We interrupt the 2012 Catcher Keeper Rankings to answer a question from one of our readers, Buck Turgidson, who asked,  “Will Jesus Montero be eligible at catcher to start next season?

Plenty of people are wondering whether or not they will get to use the New York Yankees hitting phenom at the position he played in the minor leagues or if his late season call-up that saw him DH for 14 games and work behind the plate for just 3 will lock him in as a designated hitter.  For the most part, those using ESPN and Yahoo as their fantasy site will be forced to begin the season with Montero as a DH and have to wait until he logs enough games behind the dish to qualify.  Those using other sites, such as CBS Sports, may have a little more flexibility depending on their Commissioner capabilities.  Personally, I think ESPN and Yahoo need to loosen the reins a little and allow for exceptions such as this.  I don’t see anything wrong with Montero beginning the season as a catcher and even set up something specific in the rules for just such an example.

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With the 2011 season firmly behind, it’s easy to look at Philadelphia’s Four Aces mantra as hubris, especially in light of their surprising exit in the NLDS. And yet, three of the aces held up their end of the bargain. The title was only rendered false by Roy Oswalt turning in a career worst season as the fourth expected ace. While his comparatively poor year didn’t do much to inhibit the Phillies in terms of regular season success, he is something of a question mark in 2012. It must be said, however, that it bodes well for a team’s continued success when one of their bigger unknowns is whether their fourth starter, who was still slightly above league average despite a down year, will return to the team.

When he first came to the Phillies in the midst of the 2010 season, Oswalt looked every bit the ace he was in Houston. He was extremely stingy with base runners and struck out 73 hitters in just 12 starts. In 2011, he struck out just 20 more hitters in almost twice the starts as part of a decline in nearly every fantasy stat. He posted his highest WHIP ever and his highest ERA since 2009 — symptoms of a lot of balls finding holes at rather untimely moments. This could be due to a decrease in fastball velocity, something Michael Barr explored earlier this month.

His BABIP was 20 points above his career average despite a LD% below his typical level. He produced a high number of fly balls — both infield and outfield flies — yet allowed a career high OPS and a near career high slugging despite a HR/FB below his career rate. He wasn’t giving up lasers all over the park or suffering greatly from his home park’s dimensions, yet it seems that balls continually found gaps in the outfield, which makes his overall line look worse than it ought to have been. He’s a pitcher who has outpitched his xFIP for most of his career, so this year was nothing unusual in that sense.

While his back is no longer bothersome to the point that he is thinking about retiring, it is a concern. The injury has flared up a few times in the last few seasons, costing him over two months of time in 2011. The Phillies’ training staff is certainly aware of the injury and are almost certainly working to mitigate it, but we’re reaching the point where their job may be more palliative and less preventative. The hope going forward may well be that Oswalt’s time on the DL will be short, rather than that he’ll be able to make all his starts. He still made 23 starts this season, so it’s not like his injury renders him devoid of value, but it does have to be part of the keeper math.

Without a doubt, part of the overwhelming disappointment with Oswalt was his acquisition price. His ESPN ADP was 71, well ahead of Matt Cain, Yovani Gallardo, Matt Garza, and more than 100 picks ahead of Madison Bumgarner. He didn’t match either his 2010 numbers or the hype surrounding the Phillies’ rotation, and that will reflect poorly on him, perhaps unduly so, when it comes to both keeper decisions and to draft day 2012.

That gap between expected value and produced value is part of what makes him a tough keeper call. I fully expect him to be better next year than he was this year, but I don’t think he’ll be worth the slot he was picked at for the 2011 season. If you have any sort of dilemma about whether he’s worth using a keeper spot on him, I’d put him back in the pot, then hope to get him at a reduced rate or slot. Just because you’re putting him back into the mix doesn’t mean you can’t target him as a solid SP option for the back end of your rotation. If someone else is willing to take him in the 70s again, more power to them, but pitching is so deep right now, I don’t see him being worth drafting that high or keeping.

Before we continue with the catchers today, allow me to make a correction/clarification.  After much discussion behind the scenes and after some of the comments received, these rankings will be purely based on the players’ level of worth, much in the style of our regular in-season rankings.  Costs to protect and relative value are up to you as there are just too many nuances and cost variations for individual leagues that we are unable to accurately factor in.  That being said, please allow me to make one change to the first tier…. Read the rest of this entry »

The inaugural season of ottoneu on FanGraphs is over. Let’s take a look at the final standings, dissect the winning moves, and congratulate the winners!

FanGraphs Staff League
Congratulations to Jesse Wolfersberger for winning the first edition of the FanGraphs Staff league. I blame linear weights points (and my infamiliarity with them) for my poor showing, but Jesse didn’t have a problem with it at all. It came down to five points on the last day, and one hit is worth 5.6 points. A photo finish!

