You may or may not know this, but I’m a Braves fan. However, I’m no prospect guru and am typically very unfamiliar with every club’s farm system. Unless a player is a top prospect heavily hyped everywhere, I probably never heard of him. So it should be no surprise to learn that when Alex Wood made his debut in Atlanta, I had no idea who he was. But now I do. And I’m excited.
Take a look at Jose Quintana’s collection of pitches, and there’s not much there to appreciate. Kind of makes you wonder how he does what he does, even if that creep can roll. His ERA is in the top 40 over the last two years, and yet none of his three most important peripheral stats rank in the top 40… how has he become more than the sum of his parts?
Everybody loves a sleeper–a player who seems primed to break out but who few pay attention to. Predicting a prospect breakout a) is fun and b) gives an evaluator some credibility, and in fantasy baseball, grabbing a player on the cheap and watching him soar to usefulness is a great way to find success.
While the White Sox minor league system has not been considered anywhere near an elite group in the past several years, they have managed to accumulate a number of sleeper successes. Until 2013, this allowed the major league team to stay competitive, supplementing a veteran core with solid performances from unheralded sources. While the team struggled in 2013, the trend continued, with Marcus Semien, Erik Johnson, and Daniel Webb all upping their stock considerably throughout the 2013 season and reaching the majors despite opening the year with no upper-minors experience.
In a system with little other places to look for positive thoughts other than the next wave of potential sleepers, one player who many analysts point to as a sleeper to watch is righthanded pitcher Chris Bassitt. Our own Marc Hulet ranked the lanky hurler as the organization’s eleventh-best prospect. But how good might Bassitt become?
One of the things I find amusing about playing fantasy baseball is that I regularly flip-flop on my assessment of players. One year I will hype a player and believe him to be undervalued, then the following year I will switch gears and suggest that same player won’t be worth his price. This is precisely what happened with Chris Sale. In 2012, he transitioned into the White Sox rotation and I was the head cheerleader. I liked him so much in fact that I boldly predicted that he would not only be the most valuable White Sox starting pitcher, but that he would also outearn every member of the Diamondbacks rotation. He did just that. But then the 2013 season came along and I was singing a different tune.
We statheads like when we can put things into tidy boxes. Pitcher X posts Y peripherals for expected result of Z. Buy or don’t buy accordingly. But not every pitcher is polite enough to reveal his true nature to us. That doesn’t mean we can’t leverage him for fantasy purposes; it just means that it’s hard to know how to leverage him.
Ervin Santana’s usefulness as a fantasy pitching option looked to be coming to an end after his disastrous 2012 season. He was traded to the Royals where he thrived for one season. He may be able to each up the magic 2014, but a lot will be determined by which team signs him.
The big issue for Santana in 2012 was his league leading 2.0 HR/9 fulled by a 19% HR/FB (among qualified starters).
Well not quite. The Angels front office would likely be a bit annoyed if Hector Santiago visited Disneyland during their home games, rather than show up at Angel Stadium. Two weeks ago, Santiago was part of the three-team trade that sent him from Chicago to Anaheim. Eno Sarris summed up the winners and losers of the deal at that time, but I am going to expand upon the Santiago analysis.
In 12 appearances including 10 starts, Sonny Gray did all the things you want to see out of a potential fantasy workhorse. He struck out over a batter per inning (9.42 K/9), kept the walk rate under control (2.81 BB/9), and threw ground balls over 50 percent of the time, all while wielding a 93 mph fastball. His ERA, FIP, and xFIP all stood below 3.00, which is about as sure a sign of dominance as there can be.
Writer’s Note: Nolasco ranked 45th on Zach Sanders’ rankings of starting pitchers.
What qualifies as a veritable spending spree for the Minnesota Twins has left right-hander Ricky Nolasco searching for some warm clothes and a nice pair of mukluks, as he’ll spend at least the next four seasons with the club after signing just prior to the Thanksgiving Day weekend.
Nolasco has long been a pitcher who has underperformed his peripherals (4.37/3.76/3.75), and after 1300 career innings, it’s probably just time to take him for who he is rather than who he should be. Much like pitchers like Matt Cain can consistently outperform their peripherals, I think it’s probably less of a stretch to say pitchers can underperform them as well. After all, bad things compound themselves much more quickly and effectively than good things. Read the rest of this entry »
Prior to the 2013 season, right-hander Yovani Gallardo had been a number-two starter for the Milwaukee Brewers and roughly a third-tier starter for fantasy owners. He’s been a good source of strikeouts and an ERA between 3.50 and 3.75 on an annual basis. But owners have largely spent the last five seasons waiting for Gallardo to take the next step forward.
This can be seen by the fact that he was the 24th-drafted starter on draft day, selected in the same breath as James Shields, Max Scherzer and Mat Latos. All three of those starters finished the season as a top-25 starter. Gallardo, on the other hand, suffered through the worst season of his career. He compiled a 4.18 ERA, saw his strikeout numbers drop significantly, and was ranked outside the top-75 fantasy starters.
To be fair, it wasn’t a complete trainwreck of a season for the 27-year-old hurler. He barely kept his ERA under 5.00 in the first half, but he wrestled the train back on the tracks in the second half, posting a very solid 3.09 ERA in 67 innings. The turnaround has led some to believe Gallardo’s first half was mere aberration and he’ll return to his career norms in 2014.
