Archive for First Base

As the season winds down, lets look at a pair of players that can help you make a late run…

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You generally expect your first basemen to give you above average production. However, over the past 30 days a majority of them went nuts. Seven posted a wOBA of +.400 and seven more were above .370. Three put up a wRC+ of over .190 and nine more were over .150. Joey Votto is first in wOBA and second in wRC+. If I gave you 100 guesses I don’t think you’d be able to name the player that’s second to Votto and first in wRC+. The mighty James Anthony Loney.

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One last set of first base rankings as we head down the stretch and into the season’s final month. You can find last month’s rankings right here, which link back through all the previous months.

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We continue looking ahead to the 2012 fantasy baseball season by highlighting the potential impact rookies at each position. Why? Because it’s never too early to begin thinking about next year, even if you’re still trying to win your league right now. And for those of you in keeper leagues, particularly deeper ones, these primers will be especially helpful, because you’ll find out which young players may be worth snatching up now — before other owners get a clue — so you can hang onto them next season, when their value kicks in. Think of it like an investment requiring only a little up-front cost that could pay off big in the near future.

Much like my Mining the Minors columns on this site, which focus on current-season impact more than long-term upside, these 2012 rookie primers are meant for players who will fulfill or are expected to fulfill their rookiedom next year. Also much like my MTM work, the point here is to find the right mix of opportunity and talent, so that you’re picking up a player who can contribute, either in a starting role or as a reserve, from Day 1 or soon thereafter. Chances are, I’ll hit on many of these same players in depth at some point in future Mining the Minors columns, but for now, it’s good to get ahead of the curve with a snapshot of the talent at each position.

To give you a brief idea of just how this sort of thing can be worthwhile, I’m in two deep keeper leagues, one AL-only and one NL-only, and around this time last year, I picked up Mark Trumbo, Jordan Walden and Brandon Beachy. Worked out pretty well, if I do say so myself.

Click on the position to see previous primers: Catcher

Next up? First basemen.

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Yankees fans can be a fickle bunch, so when their $180M first baseman starts posting .360-.370 wOBA’s instead of .390+ plus, they notice and wonder what’s wrong. Mark Teixeira is still one of the game’s very best hitters, a run-producing machine with serious power from both sides of the plate (.258 ISO vs. RHP and .280 vs. LHP this year, with similar splits throughout his career) and a knack for avoiding strike three (just 15.3% strikeouts this year and 17.2% for his career), but what’s going on with his batting average, the most basic of offensive metrics?

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Welcome to another game of Keeper League Would You Rather.  While first base is widely considered the deepest position in fantasy baseball, it is also has a high percentage of players protected, given the fact that most of your mashers are found here.  Still, dynasty leagues, AL or NL-only, and deeper mixed leagues have numerous owners looking for cheaper alternatives at the position with the hopes that an inexpensive youngster will eventually provide big time power at a bargain rate.  So let’s look at two of the more popular options from the youth bin…

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Adrian Gonzalez has been pretty much everything the Red Sox expected him to be and then some after sending three top prospects (and Eric Patterson) to the Padres to acquire the now-29-year-old slugger over the winter. Gonzalez leads all of MLB in batting average (.348) and runs driven in (92), and is tops among big league first baseman with 5.1 WAR. There is a slight problem though (and a really hesitate to call this a problem), and it’s the lack of homeruns, especially recently.

Since the middle of June, the arbitrary end point of June 18th, Gonzalez has hit just three home runs. Three in 212 PA. He hit three homers in the 22 PA immediately prior to that, and 15 in his first 311 PA of the season. It’s kinda hard to believe that he’s being out-homered by Jacoby Ellsbury (19-18) while out-tripling his speedy teammate (3-2) this season. When you look at Adrian’s day-by-day batting ball profile, it’s easy to see why the big flies have been scarce for the last month and a half…

Gonzalez has stopped hitting fly balls, basically. His season ground ball rate is 46.7%, easily the highest of his career. He had been in the high-30% range the last two years. The high ground ball rate helps explain his MLB leading .389 BABIP (.310 career coming into 2011), which has resulted in the MLB best batting average. Let’s look at the spray charts, beginning with his first 311 PA (before this recent homer drought started)…

It’s a pretty standard Adrian Gonzalez spray chart. The majority of the fly balls are out to left field, and the majority of the ground balls rolled over to the right side of the infield. You can get a general idea of which balls clanked off the Green Monster for hits, and I count four (maybe five) balls hit over the wall the other way. Now lets look at the spray chart for his last 212 PA…

Again, typical Gonzalez in that most of the balls hit to the outfield went the other way while the grounders have been pulled, but where are they majority of the hits? They’re in shallow right and center, and a lot them are grounders sneaking through the infield (remember, the spray chart shows where the ball was fielded by the defender, not where it landed). There’s basically no balls hit deep to left, at least relative to what he was doing earlier in the season. I’d like to hear from the Red Sox fans out there … is Gonzalez battling a nagging injury? Have pitchers changed their approach against him (more offspeed, maybe pounding him inside with fastballs)? Is there any evidence that would help explain this sudden spike in ground ball rate, which has led to the lack of homeruns?

