We’ve spent so much time on these Would You Rathers with respect to keeper leagues that it’s time we threw some out for those that re-draft each year. Taking long term benefits out of the way, which player would you rather draft this season — Yoenis Cespedes or Bryce Harper?
Cuban mega star and Dominican Winter League flameout Yoenis Cespedes signed with the Oakland Athletics for four years and $36 million today. The landing spot for The Showcase might seem like a poor fit at first, but it’s not all bad news today. There are even things to like about where he ended up.
Each year, there’s always one pick in the draft that always seems to cause the biggest stir amongst the fantasy community and leads to the greatest number of emails seeking added opinions. It used to be closer to the tail end of the first round when an owner was deciding between whichever offensive treat was left or the number one overall starting pitcher. This year, I’ve received a number of emails from people with the 4th pick. People with the 8th and 9th picks are rolling their eyes right now, but truly, the 4th pick can cause quite the conundrum.
2011 was supposed to be Jose Tabata’s coming out party, his first full season in the majors, the year that made his production a bigger story than his troubled ex-wife, but it just didn’t happen. Like so many others, his plans of grandeur were derailed by injuries.
He started the season about as well as could be hoped, getting hits in the season’s first 10 games including a pair of home runs, and stealing five bases as part of a .342/.457/.553 start. Over the next 17 games however, his BABIP dropped to .213 and his overall line suffered greatly, as he hit .180/.250/.279, though he did add four more steals. His play in May and June was inconsistent, but he seemed to be getting back into a good groove when he was placed on the DL with some combination of a right hand contusion and a left quad strain. He came back in mid-August, but was back on the shelf with a fractured left hand before September was a week old. All in all, Tabata played just 91 games — fewer than he played in 2010, despite having actually broken camp with the Pirates in 2011 — and his second half was so segmented that it’s hard to make any real concrete judgments about his performance after his return from the DL. Read the rest of this entry »
The “Free Russ Canzler” movement can turn its attention toward the plight of some other minor league masher buried on the depth chart. Canzler, the 2011 International League MVP, figured to toil at Triple-A Durham again next year after the Tampa Bay Rays signed Luke Scott to DH and Carlos Pena to man first base. But the Cleveland Indians picked him up for cash after Tampa DFA’d Canzler, adding right-handed punch to a lefty-laden club that has tired of former CC Sabathia trade bauble Matt LaPorta’s flailing at first base.
So, Canzler (26 in April) has the chance to free himself from the chains of the “Quad-A” label. Is he up to the task? Maybe. Canzler’s power is impressive, he may well be Cleveland’s best option at first and his versatility will help him make the squad this spring, but putting his minor league numbers in greater context removes some of the sheen from his award-winning slugging.
Sometimes, short and simple is the best way to go. As Sly and the Family Stone said — “Thank You Falletinme Mice Elf Again”… no it was “Sing a Simple Song” — sometimes it’s just about the ABCs, or in this case the ADPs. Let’s look at some Average Draft Positions for outfielders in the early going. We know some drafts start in February, and we know that at least 607 drafts have been completed at Mock Draft Central, so let’s use their excellent knowledge to benefit our fantasy teams.
If every team in baseball played their absolute best, if every player played at their ceiling for an entire season, which teams would look the most different? It’s an interesting thought experiment in its own way, but it also shows which teams are stocked with underachievers and could be hiding bargains. Granted, the term “chronic,” which frequently proceeds underachiever is a warning that some players never find that ceiling, but some do and there’s value to be had in that search.
If I had to guess, I’d say the team that would change the most would the Blue Jays. There is so much talent on that team right now in players like J.P. Arencibia, Colby Rasmus, and Brandon Morrow just to name a few — and this is not to say those three are terrible underachievers, they’re just less good than perhaps they ought to be — that if everyone were to hit their strides at once, the Jays would be a force to be reckoned with.
One of the players that would make the biggest differences is Travis Snider. The powerful lefty received just over 200 PAs in 2011 despite breaking camp with the team as their opening day left fielder, hitting only three home runs as part of a rather underwhelming .225/.269/.348 line that included almost as many strikeouts (56) as total bases (65). Snider once again tore up Triple-A, hitting .327/.394/.480 — though he missed time with a concussion as well as with tendinitis in his left wrist while in the minors — but couldn’t seem to translate that success to the majors.
