Howie Kendrick had what seemed to be a breakout season in 2011. Most of his improvement came from a career high 18 home runs. He is not having the same level of production in 2012. He is just hitting over .250 with four home runs. Howie has several factors leading to his decline this year.
Omar Infante is possibly having the most productive season of his career. He is currently hitting 0.321/0.352/0.532 with 6 HRs. While it may be tough for him to hit 16 HRs like he did in 2004, he is seeing a nice power spike. Have any of his core attributes changed that will help keep this break out sustainable?
When an organization decides to give a player an opportunity to play every day and take over a starting position, fantasy owners need to stand up and take notice. Especially if the player qualifies at a position that is either thing to begin with or has been decimated by injuries through these first two months of the season. Here are two prime examples that are likely sitting on your waiver wire just waiting to be claimed.
Josh Bell, ARI |3B| Ownership: ESPN – 0.5% Yahoo – 1.0%
Right on the heels of my last Kicking Rocks piece which clamored for Bell’s call-up, the Diamondbacks finally said enough to the Cody Ransom/Ryan Roberts platoon they had working the hot corner this season. With little or no legitimate production at the position, it made perfect sense for the team to give Bell a shot, if not for anything but to at least just kick the tires and see what they had. It’s not like things could get worse, right?
Rickie Weeks has been struggling. The 29-year-old second baseman has never been a high-average hitter, but this season he’s reached a new low. Among qualified hitters, Weeks’ .154 batting average rates as the second worst in the league. Weeks has shown elite ability in the past, but owners are probably having some buyer’s remorse right now. And while trading him won’t bring back a fair return, owners are best sticking it out and hoping Weeks turns things around.
To the surprise of, well, absolutely no one, the Padres whacked second baseman Orlando Hudson on Thursday, sending him to the unemployment line thanks to a line of .211/.260/.317 and rumors of his unhappiness at his situation. At the same time, they placed Jason Bartlett on the disabled list with a strained knee that’s in no way as painful as his unbelievably poor .133/.240/.193 performance. Whether or not we see Bartlett in a San Diego uniform again — his release has been rumored for a while as well — it’s clear that the last-place Padres are committing to youth in the infield, starting with the promotions of second baseman Alexi Amarista and shortstop Everth Cabrera.
The folks at Baseball Think Factory are kind enough to supply Fangraphs with projected ZiPS values for each player covering the rest of the season. These values take the player’s preseason projection and how they have produced so far in 2012 and then estimate the player’s stats for the rest of the season.
I used Zach Sander’s formula to rank only 2B for the rest of the season.using z-scores. Here are the rest of season values for 2B order by their current z-score and some thoughts on the rankings:
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The league leader in WAR for second basemen? Kelly Johnson. I made some pretty bold predictions in our staff-wide preseason series, one of them being that Matt Kemp will not even get to 30/30 (looking like a bad one). One of the ones that is looking good so far is my prediction of Kelly Johnson being a top-5 second baseman.
In Yahoo! leagues, Johnson is currently the third ranked second baseman. His seven home runs leads the group, a group that consists of more home run threats than in past seasons. He has also added over 20 runs, with his team’s best hitter, Jose Bautista, hitting under .200 directly behind him (Johnson batted second until recently). Since moving to the leadoff spot, Johnson is three for three in steal attempts, and should score more runs as Bautista’s production improves. Johnson’s season is looking much more like his breakout 2010 campaign than his underwhelming 2011 season, which is exactly what those who drafted him were hoping for.
The Royals have called up Johnny Giavotella to the MLB club. The word out of KC right now is that he will join the team and Jonathan Sanchez will be placed on the DL. Besides Giavotella, the Royals have Chris Getz, Yuniesky Betancourt (on DL) and Irving Falu that have or can play 2B. Here is a quick look at each candidate and my take on the entire situation.
Johnny Giavotella – The 24-year-old Giavotella was initially pencilled in as the starting 2B for the Royals to start the season back in Febuary. The Royals decided to keep Chris Getz and re-sign Yuniesky Betanourt, so off to AAA went Giavotella.
In 31 games at AAA this season, he has hit a triple slash line of 0.331/0.408/0.504 with 5 HRs and 1 SB. He has shown that he can hit the ball in AAA and deserves a shot to see if he can cut it in the majors. Projection systems have him at just under 10 HRs and just over 10 SBs with an ~0.275 AVG. Not great, but not horrible in deep or AL-only leagues.
Chris Getz – Chris is having a nice breakout/career season at age 28. His triple slash line of 0.288/0.338/0.424 are all career highs. His 2012 ISO (0.136) is 4 times higher than his 2011 value (0.032). The change in performance can be linked back to a change in his batting stance.
Irving Falu – Falu is no prospect and his current role on the team is to be Alcides Escobar’s backup at SS in case Escobar is injured. If the 29-year-old has to see full time playing time, people can expect and OK AVG (~0.250) and double digit steals. There is no reason to own him unless Escobar goes to the DL.
Yuniesky Betancourt – Yuni was having an OK season for him when he finally went on the DL with an ankle injury. He was trying to play through the injury since the beginning of the season. When he went on the DL he had a triple slash line up 0.280/0.333/0.420. The OBP and SLG would be career highs if he is able to maintain them.
He started the season as the everyday 2B and backup SS. Once the ankle injury became more pronounced, Getz took over at 2B and Betancourt “rode the pine for nine”. He was placed on the DL on May 3rd so he can come off the DL after the 18th.
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So what does this all mean? The situation is a cluster …. mess. Getz, a LHH, and Giavotella, a RHH, look to be in a platoon situation at 2B for the next week or so. Platoon situations are a mess for fantasy owners, especially those with weekly lineup changes. In a few days, Betancourt looks to return, so one of the Royals management’s favorite players will be back taking away playing time from the other two. I see Giavotella headed back to AAA and Getz on the bench most days. When the final answer to the Royals 2B situation is Betancourt, I would just stay away from any of the players involved.
Let’s take a minute all sitting right here to tell you how these rankings came to be. In West fantasylandia, born and raised, on fantasy leagues is where we spend most of our days. Chilling out, ranking, adding, dropping, all trading players with the dudes on the playground, when a couple of guys, they were up to no good, started asking “What about rankings for the rest of the season?” We got in one little fight, and the Dark Lord got scared, and he said “You good for nothings gotta get a consensus together.” So we pulled up our own rankings, each with our own methods, and we yelled to Appelman “Yo dude smell you later.” We looked at our blog, we were finally there, we had Rest-of-Season Consensus Ranks for all of our players.
Uh, so yeah, the point is, these are our consensus ranks for the rest of the season. Because of our methodology, they will move slower than popular opinion. They also don’t give a ton of credit for past work. Just enough we think. On to the second baseman.
On Monday, I looked at two 2B, Danny Espinosa and Ryan Roberts, who are being dropped the most in ESPN leagues. Today, I am going to look at the next most dropped 2B, Jemile Weeks and Neil Walker.
(Values after name are ESPN ownership %, % point drop in ESPN ownership and Yahoo ownership %)
Jemile Weeks (68%, -21%, 61%) – Most of Jemile’s drop can be directly attributed to his sub-0.200 AVG. Projection systems had his AVG projected to be between 0.266 (Steamer) and 0.296 (Marcel). The drop in AVG is not from an increase K% which is almost identical to his career rate of 14%.
