Archive for First Base

Thing might look a little different this year. We’ve got tools upon tools for your drafts this year, and they should be easier to get to now. But we will still do consensus rankings, and we’ll still do tiered rankings. Because it’s all helpful in different ways.

But it’s time for the consensus ranks first.

It’s also worth putting down on ‘paper’ why we do the consensus ranks the way we do them. We have Jeff Zimmerman, Mike Podhorzer and Zach Sanders submitting their individual ranks alongside mine for a couple of reasons. The first is that four is the minimum ‘n’ we can give you: more of a sample should give you a better ranking. It’s like a mini crowd-source. And the second reason is really the same, in an alternate package: each of us uses projections to a different extent, and each of us uses intuition and research to a different extent. And yes, we have the Steamer projection numbers listed here, but no, none of the rankings is solely based on those projections. In any case, you’ll get five numbers to look at, and you can choose which one you like.

To the first basemen!

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Adrian Gonzalez was a disappointment last season. While his overall slash line of .299/.344/.463 isn’t terrible for most players, it represented a pretty big fall from the elite production he’s provided in the past. The culprit of his struggles wasn’t an injury, and, at age-31, Gonzalez is still young enough to stave off a major performance decline. Those factors have made Gonzalez one of the most difficult players to project this season. Unless he can return to form, Gonzalez’s days as an elite offensive first baseman may have already come to an end.

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While he is far from an elite first baseman, Freddie Freeman should be a big target for fantasy players on draft day this season. At just 23-years-old, Freeman already has two seasons of more than 20 home runs and owns a career 115 wRC+.

The biggest reason to be bullish in regards to Freeman is how he improved in almost every area you would want a second year player to improve in. His strikeout rate dropped from 22.4% to 20.8%, his walk rate rose from 8.3% to 10.3%, his ISO rose from .166 to .196, and his line drive rate jumped from 23% to 26% with his fly ball rate jumping from 34.6% to 36.9%. The big drop from a fantasy perspective was his average, which dropped from .282 to .259, a notable decrease that matters for leagues that still use batting average as a category. While his .339 rookie BABIP probably was a bit on the high end of what to expect, his career BABIP of .315 looks more reasonable than the .295 mark he posted last year.

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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 »

Considering I just covered the A’s infield earlier this month when the team acquired infielder Jed Lowrie in exchange for Brad Peacock and Chris Carter, this one will actually be short and sweet. There hasn’t been any change in the two weeks since that last article was published. What I did do was a little more studying of the team and consulted with those who follow the A’s much more closely than I do and whose opinions I trust and respect. Read the rest of this entry »

The Brewers are looking for a new first baseman for the second time in about two months due to injury. News of Corey Hart’s knee surgery broke in mid-January, pushing perpetual prospect Mat Gamel into the first base spot on a full-time basis, at least until yesterday. The Brewers announced on Monday that the 27-year-old Gamel re-tore his right ACL during a workout over the weekend, the same knee ligament that snapped and ended his 2012 season in early-May.

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Although he wasn’t called up until late-June, Anthony Rizzo’s debut with the Cubs last season couldn’t have gone much better. He hit .285/.342/.463 (116 wRC+) overall and was even better against righties: .318/.383/.508 (141 wRC+). His 15 homers were split evenly between home (seven) and away (eight), so it’s not like his power was solely a product of Wrigley’s friendly confines. Left-handers gave Rizzo some serious trouble (.208/.243/.356, 56 wRC+), but given the team’s situation, it’s safe to say he will get more than 107 plate appearances to prove he needs a platoon partner.

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Phew. After a nearly four and a half hour snake draft online, I have officially completed the earliest draft in my fantasy baseball career. LABR stands for League of Alternative Baseball Reality, and along with Tout Wars, is one of the two most publicized “expert” leagues. In the past, LABR has had only two leagues, an AL-Only and NL-Only, with both formats using a live auction in Arizona to select players. Last year, a mixed league with an online draft was formed and I participated in the inaugural season as well. With that background out of the way, let’s get into more league specifics.

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You can tell we’re all itching for pitchers and catchers to report when multiple RotoGraphs writers start jumping all over a trade between the A’s and the Astros that doesn’t really have any marquee talent to discuss. But hey, we’re almost there. Just days away, in fact. But while others handle the power bat of Chris Carter, the potential of Brad Peacock and the dregs of what’s left in Houston, I’m going to take a look at how Jed Lowrie’s arrival in Oakland is going to impact the A’s, and how, for fantasy purposes, the outlook isn’t so good. Read the rest of this entry »

Last night the Athletics and Astros agreed to a five-player trade that, in fantasy essence, swapped Jed Lowrie for Chris Carter. Mike Podhorzer already looked at what the move to Houston means for Carter earlier this morning, but the trade also impacts the first base situation in Oakland. Based on their success last year, it seemed likely that manager Bob Melvin would again platoon Carter (a right-handed bat) with Brandon Moss (a left-handed bat). Now he’s left without an obvious right-handed first base bat.

I wrote about Moss last week, explaining why I’m pretty skeptical about him heading into 2013. It’s not that he’s a bad player or anything, just that I don’t expect him to perform anywhere near the 40+ homer, 162 wRC+ pace he played at in the second half. He is a nice fantasy bench piece given his 1B and OF eligibility, but not someone I would stick in my lineup everyday because he himself was not going to play everyday for the Athletics. The trade could change that.

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