Per usual, this is the rest-of-season thoughts on the American League outfield. All stats cited are through August 12, 2013.
Tier One
Mike Trout
We’ll be telling our children and grandchildren about how we remember Mike Trout’s first two seasons and hopefully his entire career. Right now he is simply in a class by himself. Trout fills up the stat line and is the ideal fantasy player. He does it all.
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Injuries afford opportunities for increased playing time and suddenly make waiver wire fodder fantasy relevant. That’s the theme of today’s free agent pool recommendations as both hitters are getting a chance to play due to injuries to players ahead of them on the depth chart.
As the season heads into the last six weeks, things get funky. It happened earlier in Miami, where September roster expansion seems to happen in May these days. But in San Diego, it’s about that time. Coolstandings has the squad with a less than one percent chance for the postseason, and the team’s Vaunted Slugger has a busted wheel. The team doesn’t really have a top prospect ready to take over out there, either — this is the recipe for full-time plate appearances for a readily-available player. AKA fantasy gold.
Is he the instructor for the new dance-workout craze Limbo with Lambo? No silly! He’s the minor league home run leader who will be making his debut in right field for the Pirates tonight. With 31 long balls in just 436 at-bats, he is seemingly a must-add for fantasy owners in need of power. But alas, there is more to analyzing a minor leaguer’s potential than solely looking at his home run total. Luckily for you, that’s what we provide here on RotoGraphs, a 360 degree view of a player’s likely future, using my trusty crystal ball that has never once failed me.
Darin Ruf is hitting just short of .300 with great power in his first 150+ plate appearances in the big leagues. Evan Gattis has 15 home runs in less than half of a debut season, and is catcher-eligible to boot. Let’s get crazy.
Of course, you knew what was coming, because titles work that way: they’re old. As terrible as it sounds for a mid-thirties desk jockey who has never been much better than the second- or third-best player on the court for his weekly lawyer league style pickup basketball game, two players that will be 27 years old at the end of the week are old, and that means something about their ceilings.
Still, there might be a chance these players are in different situations.
Few players can hold a candle to Bryce Harper. At an age where most kids are still in college, Harper has already emerged as one of the best players in baseball. After a strong rookie year, Harper has taken a step forward in year two. His walk rate is up, strikeout rate is down and his .378 wOBA is 20 points higher than last season. There is, however, one area where Harper has looked mortal. In his first season-and-a-half in the majors, Harper has shown a significant platoon split.
After many weeks of speculation about whether Alex Rios would be donning a new uniform before season’s end, the Texas Rangers nabbed their Nelson Cruz replacement they so desperately needed. Rios departs the last place White Sox, a team tied for the second worst record in baseball, for a Rangers team that leads its division by a game. Jackpot! Do Rios’ fantasy owners also hit the jackpot? Let’s try to answer that question.
A few days ago, I wrote a post looking into some players who were putting up fairly pedestrian numbers but remained quite intriguing due to being young for their levels. I didn’t include White Sox outfield prospect Courtney Hawkins on the list, but I suppose I could have. Nobody would say Hawkins doesn’t have tools–he was the 13th overall pick in the 2012 draft for a reason–but he sure is struggling in High-A Winston-Salem this year. I mean, sure, he’s second in the Carolina League with 19 home runs, and he’s slugging a quite respectable .452–the elephant in the room is the strikeout totals.
“Argue your limitations, and they will be yours.” — Illusions, Richard Bach
How I wish I had learned that phrase back when I was playing Little League. Defensively, I was rock solid. I could turn the double play from the second base side with ease or I could sit behind the plate for nine innings and call a game with the best of them. Put me in the batter’s box though, and my ineptitude at the plate was depressingly laughable. But rather than work my tail off to become a better hitter, I simply accepted the fact that I was never going to work my way up to the clean-up spot and when the coach said that a walk was as good as a hit, I took it as gospel. The bat barely left my shoulder and I led my team in walks. Of course I took a few cuts from time to time and even found my way on-base via an actual hit, but overall, taking a pitch was my specialty. I was the original Robbie Grossman. Read the rest of this entry »
Let’s do one last round of ranks for the rest of the season. Cause I know you guys are still in it and winning your leagues because we’re helping so much, right? Right??
In any case, the trade deadline is coming up and this might help you decide on a trade or two. And to help you even further, this time I’m putting in the rest-of-season projections from Steamer. One stop shopping.
And because I can, I’m using pale ales to name the tiers. Read and drink responsibly.