By no means has Gonzalez been bad this season, in fact I just ranked him the top fantasy first baseman last week. He’s hitting for a super-high average and is driving in what seems like two runs a game because his teammates are awesome, though after four straight years of 30+ homers with the Padres in Petco Park, we all expected him to do no worse than maintain that pace in Fenway. ZiPS projects him to hit just nine more dingers the rest of the way, which would bring his season total to 27. Gonzalez showed earlier in the year that he can get hot (eight homers in an 11 game stretch in May), so it would not be a surprise to see how outperform that projection. But has his relative lack of homers to this point been a little disappointing? Yeah I think that’s fair.

Big ups to Texas Leaguers for the spray charts.

With the unfortunate knee injury to Daniel Murphy, starting roles are in flux in New York. Ike Davis has also admitted recently that he’ll out of commission all year most likely. There’s playing time to be had.

Lucas Duda (3% owned in Yahoo)
We last profiled el Duderino at the end of June, so it’s time for an update. There are still plenty of reasons to be excited about Duda, even if his overall .262/.329/.436 line is underwhelming for a corner outfielder slash first baseman. First, there’s obviously power upside remaining. Duda ISO’ed .295 at Triple-A in 2010 and 2011 (455 PAs combined), and managed a .214 ISO in his debut (92 PAs). He hits more fly balls than ground balls, and he looks like an ox. For some reason, he’s only managing a 5.9% HR/FB number right now, but that’s not statistically reliable yet. Power is tied into his batting average, and if he can inch that power forward, he could beat his ZiPs RoS projections (.246/.324/.421) because the rest of the batting average package (other than speed) is there. He doesn’t strike out much (7.5% swinging strike rate is below average, and so is his 14.1% strikeout percentage). He’s hitting gobs of line drives (23.3%, average is 19%). He’s not an extreme fly ball hitter (0.94 GB/FB). Throw those batted ball numbers into an xBABIP calculator, and you get .328 (not his current .286). So it’s on the power: if he shows a little more of it, he could be a .275/.340/.480 guy for the next two months, which does work in most leagues.

Scott Hairston (0% owned in Yahoo)
Though he does represent an upgrade over Met bench pieces of the past, Hairston is most likely only a bench part. As much as we try to avoid using platoon splits too often here, the Chin owns a sizeable split that has affected his usage. In over 700 PAs against left-handers, Hairston is a useful .278/.331/.492 player. Against over 1200 PAs against same-handed players? The 31-year-old is batting .228/.289/.411. He still shows power, which is the best part of his game, but there seems to be something going on there. If you can put him on your deep league bench and slot him in against southpaws, you’ll come out ahead.

Nick Evans (0% owned)
If Lucas Duda is really the starting first baseman, and Scott Hairston is best used against right-handers, perhaps the 25-year-old Evans will draw the starts against right-handers. Unfortunately the player nicknamed ‘Who’ by Met faithful is also right-handed and hasn’t distinguished himself as a bona fide major league regular so far. Well, it would be unfair to judge him on his 266 major league PAs. But his minor league PAs haven’t been so amazing for a player older than his competition performing near his peak. His walk rates have been at average or worse, his strikeout rates around average, and last year he had a .149 ISO in Triple-A. It’s true that he’s had better years in the past, and it’s possible he could be useful in the deepest of leagues. But Evans didn’t once have a year as nice as Duda’s last two years in the same parks.

New month, new rankings. The trade deadline had some fantasy impact on the first base position, but nothing too crazy. Here are last month’s rankings, which link back even further into the season.

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If Derrek Lee’s Pirates debut Monday night is any indication of things to come, then you should be running to your fantasy league’s waiver wire and grab him while you can.  2-for-4 with 2 HR and 3 RBI?  Sounds like someone’s happy with his move to the Steel City.  If you’re looking for a boost from your corner infield spot, then Lee will certainly fit the bill. Read the rest of this entry »