Today we take another stroll into the dangerous and deep waters of the free agent pool of mystery. During our treasure search, we find a pitcher with a new name and pitch mix and an outfielder that was just called up.
There are good weeks, there are bad weeks, and then there are weeks like the two Aaron Hicks (owned in 1.2 percent of ESPN leagues and 3 percent of Yahoo! leagues) had to start the season. His .042/.179/.042 line over the first 13 games of the season was marred by 20 strikeouts in 56 PAs, and he reached base more often via error (3) than he did by getting a hit (2). It’s not exactly a line that breeds confidence. He managed to be driven in six times, which is somewhat impressive given his incredibly low batting average, and was largely due to the fact that even though he wasn’t hitting, he did walk in 14 percent of his plate appearance.
His ownership started slipping, for obvious reasons, right about the same time there were rumblings that Hicks may need a stint in Triple-A to improve his eye. The Twins did decide that Hicks should no longer lead off, but elected to keep him in the majors. Three games after he was dropped from the leadoff spot in the Twins’ order, Hicks started hitting. Heading into Monday’s game, Hicks had been hitting .300/.375/.350 with just four strikeouts in just 24 PAs. Monday night, he struggled against Max Scherzer, but that’s hardly a unique issue. If that’s the criteria for success or failure, better players than Hicks would fall into that second category. Read the rest of this entry »
Dude is 31 years old. Nate McLouth probably isn’t a new player. But there are reasons to believe in him, to believe in the changes he’s made.
Last summer, Jeff Zimmerman updated the xBABIP formula and provided a spreadsheet calculator to perform the dirty work. So with a month of the season in the books, let’s take a look at the hitter’s who have outperformed their xBABIP marks the most. It would be easy to simply sort by BABIP and note that the .400+ guys won’t maintain that pace, but it’s very possible that their batted ball profile supports a BABIP above .350. You wouldn’t know that without the calculator.
In the couple weeks before Opening Day, hundreds of season prediction articles littered the baseball blogosphere. Naturally opinions varied, but almost nobody disagreed on one point: the Miami Marlins were expected to be terrible across the board and finish last in the NL East.
Well, more accurately, everything about the Marlins was expected to be putrid except Giancarlo Stanton.
We’re about 20 games into the season and certain players are beginning to standout — some for good reasons, and some for bad. Today I also attempt to coin (you’ll get that joke at the end) a new nickname for a player.
Let’s face it…nearly every guy who is sitting on your waiver wire is flawed in some way or another and the thought of using someone from the scrap heap on a full-time basis makes your fantasy skin crawl. But when Jason Heyward goes in for an appendectomy and you’ve already lost Yoenis Cespedes, Michael Bourn and Ryan Ludwick, desperate times call for desperate measures. Now obviously you’re not going to find one guy out there who is going to do it all for you, so your best bet is a platoon. And based on ownership percentages, it looks like you can solve some of your issues just by looking north of the border and using the DH spot from the Blue Jays. Read the rest of this entry »
It’s time for our weekly look at the best of the worst. That’s right, it’s the deep league waiver wire where I attempt to find value in mediocre players! Today happens to be Astros day. The good thing about being a weak team is that most of your players are unowned in fantasy leagues. So that gives me multiple options for this very column.
Over the last three or four years, it’s become pretty clear the Yankees have one of the better pro scouting departments in the game. Everyone offseason they acquire some retreads and somehow turn them into useful players, like Bartolo Colon or Eric Chavez or Marcus Thames. They seem to revive guys from the baseball graveyard, and this year they might have done their greatest work, turning Vernon Wells back into a legitimate big league player.
Wells, 34, was hilariously bad with the Angels the last two years. You know that. He hit .222/.258/.409 (82 wRC+) in 791 plate appearances from 2011-2012, his only saving grace the 33 homers he swatted from the right side. Wells was effectively done as a MLB caliber hitter, someone who kept his job only because of the tens of millions of dollars still owed to him. Fantasy owners didn’t even have to think twice about dropping him from their roster or consider him on draft day.
As of Friday morning, Matt Kemp is hitting .182/.217/.255 with zero home runs and zero stolen bases. His .207 wOBA ranks third-worst amongst qualified outfielders in all of baseball — ahead of only Aaron Hicks and David Murphy — and he currently owns a 28 wRC+ and a -0.6 WAR.
In short, he’s been dreadful, and many fantasy owners who drafted him in the first round have been limping through the month of April, waiting for Kemp to rebound and become the .362 wOBA hitter he’s been throughout his career.
Lots of speculation exists that this slump is either related to his offseason shoulder surgery or the result of a mechanical compensation from his injury last season. While Kemp has repeatedly told reporters he’s physically fine this week, the numbers indicate something has negatively changed at the plate.