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Being tasked with ranking the NL starting pitchers is a mixed blessing.

On one hand, there’s so much talent here, I don’t have to worry about having to recommend someone like Derek Lowe as a tier three pitcher, which is nice, since Lowe really isn’t a SP3 option in any sense of the term. On the other hand, someone like Matt Garza may end up in the fourth tier or perhaps even the fifth, which always gets someone’s goat. I love Garza — and I’m quite sure I’d never trade him for Theo Epstein — but if you’re giving me the choice between Garza and Roy Halladay, suddenly I love Garza a lot less.

Tiers are derived from Zach Sanders’ retrospective auction values. If I think a guy isn’t likely to stick near the same level next year — either that he’s tiered too high or too low — I’ll let you know in the comments, but this is reflective of what they did this year.

Joining the chorus of keeper rankings that have popped up over the last day or two, here are your NL starting pitching ranks.

Clayton Kershaw — $35

Not much to argue about here. Kershaw may not have saved many games, but he dominated the other four standard pitching categories with nearly 250 strikeouts, an ERA of 2.28, a WHIP under 1.00, and more than a quarter of the Dodgers’ wins this season. He was good last year, so it isn’t as though his success is unexpected, but he took a huge step forward this year and should continue to be dominant for the foreseeable future. If he’s the first pitcher off the board next year, I can’t say I’d disagree with that choice. He’s just 23 after all, it’s entirely possible that he’ll improve from here, which has to be a downright terrifying thought for the divisional rivals that have to see him multiple times a year. Projecting someone to reach Pedro Martinez’s level of outrageous dominance is foolhardy at best, but if I had to put money on some current pitcher to get there, Kershaw would be hard to pass over, though Stephen Strasburg makes a compelling case as well.

Roy Halladay — $30

Doc set a career high in strikeouts last year with 219, then bested that record this year with…220. Ok, he didn’t exactly blow away that mark, but the strikeouts are a relatively recent addition to Halladay’s arsenal, which has made him more valuable in almost every format over the last two seasons; clearly, the move to the National League did him some good, but facing a pitcher instead of a DH will do that. I’m not at all portending doom for Halladay in the near future, but next season will see him turn 35. It’s entirely possible to pitch well at ages more advanced than that, but not everyone ages so well. Of the 10 best seasons since 1960 turned in by a pitcher age 35 or older — determined by ERA+ — Randy Johnson owns five, Roger Clemens and Kevin Brown each have a pair, and Whitey Ford has the remaining one. Halladay looks like he could turn in a season good enough to join the list, but we’ll see what next year brings.

Cliff Lee — $30

Like his teammate Halladay, Lee set a career high in strikeouts this season with 238, and unlike Halladay, it was an appreciable improvement over his previous career high of 185. Concerns over Lee moving to hitter-friendly Citizen’s Bank Park proved to be overblown as his H/9 dropped to a near career-low 7.6 and he allowed opposing hitters to slug just .339 against him. In fact, Lee pitched much better at home, allowing hitters just a .559 OPS in Philly compared to .672 on the road. No one will mistake the Phillies’ rotation for a bunch of college kids, but there’s no reason to believe Lee is going to suddenly “regain” his 2007 form.

Ian Kennedy — $25

There’s no surprise that Halladay and Lee were among the top five pitchers this season; Kershaw and Hamels weren’t givens to join them, but were obviously capable. Kennedy is the man who looks out of place in this list, but he certainly earned it. His H/9, HR/9, and BB/9 all dropped from 2010 while his K/9 rose; the 21 wins are just the icing on the cake. In an objective sense, there are other players who might be better than he is, but if he can keep his strikeout rate reasonably high, there are few who can match his combination of low acquisition price and high production.

Cole Hamels — $24

Hamels did lose a few strikeouts this year, but in exchange he also gave up fewer hits, fewer home runs, and fewer walks. Given that he had strikeouts to spare last year, it seems like pretty a fair trade off to me. He still struck out nearly 200 hitters, so it isn’t as though he turned into Livan Hernandez, and the balance made him a better option across the board. He’s the youngest of the Phillies’ Four Aces, so he’s got that going for him. If he can add in the strikeouts he lost this year, while keeping the other peripherals down, I see no reason he can’t be even higher on this list next year.

As you’ve seen, we’ve started to roll out our 2012 keeper rankings. Today we look at the top tier of shortstops, which includes two unsurprising names.

