Every year, there are players who — for whatever reason — go completely overlooked in fantasy leagues, despite providing solid value. This year is no different. For today’s example, take Derek Dietrich.
The 26-year-old has been highly productive since his call-up in mid-June, hitting a robust .261/.368/.504 with seven homers in 136 plate appearances. However, his ownership rates remain miniscule (1% Yahoo, 1.9% ESPN, 4% CBS).
Your favorite AL specific outfield rankings here at FanGraphs is back! As usual, rather than boring Tier One or Tier Two, etc., today I’ll be presenting my favorite Kanye West albums. To be clear, I don’t actively dislike anything he’s recorded, but I certainly have my favorites. As a bonus, I’ll be adding my three favorite tracks from each album. I can’t defend what Kanye has said and done outside of the recording booth, but I’ll be damned if he can’t create magic with music and lyrics (warning, language, etc. on these videos).
As always, apologies if I accidentally missed a player.
The College Dropout — All Falls Down (runner up: Never Let Me Down, third place: Jesus Walks)
Mike Trout Read the rest of this entry »
Edit (12:59 pm EDT): Left out a bunch of dudes (Cespedes, Pederson, Moss) and wrongly included a bunch of dudes (Gomez, Revere). I basically I forgot all about the trade deadline, so if notice another name omitted, leave it in the comments. Thanks (and sorry)!
NL OF Tiers: July
NL OF Tiers: June
NL OF Tiers: May
NL OF Tiers: Preseason
Prior to writing for FanGraphs, I never took time to systematically reevaluate players. That’s not to say I never evaluate players after draft day — of course I do. But I typically only concern myself with the players I own and compare them to those on waivers. Occasionally, if my team is wildly imbalanced, I’ll evaluate other owners’ players for potential trades.
Because it’s tedious to thoroughly re-rank all the players at one position, let alone in all of Major League Baseball. I can’t complain, though, becauseI’ve learned something new with every re-rank, the most prominent lesson being baseball players exist to humiliate you. I’m being hyperbolic, and perhaps Carlos Gonzalez is, too, but his recent results speak volumes: CarGo more than doubled his home run total between my July re-rank of National League outfielders and now.
I also learned I need to learn to stand my ground. After mindlessly over-ranking Carlos Gomez in June, I slotted him at the top of the fourth tier (roughly 20th overall) in July. I got slammed for it and I backpedaled on my stance a bit when responding to comments, but, like clockwork, Gomez has continued to underwhelm, hitting .230/.373/.410 with two home runs and nary a stolen base. Sure, the 17.3-percent walk rate (BB%) the last 30 days is nice, and it brings him back up to normal Carlos Gomez levels, but his batted ball profile continues to resemble the generally uninteresting pre-breakout Carlos Gomez.
Anyway, iers will conform to my ranking of feature-length films directed by Hayao Miyazaki, with emphases on directed and feature-length. To not see a Miyazaki (or Studio Ghibli) film is to ignore a cherished corner of cinematic history. Like my hotly contested Coen Brothers tiers, these will be very difficult for me to rank.
Alejandro De Aza, Red Sox
After flirting with a 20-20 season in 2013 — coming three home runs short of the feat — Alejandro De Aza has seemingly taken a step back. The left-handed hitting outfielder has a pedestrian .260/.316/436 line this year, however opposing southpaws have picked on him this season, more than any other in recent years. In 38 plate appearances versus southpaws this year, De Aza has posted a 7 wRC+. Small sample size will of course play havoc with stats, but man, that is rough. Still, he is more than adequate in most formats when facing right-handers. Read the rest of this entry »
It’s time for another monthly analysis of Carlos Gonzalez’s tumultuous 2015 season. When we first tuned in, Carlos Gonzalez was bad. Like, really bad. Despite peripherals that suggested some bad luck, the rest detailed a hitter struggling mightily.
When we last tuned in a month later, Eno Sarris determined CarGo had been unlucky up to that point, but only slightly. Things had started to turn around, but it was hard to be optimistic.
