It’s hard to believe it, but Yoenis Cespedes just completed his age 28 season. Because he was a Cuban defector and came to the States later than others who have come here, he’s much older than one might expect given that he has just three full seasons under his belt. So the question is certainly valid as to whether Cespedes has peaked. His trends don’t paint a very pretty picture.
I wanted to go with a title that likened Matt Holliday to the smokin’ Diane Lane. But I don’t really look at Holliday the way I do the smokin’ Diane Lane.
Anyway, that Holliday ended up as the 18th-ranked outfielder in Zach Sanders’ end-of-season rankings for the position might surprise some fantasy baseball players. The St. Louis Cardinals’ regular left fielder hit .272 with 20 home runs and four stolen bases in 667 plate appearances. OK, not bad, those marks seem good enough to place him 18th. But he hit a mere six home runs in 339 at-bats (400 PAs) prior to the All-Star break, so he appeared to be on course to fall short of 20 bombs for the first time since 2005, his second year in the majors. It might just surprise some folks to find out that he recovered so well.
I felt very strongly about Marcell Ozuna coming into the season, writing a lengthy piece in which I wondered if a balky wrist was to blame for his 2013 power outage. I also used one of my “Bold Predictions” to claim that the 23-year-old would hit more than 20 homers, one year removed from hitting just three long balls in 291 plate appearances.
I’ve already had the opportunity to pat myself on the back for getting this one right, so let’s dig into how Ozuna transformed from our preseason No. 85 fantasy outfielder into the season’s No. 27 player at the position. (As I noted in my Bold Predictions recap column, his average fly-ball distance increased by a ridiculous 36 feet, from 255.5 feet last year to 291.5 feet in 2014, which is a pretty darn good place to start.)
I told you Corey Dickerson was going to go 25/10 this season and while he missed those milestones by one homer and two steals, you should have listened to my prognostication! Of course, I failed to do so myself, as I drafted Dickerson in a total of zero leagues. That proved to be a mistake, as Dickerson completed a breakout year that resulted in fantasy earnings ranking him 15th among outfielders and 37th overall. That’s pretty crazy for someone ranked as our 77th best outfielder in our preseason consensus.
Episode 178
The latest episode of “The Sleeper and the Bust” is live!
Eno Sarris and Nicholas Minnix talk strategy; the re-signing of Victor Martinez; the Devon Travis–Anthony Gose trade; Yoan Moncada; Kwang-Hyun Kim; a Twitter question about head-to-head leagues; and, of course, outfielders! The end-of-season OF rankings went up this past Monday. Under discussion: Michael Brantley; Charlie Blackmon and Corey Dickerson; and Matt Kemp, for starters.
As usual, don’t hesitate to tweet us or comment with fantasy questions so that we may answer them in our next episode.
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Allen Craig stunk in 2014. We all saw it. He stunk for the St. Louis Cardinals. He stunk even more for the Boston Red Sox. He stunk all season for fantasy baseball players, for whom he lost money, and ended up in the hundreds among outfielders. A regular. The only guy who accumulated 500-plus plate appearances this past season and finished ranked in the hundreds.
Is that it, then? Does he just stink now? It’s possible. Maybe even likely. Perhaps close to definite. But we don’t know. I don’t think that we can know. At least not yet.
This past season was a pretty productive one for Brandon Moss. The Oakland Athletics’ outfielder-first baseman hit a subpar .234, but his 25 dingers helped to place him in the top 40 outfielders by Zach Sanders’ standards. His $12-plus in earnings would make him a top-15 first baseman, in case he went that way for fantasy baseball players. The recession on offense made Moss’ numbers more valuable in rotisserie leagues.
The 2014 campaign could have been better, perhaps notably so, for Moss, in fact. The slugger went yard for the 23rd time this season on July 24, yet he finished with a total that tied him for 21st in the majors in that category. He much more resembled the hitter he was in 2013 (.267 ISO) prior to the All-Star break this year (.268/.349/.530, 21 jacks, and a .262 ISO in 364 PAs) than he did after it (.173/.310/.274, 4 HR, and a .101 ISO in 216 PAs). Moss wasn’t the same by the end of July.
It’s hard not to fall in love with the fantasy potential of Jason Heyward, especially for those of us who can’t forget the can’t-miss hype surrounding his debut and a rookie season that seemed like the precursor to imminent superstardom. So it’s difficult to shake the tinge of disappointment that’s come to hang around Heyward in the past couple of years, not necessarily because he’s done anything wrong — he is, after all, just 25 years old and boasts a career .345 wOBA — but because in him we see fantasy studliness, and can’t help but feel let down each year when he falls short of making good on his immense potential.
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Coming into 2014, I was very high on George Springer. After seeing him play in both Double-A and Triple-A in 2013, I was so confident in his abilities that I wrote a column explaining why Springer was still worth drafting and holding in standard mixed leagues, even if he started the season in Triple-A.
The 24-year-old spent exactly 13 games back down in Triple-A to start the season, hitting .353/.459/.647, with eight extra-base hits and four steals. That was enough to convince the Astros to call him up and give him the everyday right-field job. At first, he struggled to adjust, hitting just .182/.262/.218 in his first 14 major-league games. As it turned out, two weeks was about all the adjusting he needed to do.
I’ve written briefly about Jordy Mercer twice before; once a couple months ago, and once in June 2013. I first saw Mercer play back in 2006, when he arrived at Oklahoma State, and I’ve followed his career closely over the eight-plus years since. That piece from last June pretty well encapsulated my feelings about Mercer’s pre-MLB career:
I always wondered whether his hit tool would play at the higher levels.
In college, Mercer was right around a .300 hitter with 25 homers in three seasons. Keep in mind that this was before the NCAA switched to the offense-suppressing new bats; a .300 collegiate hitter wasn’t exactly impressive in that offensive environment. As he climbed through the minors, my concerns seemed valid, as he posted a batting average around .260 at most of his minor-league stops.
Then, last year, something seemed to change. Mercer developed an ability to get on base that he hadn’t shown before. He posted a much-improved .287/.357/.421 slash line in Triple-A, good enough to get him a call to the majors.
