Let’s start this off by saying that the biggest aberration in terms of fantasy production that Martin Prado will probably ever have is his 2012 season. I would put a good deal of money on him never stealing 17+ bases again in his life.
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While Matt Harvey’s Tommy John surgery has Mets fans looking ahead to 2015 for the next signs of competitive postseason baseball, fantasy owners needn’t wait so long, at least so far as New York’s infield is concerned. With a near-elite option holding down the hot corner and a couple of intriguing upside artists elsewhere, the Mets offer help at some typically hard-to-fill fantasy positions – at prices that may be bargains come draft day.
At first base in Atlanta, you’ve got a line drive, batting average on balls in play god with maybe a lower power ceiling than some of the others at his position. At third base in Atlanta, you’ve got a line drive, batting average on balls in play demi-god with maybe a lower power ceiling than some of the others at his position. At catcher, you have two grip-it-and-rip-it guys with power and little else. There isn’t too much science to those parts of the Braves’ infield depth chart.
In between the three positions, you’ve got some strange batted-ball distributions that make for more interesting conversations.
The Cardinals’ first-round pick in the 2011 Draft, Kolten Wong, is expected to begin the 2014 season as the team’s starting second baseman. Coming into last year, Wong was a near-consensus Top 100 prospect, and he was very impressive at Triple-A Memphis in 2013. At age 22, Wong posted a .303/.369/.466 slash line in 463 plate appearances before earning a call up to the majors.
Wong struggled mightily in his first taste of major-league action, scuffling to a paltry .153/.194/.169 line. However, we’re only dealing with a sample size of 62 plate appearances, and those were spread over 32 games. At one point, Wong went 24 days between starts in St. Louis, and when he did start, he often did not finish the game. It’s difficult to expect any player, not to mention a 22-year-old rookie, to produce much of anything with such inconsistent usage.
Think about the Giants’ infield, and inevitably you wonder if the large mound at third can rebound from a disastrous year at the plate. Of course, there’s a breakout candidate at first base, and two deep leaguers up the middle, but you can’t help thinking about Pablo Sandoval first.
The Alex Rodriguez news will send a lot of fantasy owners scrambling for a new 3B, but it has other implications on the Yankees infield that may present an opportunity for savvy fantasy owners.
Brad Johnson looked at what the A-Rod suspension means for the Yankees yesterday. Not long thereafter, New York added Scott Sizemore and Ken Rosenthal reported that the Yanks are unlikely to add another MLB IF, which means the in-house options Johnson considered – along with Sizemore – are basically the only options in the Bronx.
Jurickson Profar finally got some decent time in the majors during the 2013 season because of an Ian Kinsler injury. Plenty of hype surrounded the 20-year-old since he was a generally considered the game’s top prospect going into last season. He is still a young with plenty of room for growth, but I am worried about speed limiting his fantasy potential.
Before I delve into the numbers, all of Profar’s value will hinge on his playing time. Last season, the best prospect in baseball didn’t have a position with Ian Kinsler at second and Elvis Andrus at shortstop. The lack of an everyday position never opened up until Kinsler got hurt. Once Profar was given a chance to start, he didn’t exactly excel at the plate. He hit .234/.308/.336 with 6 HR and 2 SB. Most of the switch hitter’s struggles came against left-handed pitchers with a .188/.291/.250 line.
Writer’s Note: Gordon Beckham ranked 31st in Zach Sanders’ season-ending rankings among second basemen.
The 2013 season marked the fourth-straight season in which Gordon Beckham finished with an OPS under .700. In fact, in two of the last four seasons, Beckham has had an OBP under .300, with more than twice as many strikeouts as walks in all four of those seasons.
In essence, those four season’s encapsulate the essence of Beckham, whose remarkable ascent to the big leagues came one year after he was the first round pick (eighth overall) of the White Sox. Beckham signed in August of 2008, and by June the next year he was a fixture in the Pale Hose lineup.
That first year was rather good to Beckham, as he took over third base from Josh Fields and never really relinquished it. In 103 games totaling over 400 plate appearances, Beckham hit .270/.347/.460 with 43 extra-base hits, seven steals, and a solid 1.6 K/BB rate.
But that season pretty much sums up the modicum of success he’s had at the big league level. Since his rookie season, he’s hit .244/.306/.364 while almost exclusively playing second base for the Sox. Beckham’s second half in 2010 gave many fantasy writers — this one included — optimism for the future. Through the midsummer classic that year, Beckham had hit .216/.277/.304 before turning on the jets to the tune of a .310/.380/.497 second half.
The next best half-season split Beckham has had in the interim was in the first half this year, when he hit .335/.357/.443 in just 44 games. But then he sputtered to a .616 OPS in the second half, and further cemented himself as a night-and-day player with little to no predictability as to which is which, and why. Read the rest of this entry »
With two 30-30 seasons in his resume, there was a time when it was quite fashionable to select Ian Kinsler as early as the first round in fantasy drafts. 2012 was a down year by his standards, but the lure of a rebound season still kept his price tag hefty with a $20-plus average auction cost and an average draft position in the 20’s. It suffices to say that he lacked a return on investment in 2013.
In the preseason I wrote about why I didn’t think Robinson Cano was worth a first round pick. Before we look back at my reasoning and before I decide whether I feel similarly for 2014, let’s figure out if I was right.
The technical answer is probably that I was right, but in practicality, I was dead wrong. Cano finished as the 26th most valuable player in our end of season valuations, and he finished 13th on ESPN’s player rater. So yes, technically Cano did not produce like a first round player. But of the players you might actually have considered taking over Cano in the first, only Mike Trout, Miguel Cabrera and Andrew McCutchen turned out to be more valuable. If you took Cano in the first, you were probably pleased with what you got from him. You were certainly happier than the owners who took Ryan Braun, Matt Kemp, Albert Pujols, and Justin Verlander.
Above I linked to my original article on Cano, but, in summation, I didn’t like Cano for three reasons.