We tune in now, another month later, to find Gonzalez falling short of his previous levels of production but still performing admirably considering the circumstances. To paint a fuller picture, observe CarGo’s statistics at the time we published each of the aforementioned posts:
After writing about the biggest value gainers last week, I started pondering Charlie Blackmon and A.J. Pollock. Both are power/speed guys, both are on the way to their best season, and both were kind of obvious in hindsight. That last part is what interests me. If their better-than-expected performances this season were fairly easy to see coming, then why didn’t most fantasy owners notice?
I touted Blackmon in passing, but didn’t blow a trumpet about it because I wasn’t completely confident in him. I had an inkling about Pollock, yet he didn’t make any of my teams and I didn’t write about him. I think so many missed them because they slipped into a sort of value vortex. They aren’t young, they didn’t have much buzz coming up and we’d seen enough games from them to assume we knew what they were.
(A: Both.)
Disclaimer: I wrote this post about Gerardo Parra yesterday afternoon because that’s how things work over here on the West Coast. Between yesterday and this exact moment, Eno Sarris and Paul Sporer posted their most recent episode of the Sleeper and the Bust during which, at around the 45-minute mark, they coincidentally discuss Parra. (Er, Parra is the coincidence, not the podcast.)
Basically, Sarris and Sporer say pretty much everything I write here but in fewer words. So if you want to hear a couple of smart dudes discuss Parra’s rest-of-season prospects, tune in. If for some reason you’d rather engage in in what will be a more verbose, occasionally visual, absolutely not visceral experience, proceed:
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For this post, I will let my deluded ramblings — what my National League outfield analysis eventually and ostensibly becomes pretty much every time nowadays — devolve into stream of consciousness. Because this is a sentence I actually wrote but deleted: “I want to talk about Gerardo Parra.” An alternative I considered: “Let’s talk about Gerardo Parra.”
Point is, I’ve started thinking too hard about simple things and my brain is grinding to a halt. Whatever — let’s just talk about Parra. Let’s have an open dialogue about the guy who, for all intents and purposes, is having a career year this season from an offensive perspective.
Parra’s 129 wRC+ (weighted runs created) easily vanquishes his previous high (106) set back in 2011. It marks only the second time his bat has rated better than average, so you’d be lying if you told me his production thus far in 2015 hasn’t surprised you. To attest: a man who, for six years, averaged eight home runs per 600 plate appearances has hit nine in almost half the time.
Our midseason rankings update continues. We have the outfield today, the starting pitchers tomorrow, and then wrapping it up with the reliever on Wednesday.
This is one of the most interesting positions just by the sheer volume of it. The fantasy community at large seems to consistently overrate the depth of the position, confusing the quantity for quality. Most leagues use five outfielders right out of the gate, but then you have to consider the OF-eligibles being used at other fielding positions as well as the UT/DH position. I don’t think there are any easy answers with the slotting of these guys after Trout, Harper, & McCutchen as the top three in some fashion. From there, we all seem to go in different directions creating some interesting totals.
For this update, you will have the rankings from me, Zach Sanders, Jeff Zimmerman, and Dan Schwartz. Mike Podhorzer is currently on vacation. A 121 from me is essentially an unranked, it’s 95 for Zach, 108 for Jeff, and 90 for Dan.
Before you take a gander at this post regarding Lorenzo Cain from a fantasy, and particularly dynasty or keeper league format, take a look at Neil Weinberg’s post on Cain over at the main site. It is a fascinating piece about what has caused Cain to breakout offensively during his age 29 season.
Read the rest of this entry »
I’m always looking for new angles on National League outfielders. There are only so many of them, and only so many things can be said about the same few juggernauts.
For example, I discovered just now that Randal Grichuk has recorded the fourth-highest wins above replacement (WAR) per plate appearance for NL outfielders behind only Bryce Harper, Giancarlo Stanton and Andrew McCutchen. It certainly surprised me, and while that’s a storyline in itself, Karl de Vries assessed Grichuk here last month, highlighting reasons for optimism and concern. (For example, his batted ball profile validates his power display but thinks his batting average deserves to drop around 45 points.)
In this same vein, it may surprise you to know the infrequently discussed David Peralta ranks seventh in WAR per plate appearance among NL outfielders with as many plate appearances as him (275) and 10th in aggregate WAR. Those figures account for his defense that, according to the metrics, rates average at best, so his value is driven primarily by his bat.
