There are a few exciting names up today. You’ve got your Maikel Franco in Philly, your Joc Pederson in Los Angeles and your Daniel Norris in Toronto. They’ve been called up to the bigs! But, due to innings limits on young arms, and roster crunches on teams now as much as 50% larger, it’s fair to ask. Will any of these youngsters play regularly?
Labor Day is officially behind us, and that means the fantasy season is beginning to wind down. This week, we’ll take a look at two Mets — one a defensive standout who’s been contributing with the bat lately, the other a newcomer to The Show — who could offer assistance to owners in NL-only leagues.
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Earlier this week, Jeff Zimmerman presented Early 2015 Hitter Projections using Steamer and/or ZIPS averaged ROS projections. The main contingency at this time: all values are set to 600 plate appearances. If I had all the time in the world, I would go through the list and manually adjust the PA based on lineup position, career PA/G, etc, but I’m not that much of a Mensch.
The next day, Mike Podhorzer highlighted some of the surprises ranked in the top 30. Again the 600 PA contingency is clear as Rajai Davis, Jarrod Dyson and Corey Dickerson make the list although if Dickerson doesn’t get platooned, I (and Mike) think he’ll surpass expectations. His splits page tells us there is no good reason to platoon him.
In Mike’s intro, he also referenced that there is no adjustment for position in Jeff’s SGP rankings. That’s where this post comes in.
The White Sox finally saw enough of second basemen Gordon Beckham and traded him away last Thursday. That opened up a gaping hole at the position, which is the theme of this week’s wire.
It’s the last week before September call-ups, that frustrating nook of the fantasy season when playing time for DLWW candidates is subject to change. But in cases of our two veterans this week, one has just received what could be an extended opportunity to make an impact in NL-only leagues, while the other’s hot bat could make him an option in the junior circuit.
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All year, both Dustin Pedroia and Martin Prado have been falling down my monthly tiered second-base rankings, to the point where I couldn’t recommend either in anything but AL/NL-only leagues or very deep mixers. Over the last few weeks, both Pedroia and Prado have put themselves back into mixed-league consideration — in the last 30 days, Pedroia was the No. 10 fantasy second baseman, with Prado at No. 15.
So who would you rather own rest-of-season? Both are aging second-sackers with steadily fading production, but both are coming off pretty good months:
For the season, Ian Kinsler has played pretty well. He’s the No. 6 second baseman in standard fantasy formats and, on the surface, he’s having a pretty typical Ian Kinsler season. His .732 on-base plus slugging is pretty much in line with the .753 OPS he averaged in his last two seasons with the Rangers. He’s got 11 homers so far, following 13 last year and 19 in 2012. He’s showed better efficiency on the basepaths, improving last year’s 15-for-26 mark in stolen-base attempts to an impressive 12-for-15.
However, a look at his plate discipline numbers suggests something amiss with Kinsler. His strikeout rate is great, as always, as his 10.7% K-rate is a notch better than his 11.7% career rate. However, the 32-year-old has suddenly stopped taking walks, with an alarming 4.0% BB-rate — miles away from his career 9.1% mark. In fact, Kinsler’s worst single-season walk rate coming into 2014 was 8.2% two years ago.
One thing we know about strikeout and contact rate is that the stats stabilize quickly. In other words, those stats tell us more about future work in those categories quicker than other stats. But players make changes all the time, and it’s not just the first month of the season that we care about.
So who’s changed the most in the last month? Let’s look at the biggest differences in contact rate over the last month, and it what might tell us about these relevant players.
Yesterday was the trade deadline in the keeper league I’ve been in for over a dozen years. I’m in the midst of a full rebuild, and was spending the day shopping around my spare parts in exchange for draft picks and prospect upgrades. (Without boring you with too many details, each of the 12 teams keeps eight major-league players per year.)
Daniel Murphy is one guy I was openly shopping. Without even really thinking about it, I envisioned him as one of my more valuable spare parts; someone who wasn’t in my long-term plans, but could bring back a nice haul. It was only when I started getting offers for him that I started to really evaluate the way I view him as a fantasy commodity.
If you’d like to check out my tiered second-base rankings from last month, click here.
TIER ONE
Jose Altuve
Anthony Rendon
Robinson Cano
Rendon’s awful month of May sure does feel like it happened ages ago. Since the calendar turned over to June, Rendon has hit eight homers and stolen eight bases, with a .294/.353/.498 slash. He also leads the entire National League in runs scored for the season. Rendon is a true five-category fantasy stud, and moves up from Tier Two into Tier One this month.
