Ian Desmond has come a long way. Two years ago, Desmond was in the conversation for worst regular in the majors. He couldn’t hit, rarely walked and didn’t even provide value on defense. At 25-years-old, it wasn’t as if Desmond was a young prospect figuring things out. Just when it looked like he was a lost cause, Desmond started to figure things out. Over the past two seasons, he’s taken himself from borderline starter to one of the best shortstops in the game.
Believe it or not, when I solicited future shortstop topics last week, the name that came up the most was Brad Miller of the Seattle Mariners.
Don’t get me wrong, I like Miller just fine, and I thought his .297 wOBA ZiPS projection was low, too. It’s just…it’s Brad Miller. People got on me for analyzing if Adeiny Hechavarria would ever steal enough to have value, but the people demand a Miller analysis?
He’s 33rd in shortstop value for the year but at age 23 he has some potential growth, and at this position the path to being fantasy relevant is a pretty smooth one. So let’s have a look.
The Diamondbacks recalled shortstop Chris Owings to the big leagues a few days ago as part of the September roster expansion, and any time you get an infielder in his age-21 season who just won both the Rookie of the Year and the Most Valuable Player awards in the Pacific Coast League, it stands that you should take notice.
Of course, the Diamondbacks already have Didi Gregorius at shortstop, and he’s just 23 himself. So as I try to parse the long-term situation in Arizona at the position, I keep coming back to these three thoughts: Read the rest of this entry »
As the calendar’s turned to September, many fantasy owners have probably turned their attention toward solidifying their dynasty teams for 2014. That is, not everyone is left competing right now, and it’s difficult not to look ahead to next year if a shot at a podium position isn’t realistic.
Even a championship contender, though, can think long term in a dynasty format. Perhaps the trading deadline hasn’t passed or doesn’t exist. Or perhaps an injury or performance issue has an owner scanning the waiver wire for a new shortstop, but the owner wants the add to be a long-term fix rather than a short-term plug.
These are situations that don’t apply to all owners, of course, but dynasty leaguers can never stop thinking about the future.
Luckily, Fangraphs affords fantasy players a tool in this regard – the ZiPS “Rest of Season” projections.
Adeiny Hechavarria has a problem.
He can’t steal bases. He’s been caught nine times in just 20 tries this season, a terrible success rate well below what any team, even an offensively inept team like the Miami Marlins, would consider their “break-even” success rate.
In the minors, Hechavarria stole 42 bases and was caught 23 times, a rate that’s a bit better but still largely unimpressive. If there was hope that 2013 might be an anomaly, his 2011 minor league season likely kills that hope, as he went 20-for-37 across three levels.
Hechavarria can’t steal, and it’s basically kept him from having any fantasy potential.
On average, Starlin Castro was the third shortstop selected on draft day, somewhere between the third and fourth rounds. He represented an intriguing power/speed option at an offensively-challenged position, and best of all, he only turned 23 in March so he was on the correct part of the age curve. No one can be blamed for buying high on the young man.
Yet, it’s August 23, and Castro is hitting .238/.274/.335 with seven home runs and eight stolen bases. His .270 wOBA ranks fourth-worst amongst qualified shortstops, and even Nick Franklin has provided more fantasy value on the season — despite not playing a big-league game until May 27. It’s frankly been a disastrous season across the board for Starlin Castro. Perhaps it’s best summed up by pointing out that he’s been worth almost four fewer wins than he was each of the previous two seasons. Four wins!
Despite being first among all qualified shortstops in wRC+ over the past 30 days, you don’t see Yunel Escobar’s name pop up as a waiver wire recommendation very often.
After all, in that same time span, he’s just 18th among shortstops in fantasy value according to Baseball Monster. He’s just 15th overall for the season despite a wRC+ of 101, seventh among qualified shortstops.
In the age of prospect rankings and (thankfully) an increased coverage of the minor leagues, fantasy owners tend to covet the top prospects in baseball. They don’t want to miss out on the next Mike Trout, Bryce Harper or Yasiel Puig — and that fear of whiffing on these young phenoms obviously becomes amplified in dynasty leagues.
So this morning, when media outlets reported Xander Bogaerts had been promoted to Boston for the final month and a half of the season, owners immediately flocked to their respective waiver wires to see if Bogaerts was still available. If you’re just hearing the news and need help at shortstop, you would be wise to do the same.
That’s not to say Bogaerts is guaranteed to be a stud throughout the remainder of the season, though. In fact, it’s slightly unclear as to what his ultimate role with the Red Sox will be.
A lot of ink has been spilled on Seattle Mariners’ infielder Kyle Seager this season. The multi-position slugger is looking to repeat on his 20-home run rookie season and is eligible at second and third, depending on your provider’s position rules. Not only does Seager have pop, he also tried to steal my girlfriend in a dream I had the other night (your heroic scribe was victorious…or just woke up in time).
But it’s Seager’s infield-mate who we’ll shed some light on in the shortstop space today even though he’s not really a shortstop. See, it’s because of The Great Gazoo that Seager is no longer taking aim at multi-position eligibility. For the Mariners, Nick Franklin’s got the keystone on lock for the foreseeable future.
