Chase Utley entered the season with two big questions to answer – could he stay healthy and how hard would age related decline bite? The answers turned out to be yes (good!) and pretty hard (not so good). Despite that, Utley turned in $15 of value per Mr. Sandman with an average preseason cost of $10 according to Fantasy Pros. That makes him an uncommon known commodity who turned a profit.

Read the rest of this entry »

Since his 2007 semi-breakout performance, Aaron Hill has been an enigma. In fact, he’s run the gamut from being really good, mediocre and bad from a fantasy perspective over those years. Unfortunately, Hill owners got the bad version this year, as he ranked just 17th in earnings among second basemen. Since it would be fun and it’s in the name of this site after all, let’s depict his various performance metrics in graphical form since his 2005 debut.

Read the rest of this entry »

In 2013, Dustin Pedroia had what most fantasy baseball enthusiasts considered a down year. Despite hitting .301/.372/.415, Pedroia’s counting stats slipped to single digit home runs, and he failed to break 20 stolen bases for the first time since 2007 (not counting injury-plagued 2010). He did provide plenty of runs and RBI for the World Series champs, and considering he played with a troublesome thumb injury for quite some time, there were many who considered him a good bounceback candidate after getting it fixed in November of last year.

And why not a bounceback? After all, Pedroia had pretty firmly settled himself behind Robinson Cano in the top tier of second basemen for the better part of five seasons going back to 2008. Pedroia was a perennial .300 hitter with 20-20 written all over him, and among league leaders at second base in runs and RBI. With the thumb issue behind him, most prognosticators saw a return to 15 home runs and 20 stolen bases at a minimum, with his typical associated counting stat output to follow.

And then on April 4th, the Red Sox home opener, Carlos Gomez slid into second base to break up a double play. Pedroia went up in the air, and came down on his surgically repaired hand. And Pedroia’s season kind of mirrored that of the Boston Red Sox all season — it just never materialized. And in fact, Pedroia aggravated his hand injury several times over the course of the season, ultimately succumbing to surgery in September when it was clear the Red Sox weren’t going anywhere in 2014 and/or he just couldn’t play with it anymore. He would finish with a .278/.337/.376 slash line with seven home runs, just five stolen bases and the lowest wOBA as a professional by far at .318.

Looking at his 2014 performance is going to be difficult inasmuch as using it as a predictor for future contributions. Because there’s no doubt you need strong hands in order to hit a baseball, and if Pedroia lacked that for the majority of the season, well then maybe his performance was actually miraculous.

If you look at his batted ball data, Pedroia was well within what would be considered normal for his career:

His line drive rate was actually at a career high at nearly 24% while his fly ball rate was at a career low. His HR/FB rate was at its lowest mark since 2007, but if you look at his average distance on fly balls and home runs over the past four seasons, it might signal some bad luck (by his standard):

So after seeing his fly ball and home run distance drop to a pretty paltry 265 feet, it popped back up in 2014 almost to the level it was when he hit a career high 21 home runs. But obviously, the home runs never really materialized in 2014.

Something that might be of concern, and perhaps just a measure of his age, is the steady decline in his pitch values on fastballs:

I include sliders here simply because that’s the second most frequent pitch Pedroia sees, and he’s holding his own there — but on fastballs, which he sees almost 40% of the time, he has been in steady decline for five seasons, although this year was a hair less terrible than last year. I’m not sure we can pin all of this on a bad hand, but it could be part of the explanation.

Pedroia has been a guy who historically has used all fields pretty well, and his scatter plot from the 2014 season demonstrates a pretty decent distribution:

But somewhere around mid-season, Pedroia started to become a very pull-heavy hitter (from July 15 to end of season):

And during that same time span, he became a much heavier ground ball hitter in lieu of line drives:

This data is what makes me lean towards his hand bugging him. He was hitting less like Pedroia than ever, and it just deteriorated over the course of the season. It’s incredibly difficult to predict which Pedroia will show up in 2015, but I’ll certainly be looking for news on his health, specifically that troublesome hand. Because he’s now seen two seasons ostensibly derailed by the same hand injury and prior to that, he was one of the most reliable second baseman in both real and fantasy baseball. He could be a bargain on draft day, but the risk is high — if he turns in another year like 2014, you’ll be kicking yourself all the way to Rickie Weeks.

