It hasn’t exactly been an easy season for fans of East Bay baseball. Facing a rotation eviscerated by injuries and trades and clubhouse chemistry, once impervious to losing, lost, there hasn’t been much for A’s fans to gloat over. Not that expectations were all that high to begin with, but this? The best that can be said about 2016 is that at least the front office made a firm commitment to its youth as soon as it became obvious that meaningful baseball would not be played in the Coliseum at the same time meaningless football would be. And for that fantasy managers and particularly those digging for championships in deep leagues, should be thankful.

Read the rest of this entry »

Brian Dozier is a streaky hitter. We know this to be true, much like the world is round, or the sun rises in the east. In the last two seasons, he’s pushed the boundaries of what I thought ‘streaky’ could entail. About halfway through the 2015 campaign, Dozier’s production fell off a cliff. Check out his slash lines by month:

• April ’15 (95 PA) – .220/.305/.336 (.671 OPS), .146 ISO
• May ’15 (121 PA) – .287/.355/.630 (.985 OPS), .343 ISO
• June ’15 (121 PA) – .287/.355/.556 (.911 OPS), .269 ISO
• July ’15 (110 PA) – .206/.282/.433 (.715 OPS), .227 ISO
• August ’15 (120 PA) – .216/.275/.387 (.662 OPS), .171 ISO
• September ’15 (137 PA) – .197/.270/.295 (.565 OPS), .098 ISO

The batting average dropped down around the Mendoza line, while his power evaporated by the month. The really scary thing was the way Dozier began 2016:

• April ’16 (106 PA) – .191/.276/.340 (.617 OPS), .149 ISO
• May ’16 (92 PA) – .215/.315/.316 (.632 OPS), .101 ISO

Read the rest of this entry »

Check out last month’s tiers right here.

TIER ONE
Jose Altuve

A couple weeks ago, I wrote a piece on this very website entitled “Jose Altuve: Fantasy Baseball’s Most Valuable Hitter.” It is a celebratory collection of fun facts about the best position player in fantasy, and I invite you all to partake in its many enjoyable info nuggets. Altuve should claim the No. 1 overall spot soon, which is currently held by the injured Clayton Kershaw. (Kershaw is seriously still the top performer in 2016 in traditional 5×5 formats, despite the fact that he last pitched five weeks ago.)

TIER TWO
Daniel Murphy
Ian Kinsler
Robinson Cano
Dustin Pedroia

The Murphy/Kinsler/Cano trio have held down this tier for months, and now Pedroia moves up to join them. The soon-to-be 33-year-old socked five homers in July, while hitting over .300 for the third time in the season’s four months. Pedroia also has more walks than strikeouts over the last two months. He’s now sitting on a .303/.373/.453 season slash, with 12 homers, 70 runs and 46 RBI. With his prime position in the two-hole of Boston’s powerful lineup, Pedroia’s four-category contributions should continue to pay big dividends for his owners.

Read the rest of this entry »

No matter your league size, there’s likely someone on the waiver wire who can give you a boost at second base. This week, I’ve identified three under-owned second-sackers who could bolster your production at the position.

Devon Travis (31% Yahoo, 30.3% ESPN, 66% CBS)

For a while, it seemed like Travis had a shot at leading off for the Jays, as he picked up five starts atop the lineup in Jose Bautista’s absence. However, the 25-year-old was unable to fend off Ezequiel Carrera as the team’s primary leadoff man, and now Bautista is due back soon. Manager John Gibbons recently indicated he’ll likely slot Bautista back into the leadoff spot when he returns.

The dream of “Devon Travis, leadoff hitter” may be a thing of the past, but despite bouncing around between every spot in the order other than third and fourth, Travis is producing well above his ownership rates. Players on CBS have clearly noticed, but there’s no reason he should be so widely available in Yahoo/ESPN leagues. Over the last 30 days, Travis is hitting .325 with three homers, two steals, 15 runs and nine RBI. Pretty darn good for a second baseman who’s likely floating around on your waiver wire.

Read the rest of this entry »

Whenever I write my monthly second-base rankings, I find myself awestruck by how much better Jose Altuve is than any other option at the position. This usually leads me down an Altuve-based statistical rabbit hole, and today I’d simply like to invite you to join me, as I explore the reasons why the 26-year-old is the most productive 2016 fantasy bat to date. (Yes, he’s seriously producing better than the likes of Josh Donaldson, Mike Trout, and David Ortiz in traditional 5×5 formats.)

First off, let’s compare the man to himself. Just 92 games into the season, his 15 home runs already equal last year’s career high. With 70 runs and 54 RBI, he’s on pace to shatter his career marks in both categories, which were also set last year (86 R, 66 RBI). He’s hitting .346, even better than the .341 he hit in 2014, when he won the American League batting title.