Franklin, a switch hitter with an enormous helmet, saw his first major league action on May 27 after the Mariners pulled the plug on Dustin Ackley for what felt like the hundredth time. In the 57 games since, Franklin has been a house afire, hitting 10 home runs and chipping in five steals for his owners while piling up the RBI.
The power has given some pause, though, perhaps because Franklin is just 170lbs (he’s a little shorter and as lanky as Alexei Ramirez, for example). But the power isn’t exactly new for Franklin – he hit 50 home runs in the minors in just 438 games, or roughly one every 40 plate appearances. That rate has been a bit more extreme this season (one every 24 plate appearances) and might slow down, but the power in Franklin’s bat is a skill that’s been on display since 2010. He also hits a fair amount of fly balls (40%) and, if you trust stringer data in a 60-game sample, he makes really strong contact (25% line-drive rate).
The bigger concern might be that Franklin is now the owner of a fairly high strikeout rate (25.2%), topping anything he put up in the minors. His walk rate is decent enough (8.7%) to keep the OBP from being a sinkhole right now but his profile would look exceedingly average if a few of those home runs disappeared.
And it’s an odd strikeout and walk profile given Franklin’s approach – he rarely swings. His 42.2% swing rate is in the bottom-100 league-wide and his 59.8% zone swing rate is bottom-50. The issue, then, is that despite not swinging at much in the zone, Franklin still has a 28.5% outside swing rate and has an uninspiring 78.2% contact rate. Basically, Franklin is being very selective but not in the “sit on your pitch in the zone” kind of way – he appears to just not swing very often.
Granted, that’s not a huge concern on it’s own as there are plenty of examples of players succeeding that way. But one of Franklin’s key attributes as a fantasy tool was likely to be his OBP for that type of league and his .314-mark at present is below-average. His BABIP (.300) should be higher given his history and batted ball profile, sure, but Franklin needs those walks to come to fully live up to his top prospect status. That’s more of a “real baseball” comment than a fantasy one, especially since many still play in batting average leagues (where owners would just prefer the strikeout rate comes down to allow for more balls in play).
For the rest of the season, Franklin may still be making adjustments and figuring out the appropriate level of aggression against major league arms. Even with a below-average AVG or OBP, he’s a great own at either middle infield spot. When you figure in that his BABIP and walk rate could both be in for an increase as he figures out his approach, it’s not hard to see Franklin remaining a top-10 option at either spot.
The far bigger issue for dynasty league owners is that Franklin is yet to appear at shortstop in the majors, meaning his current flexibility could be lost. He’ll still be a fine own at second, but the option to move him around has certainly added value to his profile this year and would have made building your team with him as a piece that much easier.
Jonathan Villar has flown a bit below the radar since his signing with the Philadelphia Phillies out of the Dominican Republic in 2008. After being dealt to Houston in the Roy Oswalt trade in 2010, he’s steadily moved through the Astros system.
While he’s only been league average at most stops along the way, Villar now finds himself in the majors at 22, being given every opportunity to permanently win the shortstop job, if you believe the team.
Villar doesn’t come with a great deal of prospect pedigree. Marc Hulet ranked him sixth in the Astros system in 2012 (10th in 2011) but thought his upside was too low (“utility guy”) to make the top-15 this season. He’s only cracked Baseball America’s Top-100 list once, coming in at number 94 in 2011. So there doesn’t appear there is much to be excited about.
However, the fact that Villar is older than just nine other players this season (using “Season Age,” not actual date of birth) is impressive. And since he’s been given lead-off duties and stolen four bases in seven games since his call up, people are interested, pushing his ownership tag up to 3.1% in ESPN leagues (4% in Yahoo).
But is there much to like here? Villar is known mostly for his defense and his strikeout rates have been pretty extreme in the minors (above 23% consistently). But he’s matched the whiffs with a decent approach that has landed his walk rate around 8%, giving him some additional OBP value beyond what is sure to be a mediocre average.
With the strikeouts and the lack of a batting average track record despite a high BABIP, it’s hard to see much average upside here. The average isn’t likely to be a concern though, considering his position. Andrelton Simmons is the 12th ranked shortstop in fantasy value this year and he’s batting .251. Elvis Andrus and J.J. Hardy are basically doing the same and rank higher. At shortstop, players are ownable at a pretty low threshold so long as they can provide some category juice.
Villar can likely do that. The speedster averaged 52 stolen bases per 150 games in his time in the minors and has hit the ground running this past week, so to speak, with the aforementioned four stolen bases. He also had an 80% success rate in the minors, a mark that stayed steady as he rose to Double-A and Triple-A. There’s little doubt that Villar can run and do so effectively. And as mentioned, thanks to a decent walk rate, his OBP has a chance to be average or just below, giving him ample opportunity.
Villar is ownable right now for the speed alone. But dynasty league players might be curious about his long term power upside as well, since a shortstop that can go .250-10-30 is immensely valuable. Villar stroked 11 homers per 150 games in the minors and has a frame that you could see additional bulk on as he ages. His isolated slugging has been consistently in the .150-range since High-A ball (though his slugging is low because of the paltry averages). There’s definitely 10-home run power in his bat now and that could eventually be a consistent 15.
Villar isn’t going to wow anybody at the dish, but the bar is so low at the shortstop position that he’s a recommended add right now for the speed and a longer-term option due to his power potential.