Troy Tulowitzki ($22)

It comes as no surprise that Tulowitzki is in the first tier. Over the past three seasons he has the eighth highest wOBA in baseball, behind only Miguel Cabrera, Joey Votto, Albert Pujols, Jose Bautista, Ryan Braun, Prince Fielder and Kevin Youkilis. No shortstop comes within .20 points of Tulowitzki’s mark of .396. We’re talking keeper rankings, though, so what he did three years ago may not be relevant for 2012. Let’s take a look at last season. The 27-year old had another excellent season, hitting 30 home runs while driving in 105 runs. He doesn’t steal bases anymore, going from 20 in ’09 to nine in ’11, but when you have the power he does it’s a non issue. His strikeout rate was down while the walk rate ticked up. He reverted back to hitting more line drives and fewer ground balls, seeing his LD% jump from 15 to 19.

If patience is a virtue then Tulowitzki is one of the most virtuous players in the game. His Swing, O-Swing and Z-Swing percentages are all well below league average while his Contact, O-Contact and Z-Contact percentages are all above league average. When he sees a pitch he likes, he hits it. It truly is hard to find any flaw in his game. The only time he’s seemed human was May of this year when he put up a .196 BABIP and .278 wOBA. Take out that month and his seasonal wOBA jumps from the ~.380’s to .440. He finished the season as the 28th ranked player according to Yahoo!, which isn’t too far off from his 23rd place finish in 2010. I actually think our values have him ranked a tad low at 25th overall and $22. He’s just starting the prime seasons of his career and plays a premium position in a great hitter’s park. He’s going to remain in this top tier for the foreseeable future.

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I have a bit of an undesirable task of trying to make some kind of sense out of the third base mess from the past season. On the one hand, we have guys like Ryan Zimmerman and David Wright who are typically top shelf third basemen heading into the season. However, if you’ve looked over the FVARz database, you’ll notice their actual fantasy value relative to on-field performance was keeping company with Danny Valencia and Daniel Murphy. So what a top tier at third base for keeper value looks like is probably open to a great deal of debate.

Fortunately, what’s not debatable is who leads off the first tier, and that’s quite obviously Jose Bautista – who ranks a country mile (or should I say country click to honor our friends to the North) ahead of the rest of the pack. The big question after Bautista’s breakout 2010 is what he would provide as an encore, and to my surprise, he was every bit as good in 2011 (in fact, he was better if you count WAR at night to put you to sleep like I do). Bautista improved his batting average, his walk rate, and lowered his strikeout rate and while he was a little dinged up, he still managed to be the only player to hit better than .300, record 40 or more home runs and drive in and score more than 100 runs. He is one of the no-doubters in terms of keepers, certainly considering the dearth of talent at third base.

And now it gets interesting.

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Yesterday, we began the process of unveiling our 2012 keeper rankings here at RotoGraphs, starting with the first tier of catchers and National League outfielders. Today, we get to American League outfielders with tier numero uno.

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The fantasy season has largely drawn to a close — sure there’s Pick Six all the way until the final out — so it’s time to start thinking about the offseason. Here at RotoGraphs we’ll be unveiling our keeper rankings, tier by tier, position by position. For outfielders and pitchers, we’ll combine them at some point, too.

Here are your top tier National League outfielder keepers this offseason:

Matt Kemp
The number one producer in fantasy baseball last year according to Zach Sanders’ new calculator, Kemp had a season for the ages. One more home run and he would have had the fifth 40/40 season in the history of baseball. Even with slightly more power/speed combo players in baseball these days, it was an exemplary year. The mercurial 27-year-old center fielder put up career highs in hits, home runs, RBI, runs, walks, and stolen bases. That alone makes him a candidate for regression, but it’s nice to see what peripherals were actually in line with his career work. His strikeout rate, for one, improved over last year (23.1% this year, 25.4% last year) but really just settled into to his career rate (23.4%). Maybe his 10.7% walk rate won’t happen again (career 7.9%), but maybe it will. Kemp walked at about an average rate in the minor leagues and patience and power come with age. Speaking of power, his .262 ISO was a career high, but it comes off a steady three-year improvement in that category. He’s also slowly been shifting from hitting ground balls to hitting fly balls — after putting up a 1.4 GB/FB in 2008, he’s steadily pushed that ratio to the 0.9 he showed last year. First you get the fly balls, then you get the power. His HR/FB rate has followed the same steady progression.

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Throughout the season, we ran a series of fantasy rankings for each position at the top of each month to help you keep track of the risers and fallers and to see who might be worth a sell high or buy-low effort.  Well, this week, we are rolling out a series of Keeper Rankings for each position to help you get a leg up on the competition and begin your preparation for the 2012 season.  Each author will take his assigned position and each post will be dedicated to a specific tier within that position.  With that, here is the top tier for catchers in keeper leagues.

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