Archive for Outfielders

Today we’ll continue our look at Pick Six values by looking at middle infield and outfield.  You can see our discussion of catcher and corner infield values here.  As a reminder, the production numbers you see below (FP/PA = Fangraphs Points per Plate Appearance) are weighted averages of THT’s Oliver and BPro’s PECOTA.  I didn’t include ZiPS, but feel free to click the players and look up those numbers as well.

Middle Infield

Elite Three (they cost a fortune, but they’re worth it):

Troy Tulowitzki, 1.57 FP/PA, $56.75
Hanley Ramirez, 1.53 FP/PA, $51.50
Robinson Cano, 1.40 FP/PA, $46.75

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Sometimes you just get bitter. Like when your FanGraphs ottoneu Experts League team has just been staring at fifth place for a month and a half in a keeper league and there’s absolutely no way to know which way to go. Sell or buy? Well, let me have a healthy week or two and I’ll decide, eh?

The David Wright injury will hurt me, but it’s a situation in my outfield that has me most upset. Nelson Cruz went down – that was obviously a risk going in, given his history. Then Angel Pagan went down, and really that’s a ditto. And Grady Sizemore? That’s on me too I guess. Travis Snider was a backup plan, though, and that went out the window with all the strikeouts. Hey maybe I deserved it?

That doesn’t help me be any less bitter. So I head over to the new leaders team, the one belonging to Tim Heaney and the crew from KFFL. I should be able to find some sell-high guys there, right?

Uh, not so much. Alex Avila, Mark Teixeira, Brandon Phillips, Starlin Castro, Aaron Hill, Evan Longoria, Juan Pierre, Ian Desmond… looks fine here. On the staff? Dan Haren, Tommy Hanson and Jhoulys Chacin are all pre-season favorites and are strong bets to continue their fine performances. Huston Street, and Jordan Walden are his only official closers, but Kenley Jansen and Daniel Bard make for fine future closers. This is a nice team.

That isn’t to say that there aren’t a couple players on the team perhaps performing beyond their capabilities. Drew Stubbs is striking out 27.5% of the time and has a .349 BABIP supporting his .281 batting average right now. Once that BABIP returns to earth – and we’re talking .325ish territory, since he does have good speed – he won’t have a real-nice looking batting average. He’ll still have power and speed, though, as his .181 ISO is right in line with career norms and he stole 46 bases at his last stop in Triple A (in 472 PAs). So, yeah, still a good player.

Same theme with Curtis Granderson. Sure, he won’t slug .643 all year and his .364 ISO will return to earth some. But he’s also hitting the ball in the air more and squarely in his power prime at 30 years old. Even with a little power regression, KFFL should be able to bank at least 35 home runs from their $14 player. Not so bad. Once money is considered, does it even matter if the $1 Brennan Boesch is a platoon player with an inflated BABIP? He’s playing well enough to fill in for the suddenly resurgent Adam Lind. Can you sense the bitterness?

Dudes even got Alexi Ogando for $2 so that takes the sails right out from any mention of his .193 BABIP or continued platoon split (4.85 FIP against lefties). Well, at least they spent $18 on Delmon Young, amiright. Even some BABIP love won’t help if he continues to pound that rock into the ground 50% of the time. Gotta get em up to get em out.

What really gets me, though, is this graph from the new ‘Reports’ tab in ottoneu. Check my team going in the wrong direction, and KFFL going through the roof. It’s enough to eat your hat.

After stumbling last year following his 2009 breakout season, Jason Kubel is quietly having a really strong start to 2011 — bet you didn’t realize he’s currently fifth in batting in the AL — so why, exactly, is he a potential a sell high candidate?

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Today, we’ll focus on one National League outfielder instead of the entire class. We know from his twitter feed that 24-year-old Logan Morrison is an excellent young man worth paying attention to, but it’s hard to know exactly how excellent he is with respect to his fantasy value without unpacking his power potential.

Right now, Mr. Morrison has a .313 ISO which would be fourth in baseball if he had played enough to qualify for the batting title. We can’t hold his foot injury against him, but we do know that it means that he’s had fewer PAs than his competitors and his sample is even smaller than average. For a guy that showed a .164 ISO last year, and a .174 ISO in his minor league career, we can remain skeptical that his power will last, and the size of the sample doesn’t help matters.

We do know that isolated power doesn’t even really stabilize over a season, so maybe we don’t really know what his major league power looks like on a reliable level. He’s only played for 366 major league plate appearances. Players don’t usually put up power numbers that trump their minor league work, but certainly young men put on weight and become more powerful as they age. Could Morrison out-do his rest-of-season projections that have him dropping back down to a .177 ISO? That projection would mean only ten more home runs the rest of the season even though he’s managed five in his first 79 plate appearances.

One piece of good news is that Morrison has changed his batted ball profile slightly. After putting up groundball rates over 50% regularly in the minor leagues, Morrison is showing what would be a full-season low in that category right now (40%). Correspondingly, he’s hitting more fly balls (43.6%) than groundballs for the first time in his life. If these changes hold, he could very easily outperform his previous power work.

