Allen Craig stunk in 2014. We all saw it. He stunk for the St. Louis Cardinals. He stunk even more for the Boston Red Sox. He stunk all season for fantasy baseball players, for whom he lost money, and ended up in the hundreds among outfielders. A regular. The only guy who accumulated 500-plus plate appearances this past season and finished ranked in the hundreds.

Is that it, then? Does he just stink now? It’s possible. Maybe even likely. Perhaps close to definite. But we don’t know. I don’t think that we can know. At least not yet.

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This past season was a pretty productive one for Brandon Moss. The Oakland Athletics’ outfielder-first baseman hit a subpar .234, but his 25 dingers helped to place him in the top 40 outfielders by Zach Sanders’ standards. His $12-plus in earnings would make him a top-15 first baseman, in case he went that way for fantasy baseball players. The recession on offense made Moss’ numbers more valuable in rotisserie leagues.

The 2014 campaign could have been better, perhaps notably so, for Moss, in fact. The slugger went yard for the 23^rd time this season on July 24, yet he finished with a total that tied him for 21^st in the majors in that category. He much more resembled the hitter he was in 2013 (.267 ISO) prior to the All-Star break this year (.268/.349/.530, 21 jacks, and a .262 ISO in 364 PAs) than he did after it (.173/.310/.274, 4 HR, and a .101 ISO in 216 PAs). Moss wasn’t the same by the end of July.

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It’s hard not to fall in love with the fantasy potential of Jason Heyward, especially for those of us who can’t forget the can’t-miss hype surrounding his debut and a rookie season that seemed like the precursor to imminent superstardom. So it’s difficult to shake the tinge of disappointment that’s come to hang around Heyward in the past couple of years, not necessarily because he’s done anything wrong — he is, after all, just 25 years old and boasts a career .345 wOBA — but because in him we see fantasy studliness, and can’t help but feel let down each year when he falls short of making good on his immense potential.
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Coming into 2014, I was very high on George Springer. After seeing him play in both Double-A and Triple-A in 2013, I was so confident in his abilities that I wrote a column explaining why Springer was still worth drafting and holding in standard mixed leagues, even if he started the season in Triple-A.

The 24-year-old spent exactly 13 games back down in Triple-A to start the season, hitting .353/.459/.647, with eight extra-base hits and four steals. That was enough to convince the Astros to call him up and give him the everyday right-field job. At first, he struggled to adjust, hitting just .182/.262/.218 in his first 14 major-league games. As it turned out, two weeks was about all the adjusting he needed to do.

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I’ve written briefly about Jordy Mercer twice before; once a couple months ago, and once in June 2013. I first saw Mercer play back in 2006, when he arrived at Oklahoma State, and I’ve followed his career closely over the eight-plus years since. That piece from last June pretty well encapsulated my feelings about Mercer’s pre-MLB career:

I always wondered whether his hit tool would play at the higher levels.

In college, Mercer was right around a .300 hitter with 25 homers in three seasons. Keep in mind that this was before the NCAA switched to the offense-suppressing new bats; a .300 collegiate hitter wasn’t exactly impressive in that offensive environment. As he climbed through the minors, my concerns seemed valid, as he posted a batting average around .260 at most of his minor-league stops.

Then, last year, something seemed to change. Mercer developed an ability to get on base that he hadn’t shown before. He posted a much-improved .287/.357/.421 slash line in Triple-A, good enough to get him a call to the majors.

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Episode 177

The latest episode of “The Sleeper and the Bust” is live!

Eno Sarris and Nicholas Minnix discuss end-of-season shortstop rankings, which went up this past Monday, as well as the 2015 outlooks for many of them, including: Starlin Castro, Xander Bogaerts, Jean Segura, Andrelton Simmons, Wilmer Flores, and Brad Miller, with plenty of comments about the bigger names thrown in there.

As usual, don’t hesitate to tweet us or comment with fantasy questions so that we may answer them in our next episode.

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This probably wasn’t the type of year most fantasy baseball players who drafted or bought Andrelton Simmons expected from him. The Atlanta Braves’ shortstop finished with a .244 average, a mere seven home runs, and a measly four stolen bases. Even in a year of depressed offense and especially at a position starving for some of it, the third-year player failed to be replacement-level in the average mixed league, according to Sr. Zach Sanders’ shortstop standings.

Simmons seemed to have the makings of an underrated fantasy asset coming into this year. He hit .248 in the previous season yet struck out in only 8.4% of his plate appearances and hit .247 on balls in play, so he appeared to be destined to be a plus – or at least not a minus – in batting average. He swatted 17 long balls, demonstrating that he could be a power player. And he’d stolen as many as 26 bases in a season on the farm, so the possibility of more speed tantalized. None of those things materialized, unfortunately.

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There’s nothing terribly sexy about Alexei Ramirez as a fantasy baseball player, despite his 2014 line. He batted .273 with 15 home runs and 21 stolen bases this past season, but we know that power isn’t a big part of his game anymore. This year’s homer total clearly pushed some of that volume in RBIs and runs scored.

Come to think of it, there’s nothing terribly sexy about Ramirez, period. He’s listed at 6-foot-2, 180 pounds (incidentally, also my dimensions). Look at him. He’s a stick. Granted, some people find men like him extremely attractive. I don’t have the numbers in front of me, but I’m confident that folks in that demographic don’t make up the majority. He doesn’t exactly fit the image of the prevailing notion of a hot slab of man beef.

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It’s been more than a decade since Jose Reyes broke into the majors, and for this Mets fan, who grew up in Shea’s baseball wasteland of the ’90s when the likes of Jay Payton, Paul Wilson and Rey Ordonez were paraded around as can’t-miss future superstars, the teenaged shortstop’s arrival was indescribably refreshing and exciting. Here, at last, was a homegrown all-star who was a natural leadoff hitter, excellent fielder and stolen base machine whose energy, smile, youth and awe-inspiring talent seemed to spell the coming of better days in Flushing.

Eleven years and two teams later, it’s still a bit unsettling to talk about Reyes as an aging ballplayer, though his injury history and 31 years of age make it unavoidable. But the star power continues to shine, as Reyes this year finished second among all shortstops in Zach Sanders’ end of the year rankings, first at the position in standard CBS formats and 36th overall on ESPN’s Player Rater, re-establishing his credentials as an early-round candidate after an injury-marred 2013 campaign.
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The headline on this column may not feel particularly bold, seeing as Ian Desmond finished 2014 as the No. 1 shortstop in fantasy. Still, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to assume he’ll be behind the likes of Troy Tulowitzki, Jose Reyes and Hanley Ramirez in the majority of 2015 preseason rankings.

In a way, this is completely fair. Both Tulowitzki and Hanley have higher ceilings year-to-year than Desmond, while Reyes has been a top option at the position for nearly a decade. What sets Desmond apart is his ability to stay on the field, compared to his competition among the top few shortstops.

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