Nolan Arenado certainly proved a whole lot of people wrong this year. Just two years ago, Arenado’s media perception took an unreasonably large hit. A rumor floated around that he was unhappy about not being promoted, he put up a bad month, and suddenly he was labeled as a whiner. He now had “makeup issues.”

Even if it was fair to be asking questions about his character, Arenado’s fall from grace in the eyes of the baseball media was nothing short of amazing. MLB.com dropped him from their top 50 list, ESPN dumped him from their top 100, Baseball Prospectus bumped him down a full 37 spots on their list, etc. The point here is not to single out any of these outlets. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. The point is to illustrate how pretty much everyone took the “makeup issues” narrative and ran with it.

One notable exception? Our own Marc Hulet, who kept a level head, writing in February 2013 that “questions have been raised about his maturity level, but most young men his age (21) have questionable behavior at times, so he probably deserves a mulligan.” This is exactly what I didn’t understand at the time. What 21-year-old doesn’t have some maturity issues? (For example, when I was 21, I still thought that mixing box wine with Mt. Dew was an acceptable practice.) Read the rest of this entry »

Episode 176

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

Eno Sarris and Nicholas Minnix discuss end-of-season third basemen rankings, which went up on Monday, as well as what they think of 2015 prospects for some of them, including: Anthony Rendon, Josh Donaldson, Todd Frazier, Trevor Plouffe, Nick Castellanos, and Brett Lawrie. The analysts also respond to a couple of holdover requests for some talk about Christian Yelich and Jorge Soler.

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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Fantasy baseball players can, at this point, feel pretty safe in making the judgment that the 2012 season represents an outlier in Chase Headley’s statistical ledger.

The switch hitter went yard 31 times and led the National League in RBIs with 115 that year. He tied a career best with 17 swipes, to boot. He also played in 161 games for the second time in his lifetime; that much playing time isn’t exactly baseline performance level, either, although it’s hardly the No. 1 factor in his limitations both before and after that career year. He posted extremely similar rates in each of the past two campaigns, and they aren’t much different from the three he produced before that legendary rotisserie line.

The object at RotoGraphs is to point out the obvious, so, case closed. Please surf the Interwebs safely. Don’t forget to tip your cloud.

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I find third base the most interesting position in terms of eligibility in fantasy. It seems to be the crossroads that connect all other positions. Shortstops with poor range often end up at third. Third basemen with poor arms often end up in the outfield. Carlos Santana tried some third this season to get him out from behind the plate, and many future first basemen try to survive at third so teams can add an extra power bat to their lineups.

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It figures. He’d entered the two seasons prior amid expectations that he’d emerge as his club’s regular third baseman, but he failed to lock down the position. Lonnie Chisenhall didn’t have a regular place to play for the Cleveland Indians in this past campaign, however, so, naturally, he produced early on and, thus, elbowed his way into the lineup. He finished with a .280/.343/.427 slash line and 13 bombs in 533 plate appearances.

Did Chisenhall truly experience a breakthrough? After a hot start to the 2014 season, his output declined pretty steadily. As a left-handed batter, he wouldn’t need much good fortune in order to exceed expectations. But he also made some gains which suggest that he began to establish a new baseline performance level. The magnitudes of those gains should be pretty telling.

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The most amazing thing about Todd Frazier’s breakout season is how little his basic statistical profile changed. He was still the same old Todd Frazier, but better this time. Good enough to be the second-best third baseman in 5×5 fantasy baseball in 2014.

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If it doesn’t seem all that long ago that Manny Machado was the darling of prospect hounds and fantasy dreamers, well, that’s because it hasn’t been; the 2010 first round draft pick made his debut just two seasons ago, broke out as an all-star last year and was barely drinking age on opening day back in April.
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Were you to look at the dashboard stats on the player page of Nick Castellanos, you might be very concerned about his batting average next year. He hit just .259 despite a robust .326 BABIP because he struck out too much (24.2% K%). Because BABIP is less within the control of the player than strikeout rate is, it’s fair to be concerned that Castellanos’ BABIP could fall and his batting average along with it unless accompanied by a surprising drop in strikeout rate. But BABIP isn’t completely out of a hitter’s control, and Castellanos might have more control over his. Read the rest of this entry »

It was a good year to be a Howie Kendrick owner. The Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim second baseman hit for a quality batting average (.293), as usual. That rate stat has kind of come to define him, though. The fact that he accumulated a career-high 617 plate appearances in 2014 is basically why he delighted fantasy baseball players as the sixth-most valuable man at the keystone sack. He belted only seven home runs and stole a modest 14 bases, but those sums and the playing time resulted in 85 runs scored and a career-high-tying 75 RBIs. Kendrick was, practically, an across-the-board money earner, and that was good enough for him to turn a tidy profit for his owners in most leagues.

Mixed-leagued earnings of nearly $20 and a spot in the top six at any position in a particular campaign don’t mean that a player is one of the best options at that position, of course. Kendrick’s 2014 value was a byproduct of auxiliary attrition coupled with his somewhat greater reliability than normal. The depth, perhaps growing, at second base should plant the Halos’ hard hitter right back into the mix of solid middle-infield options, as the RotoGraphs consensus pegged him this past March, next draft season. The 31-year-old has a tried and true skill set, but it’s limited and in decline.

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On the surface, Kolten Wong didn’t have the most exciting 2014. The 24-year-old’s season was a serious rollercoaster, as I discussed in my column on him over the All-Star Break. Sitting here at the end of the season, it’s hard to look at his monthly splits and know what to make of his year on the whole. He finished the season as the No. 13 fantasy second baseman, coming in just behind the likes of Dustin Pedroia and Scooter Gennett, earning a little over $6. Pretty unremarkable, right?

Wong started off so cold that the Cards sent him back down to the minors before the calendar even turned from April to May. He tore it up for a few weeks in Triple-A, Mark Ellis and his .180/.253/.213 slash failed miserably, and Wong was back up by mid-May. His hot hitting carried over from the minors, and Wong became firmly entrenched as the starting second baseman in St. Louis.

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