Two weeks ago, we inaugurated what will likely still be a few more weeks of depth chart discussions in the form of playing time battles. RotoGraphs staff will discuss and assess noteworthy battles for playing time and/or starting gigs for position players and, separately, pitchers. Here, specifically, this author will investigate the Los Angeles Dodgers‘ position player situations.

Around the horn.

Catcher

No surprises here: Yasmani Grandal will assume the primary backstop role while A.J. Ellis sticks around for his defensive acumen. Grandal is the only name you care about here; he has pretty easy 20-homer power if he can make it through an entire season unscathed. The BABIP (batting average on balls in play) is ugly, no thanks to his lack of speed and his non-ideal tendency to pop balls up, but the league’s 7th-best on-base percentage (OBP) helps mitigate those losses, especially in OBP leagues (obviously).

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After last week’s gigantic breakdown of the Twins’ position battle breakdown pitching-wise, the offensive one is going to be brief, and probably a bit of a letdown. Despite having a glut of similar players returning from a middle-of-the-pack offense — they finished eighth among 15 AL teams in runs scored — there aren’t many position battles after a pretty quiet offseason as far as the Twins of 2016 are concerned.

Catcher

Despite coming off a poor season in 2015, Kurt Suzuki basically enters this season as the starter behind the plate. However, a wrinkle has been added, as the club added John Ryan Murphy from the Yankees in an offseason deal for centerfielder Aaron Hicks. It has the chance to be a signature move from Twins GM Terry Ryan, as Murphy is coming off a .277/.327/.406 line in part-time duty with the Yankees behind Brian McCann. If he can come anywhere close to replicating that, he’ll take a big chunk of playing time from Suzuki and probably quickly. My immediate vision is that it’ll be a timeshare of a 5-2 or 4-3 platoon with the Twins giving Murphy as much as he can handle provided he hits at least at the league average — not a high standard behind the plate — and handle a staff that for some reason raves about Suzuki’s receiving. The Twins also have to keep Suzuki under 485 plate appearances — he didn’t reach that mark even last year with Eric Fryer and Chris Herrmann behind him — to keep his 2017 option of $6 million from vesting. Odds are, he won’t come close. Read the rest of this entry »

I ran the 2016 Steamer projections through Zach Sanders’ Fantasy Value Above Replacement system and compared the results to early ADP data. Below I’ve got a player at each infield position that the Steamer projections think are unlikely to live up to their draft day price.

Matt Wieters, C, Baltimore Orioles

Wieters coming off the board as the ninth catcher on average makes little sense. For one, drafters are counting on a big bounce back in health from a now 30-year-old catcher. Wieters has a combined 394 plate appearances in the last two seasons. Staying healthy and getting enough PA to be a relevant fantasy option in shallow mixed leagues will be Wieters’ biggest obstacle this season.

But let’s not forget that he wasn’t that great in his last healthy season in 2013. Per our end of season valuations for that year, Wieters was barely starter-caliber in 12-team mixed leagues. His biggest issue that season was a .235 batting average, which was undoubtedly somewhat affected by some bad luck on balls in play. But since that time Wieters has been striking out more, as his strikeout rate was was a career-high 23.8 percent last year in 282 PA. So even assuming better health and an absence of bad luck on balls in play, Wieters seems unlikely to hit for much average. Steamer has a low-but-reasonable projection for Wieters’ BABIP and a 20.3 percent projected strikeout rate with a projection for his average of .244.

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Last year, I unveiled the xHR/FB rate equation I developed that I use to help guide my HR/FB rate forecast for my Pod Projections. We’re all familiar with the average batted ball distance component of the formula. Also included is the hitter’s standard deviation of distance (SDD) of his fly balls and home runs, which has a rather high year-over-year correlation, though not as hefty as distance. That means that the leaders generally remain near the top and the bottom dwellers will rarely surge into the top quartile.

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As I continue to remind you, I have been plugging away at finishing my initial set of Pod Projections, which is incredibly time consuming. However, it allows me to learn a whole lot about, like, every player, even guys I have no desire to learn anything about, such as Cameron Rupp. Every so often, I come across a player that I not only know little about, but two different sets of data lead to opposite evaluations. Then I throw up my hands and internally debate how I should project said player. So it is possible, perhaps far more so than you would ever believe, that Stephen Piscotty is a star. Or maybe he’s not. That’s probably safer to claim. Let me explain.

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Yesterday, I shared the fantasy relevant 2015 leaders in average absolute angle (AAA), one of the three components of my xHR/FB rate equation. If you don’t feel like clicking back to yesterday’s article, I will repeat what this mysterious metric is all about.

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Last year, I unveiled the xHR/FB rate equation I developed that I use to help me with my Pod Projections. We’re all familiar with the average batted ball distance component of the formula. Also included is the hitter’s average absolute angle (AAA) of his fly balls, which has a relatively low year-over-year correlation.

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Yesterday, I finally launched my never ending series of lists as we look toward the 2016 season by reviewing those fantasy relevant hitters who gained at least 15 feet of batted ball distance from 2014 to 2015. As you may have guessed, today I’ll look at the other end, those hitters who lost the most distance. Since there were surprisingly fewer extreme decliners, the list is going to include those who lost at least 10 feet of distance, rather than 15 feet like the gainers list included.

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Finally, it’s time for me to start looking toward the 2016 season with list after list after list. You love lists, right? Of course you do! We’ll start preview season with a look at one of my favorite metrics – hitter average fly ball and home run distance, or simply hitter batted ball distance. A long three years ago, Chad Young and I embarked on a quest to predict HR/FB rate and found that a hitter’s batted ball distance available at Baseball Heat Maps is highly correlated with HR/FB rate. No duh. The further a batter hits the ball on average, the more home runs, shocking!

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Looking over some recent real and mock fantasy drafts, one name which is coming up as a potential sleeper is Jose Reyes. His fantasy value is unknown with his projected value being quite a bit different than the position he is being taken in fantasy drafts. Dan Swartz had him ranked 34th using Steamer projections while he was actually going 151st in NFBC drafts. The reason for the huge difference comes down to his pending criminal charges for domestic abuse. While the legal, ramifications may take a while to go to court, MLB has enacted a new domestic violence policy which has yet to be tested. I can see why people are reluctant to draft Reyes. Well, here is an attempt to put a reasonable fantasy value on him for 2016.

Estimating games missed

To get the expected games suspended, I went with two methods to find the answer, asking the crowd and asking the expert. Both sources generally agree with the time missed.

For the crowd, I asked my Twitter followers how much time they expected Reyes to be suspended. Most people put the value between 25 and 50 games with an average value near 35 games.

Then I moved on to FanGraphs legal expert Nathaniel Grow. When I asked him how he expected the situation to play out, here is his response.

While Reyes’ status remains uncertain, a suspension somewhere in the 25-50 game range would probably be a reasonable, conservative estimate of the punishment he is likely to face from the league.

So somewhere between 25 and 50 games, which is around where the crowd put the number. I will take the view of a conservative owner and go with a 50 game suspension to figure out his value. If an owner wants to take a chance, they could assume fewer days missed.

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