It’s outfield week here at RotoGraphs, so I’ll begin the festivities by reviewing my preseason Pod’s Picks at the position. Every year after the RotoGraphs consensus positional rankings are published, I compare my column of ranks to a recalculated consensus after excluding mine. It’s a fun little activity and it allows me to figure out why I might be more bullish or bearish on a particular player than the rest of the crew.
The 2015 fantasy baseball season has come to a close, so it is time to look back at the season past and determine which players were the most valuable at each position. After moving our way through the infield, we roll around in the green grass of the outfield.
Earlier today, we published my conversation with Joey Votto about aging, and within the post is a graph that didn’t necessarily fit the narrative but should contain an interesting tidbit for we fantasy players.
Take a look at this graph again, except instead of looking towards the end of the graph where the old guys are hanging out, look at the beginning of the graph. Under 25, it looks like hitters with pull percentages under 45% have a little more growth left in them than their pull-heavy counterparts.
The storybook narratives of 2015 do not limit themselves to the Mets or the Twins or the Rangers or the Astros. Surprises abound each year, usually in the form of a former prospect who finally hit his stride or a journeyman Minor Leaguer who catches lightning in a bottle. Perhaps they’re more surprising, then, when they come from seemingly established players.
For example, Bryce Harper finally evolved into the Bryce Harper of prophecies’ past, basically hitting twice as many home runs as projected. Except the evolution happened, like, two or three or seven years sooner than expected. I don’t know when it was supposed to happen, but surely it wasn’t supposed to happen at 22 years old.
And Carlos Gonzalez, at 29, has hit a career-high 37 home runs, a healthy dozen-or-so more than any of his previous four seasons — all after having arguably the worst April of his career (rivaling 2011).
I’m thankful the Tigers traded Yoenis Cespedes into the National League so I can write about the dude now. Aside from Matthew Kory’s assessment of Cespedes’ chances to win a Most Valuable Player (MVP) award two weeks ago, we have pointed little attention to how Cespedes earned his way into MVP discussions in the first place. The injustice ends here.
Disclaimer: Yesterday, the author wrote the words organized below. This morning, a doctor person surgically repaired the author’s faulty body. During the day, he will rest in bed, likely incapacitated, lest he be tempted to incoherently, and probably embarrassingly, address your comments. He apologizes for the inconvenience this delay in correspondence may cause.
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Unless you’re in a year-long roto league — or, wait, are there year-long points leagues? Is that a thing? — you’re probably neck deep in playoffs. Maybe some of you are vying for the championship. Maybe some of you are trying to avoid last place and a sexy calendar photoshoot as punishment for it, as I just successfully did last week.
The RotoGraphs staff has published several pieces recently focusing on waiver wire finds to help your playoff push. For roto leagues specifically, we’ve reached a point where a couple weeks’ worth of standard performance may not affect runs, runs batted in (RBI) or batting average, but a sudden burst of home runs of stolen bases can make all the difference.
After digging through the scrap heap, I found yet more players (strictly National League outfielders, mind you) that can help owners trying to catch lightning in a bottle. However, some the following names could also help in shallower leagues and are worth keeping in mind as dynasty or keeper considerations.
FanGraphs’ leaderboards are like iron ore mines. They abound with potentially valuable commodities, but sometimes it takes effort to unlock the potential and extract the value.
There’s only so much you can write about a certain subsection of players (National League outfielders) without beating a dead horse. Alas, I’ve tried to find peculiar reasons to write about particularly interesting hitters. And, ah, FanGraphs’ leaderboards, they’re helpful in this regard, especially when broken down by splits.
Baseball Info Solutions’ (BIS) opposite-field batted ball data are no exception, as exemplified by this table of opposite-field hard-hit rate (Hard%) leaders among NL outfielders:
At 1 pm EDT, we will begin to chronicle September call-ups and their potential contributions in a running post organized by David Wiers. Stay tuned.
NL OF Tiers: August
NL OF Tiers: July
NL OF Tiers: June
NL OF Tiers: May
NL OF Tiers: Preseason
What’s most interesting about September, from a purely statistical standpoint, is small-sample volatility. Just like the unpredictability of April, anyone can go off — or fall flat — in the home stretch. If I’m contending, I’m trying to maximize playing time, although I will stream or start certain specialized players if I’m chasing a particular category.
I’m in a head-to-head standard roto league with two weeks of regular-season play left before two one-week rounds of playoffs. In the last four weeks, my team has roared back from a miserable 9th place to a legitimately-contending 6th, and I’m already off to a strong start this week. In other words: a lot can happen in a month, so certainly half of a lot can happen in two weeks. Hang in there.
I drafted one of my fantasy football teams this weekend. My tiers shall assume the names of my six most expensive players.
Often times, the most heavily hyped prospects flop in their first taste of Major League action. As I discussed a couple of weeks ago, this has not happened to top Twins prospect Miguel Sano. But it has to their top rated prospect, Byron Buxton. Over 86 plate appearances, Buxton has posted a paltry .235 wOBA. It would be easy to look past the surface results and consider them just some standard struggles at the plate for a youngster, coupled with some likely poor fortune. But there have been some very troubling signs behind these numbers.
Mike Trout hurt his wrist in late July. Since then, in the 101 plate appearances headed into his game last night, the Angels outfielder has hit .224/.347/.388 with two home runs and a caught stealing. He’s been 11% better than league average, but that’s like 50% below average on the Trout scale. Is he still hurt?
Kyle Schwarber gets double-duty this week. Yesterday, Mike Podhorzer discussed Kyle Schwarber’s 2016 potential. He mentions he read a post in which the author allegedly considered Schwarber in the second round of a 2016 mock draft.
I found the whole thing intriguing, primarily because we’re working with a small sample — slightly more than 150 plate appearances. I tried to draw meaningful conclusions on a comparably small sample size for Carlos Gonzalez, and now I’m pretty sure hired assassins are tracking me. Alas, what follows is not a disagreement with Pod (because his analysis is excellent) but an unauthorized biography extension of his post.
In June, I compared Joc Pederson to George Springer, two blossoming young stars to each of whom I alluded as “evolving juggernauts.” In fact, I think Schwarber is not particularly dissimilar from Pederson. With another two months of baseball in the rear-view mirror, that comparison is especially illuminating, given we’ve seen just how tumultuous Pederson’s rookie campaign has been.
