Shin-Soo Choo is no longer elite. He used to be, though. Back in 2009-2010, he put up a pair of excellent .300, 20/20 seasons which yielded a 139 wRC+, good enough for 11th in baseball. Just two years ago in a much tougher scoring environment across the league, he hit .285 and went 20/20 yielding a 151 wRC+ (9th-best). The move to Texas wasn’t really an upgrade in park, but it didn’t project to really hurt him, either. After all, his best work came in Cleveland which is hardly known as a hitter-friendly ballpark (these days it plays plus for LHB, though not overwhelmingly so).

Injuries marred his debut season in Texas resulting in an uninspiring effort that saw him hit 13 homers with a .242 AVG, .714 OPS, and just three stolen bases (in seven attempts) in 123 games. Both the ankle and elbow injuries that nagged him throughout the season required surgery and so there was a reasonable expectation of health for Choo coming into the season. His 2014 campaign offered a discount as he sank to the 51st outfielder off the board this draft season. Given the wretched first month to his season, it’s hard not to wonder if either of last year’s injuries or perhaps a new one has cropped up for Choo.

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Last week I posted the AL OF tiered rankings for May and used my favorite films from 2014 as tier labels. In the comments section I briefly discuses with one reader, The Theory, about my enjoyment seeing fellow South Koreans get their shot in Hollywood. I suggest seeing The Good, the Bad, the Weird — currently available on Netflix — as I really enjoyed it.
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Through the magic of fantasy sport position eligibility designations, Odubel Herrera is looking like one of the more flexible fantasy options available on waiver wires. The time to pick Herrera up is dwindling by the day, if not gone entirely already, in most leagues, but he is still a player worth looking into for trade purposes or for those in long term leagues that want to know exactly what they have.
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For the first time in years, Justin Maxwell is in demand.

OK, so it’s not a crazy, opening-scene-of-a-Beatles-movie demand, but still, his ownership has jumped 20% in CBS leagues in the past week, and for good reason: He’s off to a hot start. He has an .843 OPS entering Friday’s play, and, for about a week after wrestling away the starting rightfielder job in San Francisco from Gregor Blanco, he had been tattooing the ball with a .333/.407/.833 slash line before he ran into two guys named Kershaw and Greinke. He’s been blasting line drives at a 34.2% clip, the fly ball rate is back to a healthy percentage, and although it’s a young season, his average batted ball distance of nearly 300 feet backs up his 20% HR/FB ratio.
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NL OF Tiers: March (Preseason) 2015
Also, David Wiers’ AL OF Tiers: May

This is my second ever installment of tiered rankings so, I admit, I’m still figuring out how to properly balance a hitter’s present and future values. It’s too easy to rank them by, say, their current ESPN Player Rater rankings, but it would be foolish to still rank them simply by expected end-of-season value, as I did in March.

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Get hyped for another round of AL OF rankings! As usual, these reflect what I believe the hitters will accomplish the rest of the season, not necessarily what they have done thus far. For funsies I’ll be separating the tiers by my favorite films of 2014. Our own Brett Talley thought last year was weak in films, and I strongly disagree.

I really liked a lot of what I saw, but of course I didn’t see everything and some genres aren’t for me. With apologies to The Hobbit and The Hunger Games for me failing to see them, lets dive right in. (Note: I really liked all of the films listed here.)

Whiplash
Mike Trout
Jose Bautista

I really don’t mean to be boring here. I just loved Whiplash and Trout continues and should continue to do Trout things. Bautista jumps up a level because his surrounding cast is incredibly strong. His counting stats could look bonkers at the end of the season, though I am keeping an eye on the uptick in his K%.
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Let’s cut straight to the chase. Take a look at the statistical snapshots below:

Obviously, Player 1 is benefiting from a higher batting average on balls in play while Player 2 is getting burned a bit by his. Still, take away their triple-slash lines (but leave the isolated power) and you have two players with almost identical numbers, down to the six steals on eight attempts and the meager isolated powers (ISOs). Where they differ a bit is in plate discipline: Player 1 has a much healthier walk rate than Player 2 and a couple fewer strikeouts. So while Player 1 is benefiting from the a higher BABIP, he can also reasonably be expected to post a marginally higher batting average and noticeably higher on-base percentage. Most importantly, the two hitters are eligible at the same position and are, thus, substitutable.

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I have been a pretty big A.J. Pollock fan for some time now. I made a bold move that could be conceived as an overpay for Pollock in a dynasty league (Ryan Braun for Pollock and Odor – with prospects moving on both sides), which I believe shows how much of an advocate I am for Pollock – and Odor for that matter.
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Josh Reddick has had an interesting career. Playing top tier right field defense along with having decent power has allowed him to be a two win player in each of the past four years despite only eclipsing 500 plate appearances once. However, he has only really been useful in the fake game once, in 2012 when he hit 32 homers and stole 11 bases.
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It’s hard to believe the current incarnation of Curtis Granderson could show up, by default, at the very top of any FanGraphs leaderboard for positive reasons. Yet there he is: the Grandy Man leads all National League outfielders in chase rate (O-Swing%), at 16.7 percent. Only Brett Gardner and the fabled Joey Votto have offered at fewer non-strikes than Granderson among qualified Major League hitters.

Granderson has seen 128 pitches outside the strike zone. Of those pitches, he has swung at 21 of them. And of those swings, he has made contact with 17. For the mathematically disinclined, that’s a grand total of four swings and misses on pitches out of the zone. That’s the fewest of any hitter who has seen at least as many pitches as Granderson has.

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