He’s already drawn more walks (42) than in any of his previous four full seasons. On-base percentage, slugging percentage, isolated power — all are miles beyond anything he’s done before. His 4.7 wins above replacement already tops last year’s 4.3 WAR.

Read the rest of this entry »

Howie Kendrick has had an atypical season in 2016, defensively and offensively. He has played the vast majority of his career at second base, but this year he has filled the super utility role, with 253 innings in the outfield, 46 on first, 91 on third, and 139 on second. His manager, Dave Roberts, has had many positive things to say about Kendrick’s defense thus far, especially with his work filling in left field for the Dodgers.  He has shown range and an arm good enough to make a few nifty plays. Namely, throwing out Wilson Ramos at home. Ramos isn’t a speedster, and the throw was from very shallow left field, but the play did a lot to contribute to a win.  His offense, though, has been a bit of a let down. Especially for a guy who has been so consistent over the course of his career. Kendrick has never finished a season with a wOBA below .313, and only twice has his wOBA have been below average: 2006 (league average .332, Kendrick .313) and 2010 (league average .321, Kendrick .316). This year, to date, his wOBA has been .277, 42 points below average. Nonetheless, this isn’t the worst start to a season in his career.  At this point in 2009, he had a very similar slash line as he does today:

In the second half of 2009, he produced .356/.393/.544, finishing the season .291/.334/.444 with a .340 wOBA. Obviously, the Dodgers would be ecstatic to see that level of production in the second half of this season, but does he have it in him?

Read the rest of this entry »

Check out last month’s tiers right here. I’m in the midst of an intensely busy week, but I’ll try to respond to any questions you might have in the comments section.

TIER ONE
Jose Altuve

Altuve is outperforming his competition to such a degree that I nearly left Tier Two empty, simply to signify how much better the 26-year-old is than any other fantasy 2B option. Altuve somehow managed to outperform his ridiculous April, with an absolutely bonkers .396/.472/.582 slash in June. He launched four more bombs, stole three more bases, walked more than he struck out for the second consecutive month, it just goes on and on.

I’ll cherry-pick one amazing statistic before moving on: Altuve is hitting .302/.362/.395 in plate appearances in which he finds himself down 0-2 in the count. That’s good enough for a wRC+ of 108. In other words, Jose Altuve is a better hitter down 0-2, than a league-average hitter stepping into a 0-0 count.

Read the rest of this entry »

In December of 2014, the Royals gave up on Johnny Giavotella, shipping him to the Angels for non-prospect relief pitcher Brian Broderick. Giavotella didn’t exactly set the world on fire after being dealt, but the biggest ramification of this minor transaction was that Omar Infante was basically assured another season as the primary second baseman in Kansas City, despite a thoroughly underwhelming 2014. The Royals temporarily addressed the problem mid-season last year when they acquired Ben Zobrist, but when Zobrist signed with the Cubs in the offseason, the 34-year-old Infante entered this season as the Royals’ default second-sacker yet again.

On the surface, there simply wasn’t any competition. Christian Colon seemed like the only other option on paper, and he’s never looked like more than a utility bench bat. Raul Mondesi — the club’s top infield prospect — clearly needed more seasoning in the minors, and then got suspended in May for taking cold medicine with steroids in it. Infante predictably started 2016 as a de facto everyday player, and continued his quest to keep sticking as a major-league regular, despite refusing to hit baseballs.

Read the rest of this entry »

Just straight hitting the ball hard has its value, but there is an ideal angle. Hit the ball a million miles per hour into the ground, and you’re Giancarlo Stanton, grounding out to second base on the hardest hit ball so far in the Statcast era. You gotta hit it square.

People smarter than I am have determined that the ideal launch angle is between ten and thirty degrees. That combines the line drive angle (10-25 degrees) and home run angle (25-30), but in fantasy baseball, we’ll take a line drive or a home run, either’s fine.

So if we want to know who’s hitting the ball harder this year, it’s probably best to ask who’s hitting the ball harder in the right angles for success? That will tell us a little about some hot starts that are more believable because of what’s going on under the hood.

Read the rest of this entry »

Last week I wrote about eight players who are under performing their xOBA, so it seems only natural to talk about a few over performers today. There are a bunch of great cases to draw from, including Odubel Herrera and Xander Bogaerts, and below you will find a table that the players with the 15 largest differences between their wOBA and xOBA. Whereas many of the under performers last week were generally slow runners, many of the over performers are fleet of foot.  I have tried to single out the guys who are closer to average runners to talk about today.

Read the rest of this entry »