Lance Berkman came out nowhere last year. 35 years old and coming off a career-low in home runs, he looked like toast. When the Cardinals signed the player some call “Fat Elvis” to play in the outfield for the first time since 2007, it seemed like a bust. Some of us even said so.
But then the magic happened. Could lightning hit twice? Could this happen again?
Several years ago I wrote an article for an old blog in which I literally argued with myself about Jimmy Rollins. I played the role of both the bull and the bear and imagined these two selves having a debate. I suddenly remembered that article while wondering what to write about for today’s post and thought it may be entertaining to try it again. As you read through the dialogue, try to figure out which side, if any, I am actually on and let me know in the comments if you were right. So, without further ado, I present to you Bull Mike and Bear Mike arguing about Brett Lawrie’s 2012 fantasy value…
Justin Verlander had himself a fine season, you may have heard. The first pitcher to win both the MVP and the Cy in about a quarter-century, he combined superlative peripherals with just a little bit of luck and the backing of a strong team to produce a season for the ages. He probably won his owners many a fantasy league. From personal experience, each team of mine that featured the Tigers’ ace won its’ league this year.
That’s all fine and good, but you shouldn’t draft Verlander next year. Focus instead on finding the next Verlander.
Two National League outfielders didn’t quite make the final keeper tier, and they’re likely to be strong bounce-back players next year with statistics that would put them in the fourth or fifth tier. Why didn’t I put Andre Ethier and Jayson Werth in those keeper tiers if that’s the case?
It has more to do with perception and relative value, or the ins and outs of keeper leagues, than it does with those actual players.
On Monday, I looked at which players showed an increase in their batted ball distances from 2010 to 2011. Not all increases can be seen in the year to year data. Some changes begin to occur during the season like with Jose Bautista and Curtis Granderson in the past couple of years. Here is a look at some players that may be turning their game around for the better
Many players show a power increase in the form of higher HRs, SLG and ISO from one season to the next. Today, I am using MLB batted ball data to see which players showed an actual increase in home run and fly distances from 2010 to 2011. This data helps show if there was an underlying talent change from 2010 to 2011.
To get the values, I used batted ball data that MLB provides. It is the data seen on spray charts during games and on their website. The data is not perfect. It is not close to perfect. Right now, it is the best publicly available batted ball data.
If you want to look at the data for any player or over any time frame, you can goto:
http://www.baseballheatmaps.com/graph/
User: fangraphs
PW: Dave (capital D)
Click on: Angle and Distance of a Hitter’s Batted Balls
Enter in the player and parameters.
The Astros are moving to the American League in 2013. We’ll be breaking this down in many different ways in order to help NL- and AL-only owners prepare for the moment in the best possible manner, but… for many leagues this won’t matter much. The Astros are just that bad.
For example, mixed-league re-drafters pretty much won’t care at all. Even in 2013, are there any current Astros that will see their draft status change much with the move? Okay, Wandy Rodriguez will be in his final year of his contract and he would be a 34-year-old starter moving to the more difficult league. There’s a player that would see his draft stock drop that year. But will he even be on the Astros roster by then? He seems like a trade candidate.
After looking at simplifying the evaluation of fantasy hitters, I have now moved onto pitchers. The key for me with pitchers is that they have very little personal control over some of their stats. Wins require their team to score runs or the bullpen to hold a lead. Bad fielders can lead to more hits (higher WHIP). More hits lead to more runs scored (higher ERA). More runs scored leads to less Wins.
On Monday, I compared the Spd Score metric with a hitter’s stolen base total to highlight three players who may experience a surge in the steals category next season. Today, I will look at the opposite, three hitters whose stolen base total is much higher than expected given their Spd scores. As a result, they may be in danger of contributing fewer steals for your fantasy team next year.
The base off-season has officially begun and that means it is time to start looking forward to the 2012 season and projecting player performance. One of the most difficult categories to project any significant change in is stolen bases. Steals are as much of a result of speed and base stealing ability as it is opportunity and the mere willingness to run. I decided to sort all qualified hitters by Spd Score, which was originally created by Bill James and includes stolen base percentage, frequency of stolen base attempts, percentage of triples, and runs scored percentage. Although I am not a big fan of the metric since runs scored percentage is too team dependent to be included in the statistic, Spd Score is pretty much the best speed metric available by default. I compared the top Spd Score hitters to their stolen base totals to determine who may see a spike next year.
