGraphs consensus rankings list at first base coming into the 2014 campaign and finished as a top-five commodity after it.
A-Gon is kind of boring, to many fantasy baseball players. I recall conversations prior to the season in which folks basically said as much. He had the look of a reasonable consolation prize if you missed out on the sexier first basemen. A big reason was that he’d seemed to have lost the ability to contribute significant power production, which made the evaluation understandable, but which also seemed a little premature. Mike Podhorzer acknowledged that he had no notable explanations for his “bullish” ranking of Gonzalez but that folks just seemed to be undervaluing him, and Pod was right.
You likely spent a late first round or early second round pick for him, paid $30+ to secure his services or were giddy about protecting him at a low cost in your keeper league. And then he made your heart sink. Chris Davis ranked 20th among first basemen and amazingly was outearned by the likes of teammate Steve Pearce and power-starved James Loney. This was not the follow-up we expected.
It’s quite possible Albert Pujols’s obituary was written a little too soon. I wrote him off; not entirely, but basically. Projection systems liked him fairly well early on; I didn’t, mainly due to injury concerns. Perhaps, that’s indicative of the leagues I play in, and their setup – OBP leagues mostly, where he hasn’t been quite as valuable lately. Either way, I didn’t want much to do with King Albert this season. I owned him in one league – an Ottoneu points league, purchased for $23 ($400 budget). I wish I had owned him in more. Read the rest of this entry »
Ryan Howard has always been a charged topic on FanGraphs. He’s long been considered among the worst “values” in real baseball. Whatever complaints you may have about WAR, you probably agree it’s good enough for a quick and dirty analysis. Howard has posted -1.0 WAR over the last three seasons (yes, that’s a negative) and just 1.5 WAR over the last five seasons. Clearly, we’re not talking about a very good real world player. I won’t bother you with how much he’s been paid for that nonexistent production.
Like seemingly every Royals hitter at some point in the last couple of years, we have been waiting for a major Eric Hosmer breakout since he debuted in 2011. He teased us with his power potential by posting a .303 ISO over about a third of a season at Double-A back in 2010, all the while making excellent contact at most of his minor league stops and even showing some speed. A first baseman who might not only sock 20+ homers, but also swipe some bags and hit for a strong batting average? Fantasy gold!
A couple months ago, Landon Jones wrote this column about Anthony Rizzo’s impressive adjustments in 2014. In that piece, Landon focused on Rizzo’s improvement against fastballs, as well as his altered approach. Obviously, not much has changed since Landon wrote that article, so I’m not going to bother retreading any territory he already covered (especially since I agree with his analysis).
However, there is one area of Rizzo’s game that I feel we could certainly talk a bit more about, and that’s his newfound ability to hit southpaws. This has always been my big reservation with Rizzo, stretching back to his days as a prospect, and it wasn’t so much a bat-speed issue for me, as it was concern regarding his swing plane.
Just in case you didn’t know, Chris Carter finished the season tied for second in home runs with Giancarlo Stanton. Also in the top five were Nelson Cruz, Mike Trout and Jose Abreu. One of these is obviously not like the others, although Cruz is a cut below Stanton, Trout and Abreu yet still a cut above Carter. We all know that Carter is a one-trick pony (or a three-true outcome pony), but it’s amusing how different he is from the rest of this group when you look at something other than home runs. For example, the three studs in the top five all had a wOBA over .400 for the year while Carter’s was .346. And those three studs all contributed at least 40 offensive runs more than average while Carter contributed just shy of 13 more than average.
For the purposes of this column, it’s more important to note that the production of all four other guys in the top five of home runs was essentially worth $30 or more. Carter’s production was worth about $15. To be fair, Carter vastly out-earned the $1 at which I had him valued in the preseason, but this just illustrates how truly limiting the batting average is even when the power production is as good as you can expect it to be. Read the rest of this entry »
We’re moving on to our recap of the first basemen this week, so let’s begin by reviewing my Pod’s Picks for the position.