Unlike many other Triple-A heroes who struggle in the pros, Snider’s issues weren’t limited to offspeed pitches. He had the normal trouble with sliders and sinkers, but he also couldn’t seem to catch up with fastballs, fouling off 31 percent of them compared to the 18 percent he put into play. His a long-standing wrist issues might help explain why he was late on so many fastballs — the pitch he should be making hay on — but I also wonder if his slow start made him start second guessing himself at the plate. Hitting .184/.276/.264 with a single home run in a month’s worth of starts is enough to get inside anyone’s head, let alone a player who hasn’t established himself yet.
Even if he turns the corner and hits the way it seems like he ought to, Snider is going to be a free swinger. The strikeouts and chased pitches aren’t going away, but as long as he hits something approaching the way he did in the minors — .901 OPS across six seasons at a variety of levels — then he’ll have enough fantasy value to be rosterable in all but the shallowest mixed leagues. If those extra swings mean that he isn’t getting good pitches to hit, however, then he could be digging his own grave. There are plenty of undiscerning hitters out there who still do good damage, but Delmon Young is out there, too, and I can’t shake the feeling that if Snider doesn’t correct his declining walk rate, Young will become one of his top comps.
In keeper, I still like Snider. He’s young, turning 24 later this week, and his power is legit. I’m not ready to give up on someone who hasn’t gotten a full season of PAs just yet, but that leash is getting shorter and shorter; I might be looking to trade him this year if I felt I could get good value coming back.
In redraft, I have concerns. Howard Bender touched on Snider’s platoon issues earlier this afternoon and he’s right, Snider really struggles against lefties — .212/.260/.314 versus .257/.318/.449 against righties for his career so far — which will ding his playing time. More than that, I’m concerned about a second straight season of wrist issues. He missed more than two months with a right wrist sprain in 2010 and a month at the end of 2011 with left wrist tendinitis. This isn’t a Mark DeRosa situation where I expect these injuries to kill his 2012 numbers, but wrists are important to hitters and Snider’s don’t look particularly durable. Add in the fact that he isn’t guaranteed the starting job, which adds another element of risk to his profile, and I’m making other plans. If you grab him as a late-round flier, I can’t say that’s the wrong play, just have a wire option in mind if Eric Thames beats him out for the starting job.
I want to like Snider more than I do, but I really need to see a healthy year from him in 2012, even if part of it is spent in Triple-A, before I make a final judgment on him. Obviously it would be great to see him have a definitive year in the majors where he either rakes or fails, but I’ll settle for what’s realistic. He’s definitely young enough to put a few more of the pieces together this year, breakout next year, and go on to a long, fruitful fantasy career, and I think most keeper owners would find that a livable result.
For redrafters, taking Snider this year is a gamble, as you’re hoping he reverses almost every trend he showed last year with a better walk rate, strikeout rate, lower groundball rate, and higher line drive rate. Impossible? No, not entirely, but you’re hoping against hope. Roll the dice if you’re feeling lucky, but have fail-safes in place behind him.
Platoon. As a movie — phenomenal. But in fantasy baseball, it’s a dirty word. No one goes into their draft hoping to walk away with a bunch of part-time players, so when doing your prep work, it’s always important to know which situations out there may cause playing time issues throughout the season. In some case, a player may shine enough to take over the position entirely, but in many cases, the manager feels better served by playing matchups, riding the hot bat and using a committee approach to get the most productivity out of a particular spot. The Blue Jays left field situation appears to be one of those cases. Read the rest of this entry »
Boston’s right field just may have become a little more fantasy friendly as the club signed Cody Ross to a one year, $3M contract the other day. Initial plans are likely to platoon Ross and Ryan Sweeney, but if both perform as they have done so in the past, Ross should end up with the lion’s share of starts while Sweeney is relegated to a late-inning defensive replacement-type role. That would certainly put Ross on the map for both AL-only and deeper mixed leagues.
While projecting a player without any experience in the Major Leagues is difficult enough, we do have processes that help us come to a reasonable estimate of the player’s current talent level. Use some major-league equivalencies to equalize his Minor League numbers, weight the years, add a little boost, take a little off — whatever the details are, we’ve made progress in this arena. Not a ton of progress — a simple Marcel monkey of a projection is still just about as good as any other projection — but some progress.
What’s missing is a way to project playing time. Or at least, a commonly accepted and readily available process for projecting playing time. It’s difficult to do — there are so many moving parts. What will his manager think? How much will a small sample outburst in Spring Training (by the player or his competition for playing time) mean to his front office? Who will get injured? How much does his team value his arbitration years — will he come up with the team because they need his bat now, or will he go to the Minor Leagues to preserve years of control down the line?
All of these are factors in playing time. And, with a rough look at the schedule and at the team, we can actually try to put a number on these possibilities. Let’s try it out with Bryce Harper.
