Too big of a reach on the title?
As I tend to do on Sundays when considering a topic for my Monday post on shortstops, I was perusing the leaderboards and settled on Brad Miller as today’s topic. What caught my eye with Miller was that he has the lowest BABIP of any healthy shortstop with a wRC+ north of 100. Read the rest of this entry »
With Carlos Correa playing in his first major league game last Monday, the fantasy gods provided me the most obvious topic for a Rotographs post as the guy on the SS beat on Mondays. Well, the gods have smiled on me again with Francisco Lindor getting the call and likely to start his first major league game tonight. Read the rest of this entry »
Would it be too awful a pun (or half-pun) to say this week’s column is a tribute to fallen angels? Probably, so I’ll rephrase: Here are two former full-time players who lost their jobs after some struggles but have now returned to regular playing time. As usual, the players featured in this column are better suited for mono leagues, and the ownership percentages are by way of CBS.
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Baseball Twitter was all atwitter on Sunday night as news of Carlos Correa’s call-up broke. Questions about Correa’s fantasy value immediately popped up in my notifications. Given that I’m tasked with the shortstop beat here on Mondays, the prompt for today’s post was a no-doubter.
To determine Correa’s fantasy value, let’s first start by projecting his plate appearances. Steamer has him at 214 PA, but that will obviously get an update soon given today’s news. It’s probably safe to assume he’s going to play every day for now, but the eventual return of Jed Lowrie sometime around the All-Star break could complicate things. My guess is that Lowrie will work in frequently at third base and not cut into Correa at short much so long as Correa is producing. As for his spot in the batting order, it’s likely to be somewhere in the 5-7 range.
This was not the plan. With Troy Tulowitzki, Hanley Ramirez and Jose Reyes among the top group, shortstop was always at the mercy of injuries. Poor performance while on the field was not supposed to be the issue. While they’ve thwarted countless fantasy seasons, the star shortstops have tossed the keys to the position to… Brandon Crawford. No kidding. Crawford leads the position in wRC+ with Jhonny Peralta right on his heels.
What went wrong? Let’s take a gander at the top 5 by RotoGraphs preseason consensus rankings.
According to both ESPN’s Player Rater and the Zach Sanders z-score method, Brandon Crawford has been the top fantasy shortstop so far this year. But in today’s post, Crawford is playing the role of Aaron Rodgers in the 2005 NFL Draft. Let’s see how far he falls. Read the rest of this entry »
We’re making our way around the diamond with our updated rankings and today we are onto shortstops. Here are the positions we’ve done so far and you can also access them via the Positional Rankings in the right sidebar:
If you feel we missed someone, please let us know in the comments.
This was a really tough position for me because it’s just so messed up. The studs aren’t studding leaving it wide open at the top. There has been some nice risers, but it’s still a remarkably thin position and easily the thinnest on the diamond.
FYI: the table is sortable!
It’s tricky to write about batted ball mix changes, for the most part. If you’re talking push and pull, adding the ability to go the other way can increase your batting average, sure. But it can also decrease your power output. Ground balls and fly balls act the same way — there’s really an ideal mix for each hitter, and we’re trying to figure out just as much as they are which is the best way forward.
There’s one batted ball type that just plain sucks, though. The pop-up. The infield fly.
98.5% of the time, that’s an out. It’s a bad idea, plain and simple.
On Friday, Dave considered Troy Tulowitzki’s trade value in the real world, and today I want to consider his trade value in the fantasy world. As Dave noted, Tulo, who is off to a slow start, still has fairly rosy projections and is a good bet to bounce back. Specifically, his home run per fly ball rate is basically a third of his career rate, and his a rough strikeout and walk rates are too far out of line with his norm to continue.
He probably has at least 15 home runs left in his bat this year, if not 20. And while he may end up with the worst strikeout and walk rates of his career, it’s unlikely they’ll end up being significantly worse than they’ve ever been. You can expect him to be much more helpful in average and/or OBP going forward.
Now that we’ve established Tulo isn’t a dog (tough, I know), what’s his trade value? Read the rest of this entry »
Each weekend I take the ZiPS rest-of-season projections and run them through the Zach Sanders z-score method and then see how players I have rostered compare to players available on the waiver wire. Being that I’m tasked with discussing shortstops here on Mondays, I thought I’d analyze two decisions I had to make this week involving shortstops. Read the rest of this entry »