Scooter Gennett owns a .300 lifetime batting average. To be fair, that line is a bit misleading as his lifetime of major league hitting consists of 704 plate appearances spread out over parts of two seasons. The left-handed hitting second baseman has been used in a platoon fashion with the probable free-agent-to-be Rickie Weeks since Gennett was called up in 2013. Read the rest of this entry »

What will the fantasy baseball market look like for Jose Altuve in 2015? The Houston Astros’ second baseman, as a top-five commodity overall who wasn’t, on average, drafted as a top-five player at his position and barely within the top 100, according to Fantasy Pros’ ADP data, certainly helped some fantasy baseball players win this year. What did Zach Sanders know that all his haters in the comments didn’t?! It’s safe to say that Altuve has changed perception and will cost more next season.

There’ll also be folks who’ll avoid and/or recommend to avoid him because of the scary regression monster. Any player who hits .341 thanks to a .360 BABIP and steals 56 bases in 65 attempts after he finished his previous two seasons nowhere near those marks is due to fall hard, the reasoning might basically go. It’s a pretty simple and safe approach, since regression to mean performance is the smart bet.

But how much will his future performance actually regress? Altuve did some potentially significant things differently in 2014. It seems pretty plausible that he’s begun to establish an entirely new mean performance level. And if that’s true, then there might still be room to profit on a purchase of Altuve next year.

Read the rest of this entry »

It’s been a long couple seasons for Milwaukee Brewers second baseman Rickie Weeks. The injuries and ineffectiveness finally took it’s toll in 2014, as Weeks was moved out of a full-time role for the first time since 2005. The move came at an inopportune time for Weeks, as he’s now set to be a free-agent. While Weeks is coming off a fine year, in which he had a .359 wOBA, there are plenty of questions facing the second baseman moving forward. Assuming he can find a team to give him a shot in a full-time role, does Weeks have anything left in the tank?

Read the rest of this entry »

Since his 2009 breakout, Ben Zobrist has been a consistent all-around fantasy contributor, with his blend of power and speed. But the first chinks in the armor started to show in 2013. After hitting 20+ homers in three of his previous four seasons, he knocked just 12 out of the park. And after attempting at least 23 steals each season, he made just 14 attempts. Unfortunately, he failed to bounce back this year and posted a nearly identical season, just reaching double digits in both homers and steals. Does this mark the end of the Zorilla’s jungle rein or is there one last rebound in his future?

Read the rest of this entry »

The case of Jedd Gyorko, 2014, is a curious one. It’s an ugly one, too, with that .210 batting average and 10 home runs he put up in 443 plate appearances this past season. The San Diego Padres certainly hoped for more given that they signed him to a five-year contract extension, which came with a club option for 2020, in mid-April. Perhaps soon afterward, they began to regret it.

Is this past campaign more of a reflection of Gyorko’s true talent? His production (.249/.301/.444, with 23 home runs, in 525 PAs) in his rookie season more of a fluke? Will more or fewer of his prospective owners in rotisserie, head-to-head, and whatever other types of leagues view them that way? He may be a popular rebound candidate. But how popular?

Read the rest of this entry »

Jonathan Schoop recently concluded a rookie season in which he often batted at the bottom of the Orioles lineup and hit the fourth most home runs of pure second baseman (i.e. those listed by Zach Sanders). The 23-year-old was worth a dismal -$2 according to Sanders and generally went undrafted prior to the season. Despite the forgettable campaign, the youngster showed flashes of fantasy viability. He’ll just have to solve some problems first.

Read the rest of this entry »

In 2013, Daniel Murphy defied all expectations by vaunting into the top-five tier of fantasy second basemen, making him one of the best bargains at the keystone sack and a tempting draft target back in March. Unfortunately, he couldn’t quite keep up the good vibes, as Murphy, despite making his first all-star team this year, slipped from No. 4 to No. 9 at the position in both Zach Sanders’ rankings and ESPN’s Player Rater.

Depending on your point of view, that’s either disappointing or merely the result of a limited offensive player regressing to his mean. Regardless, Murphy, who long ago established himself as a legitimate major league hitter, continued his steady ways at the dish:
Read the rest of this entry »