How far are we from being able to reliable predict that these changes in his batted ball profile will hold? Some might say never because of stringer bias, but Pizza Cutter tells us the ground-ball rate numbers that we have stabilize around 40 PA. So Morrison has shown us that he’s willing to hit the ball on the ground a little more in the major leagues. According to his work, we’ll have to wait another 100 PAs to believe the fly ball rates, but we do know that he’s hitting fewer ground balls.

You have to get the ball in the air to get it out of the park. This is true even if your home park suppresses home runs between one and five percent depending on your handedness. It would be folly to believe a .300 ISO from Logan Morrison, given his minor league career numbers, but a .200 ISO now seems possible with his new ground-ball rate. With the average major league ISO now down to .139, Morrison’s power looks better in comparison even if he doesn’t sustain a .200 ISO, though.

It’s clear that Mr. Morrison is an excellent play even if he doesn’t ever hit 30 home runs a season. His modest power is being boosted by what might turn out to be a real change in approach at the plate.

In today’s look at the Deep League Waiver Wire, we have one outfielder from each league.

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“Pat the Bat Goes Splat” was the alternative headline, but with widespread rumors that he is, in fact, Brian Wilson’s neighbor, “The Machine“, I thought it best to keep it simple and spare the little baby ears of some of the easily offended.  But the bottom line is that, as a fantasy commodity, Pat Burrell is rapidly losing value….as he should be. Read the rest of this entry »

There’s really no need to be embarrassed.  It’s a very common problem.  In fact, I hear that it happens to a lot of fantasy owners.  I, myself, have been known to experience it from time to time.  No, no…I’m not just saying it to make you feel better.  It happens to everyone.  Believe it or not, even to girls. Read the rest of this entry »

Join us this week on Bottom of the Barrel Scrapers as we look at a stopgap infielder with multi-position eligibility and a former playoff hero who just might have found his stroke in 2011.  They may not be the tastiest treats on the fantasy dessert buffet, but hey…they’ve each got a World Series ring.  That’s something, right? Read the rest of this entry »

Play in a linear weights league in ottoneu (or Pick Six), and walks become that little sliver of an edge that you might be able to get over your competitors. But play in any league that values OBP and you might find yourself wondering which players take the most free passes – and most importantly, which players might be taking more free passes in the future based on their past numbers.

At the same time, a star that walks is still a star. How about some players that might be under the radar in a 12-team mixer that still add value with their walk rate? Let’s get them up in this piece. Did you know Jack Cust, who is currently batting fifth for the Seattle Mariners, is second in qualified batters in walk rate? He’s walking in nearly one-fifth of his at-bats. That’s right in line with his 17.4% career walk rate, and he’s well-known as a three-true-outcome guy.

Unfortunately, Cust’s .360+ OBP comes with a sub-.100 ISO. If you’d like a little power with your walks, maybe you could take a look at a more surprising heavy walker, Chase Headley. He’s walking about 16% of the time and has a sub-10% career walk rate. There are reasons to believe his step forward in the category, however. Headley is swinging at fewer pitches outside the zone than ever. He’s even swinging less than ever overall. Both of these numbers are probably reliable given his number of plate appearances so far this year, too. A little bit of power, a little bit of speed, and a lot of walks – at a tough position no less.

If the other side of the corner infield is more your bag, Adam LaRoche is putting forth similar plate discipline statistics and a career-high walk rate of his own. What’s particularly nice about LaRoches’ work, despite looking so mediocre overall, is that he’s swinging less than ever and making more contact than ever (measured by both contact % and swinging strike rate). His contact is even about as ‘good’ as ever if line drive rate can be believed. It seems to suggest that he’s getting choosier in his old age. We know that power stabilizes last, so if he can get his ISO back over .200 again, he might be able to pair it with one of his best OBPs. He’ll have to hit a few more fly balls to do that.

A few newcomers deserve some love. Jonathan Herrera doesn’t have a ton skills but can take a walk. Jonny Gomes is pushing his three-true-outcome work to a new level. Ben Francisco is one of those guys that is mediocre all-around, but he’s got a double-digit walk rate. Jack Hannahan is a flawed player, but he’s had those double-digit walk rates his whole career. Luke Scott comes to mind.

One last note about some players that might be walking more in the future. Chipper Jones has a decent OBP, and is walking about 10% of the time, but he’s walked much more than that in his career, and his plate discipline stats tell us that he’s playing just about the same. Expect a few more free passes in the future as he shows an OBP more like the .409 OBP he’s had since 2008. Nick Markakis may not have Jason Catania’s vote when it comes to standard leagues, but he will be useful in OBP leagues shortly. He has a career walk rate right at 10% but hasn’t managed an average walk rate this year. This despite a reach rate under his career number and a first-strike and zone percentage under his career rates as well. Once you add a double-digit walk rate to his overall strong play, he makes a good acquisition in linear weights and OBP leagues alike.

Happy hunting.

On Monday, the Milton Bradley era in Seattleland ended, as the board game man received the dreaded DFA. Oh, and Ryan Langerhans got the boot too, but he is probably used to it by now. With a team going nowhere and an offense struggling yet again to score runs, might as well see if they have anyone younger who might provide a jolt to the lineup. A pair of outfielders received the call, let’s see if they have any fantasy potential in deeper leagues.

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