Last Saturday, I looked at the bottom dwellers in hitter BABIP. In a surprise move, one of those hitters, Adam Lind, was actualy sent down to Triple-A. Today we will look at the BABIP leaders. These are your potential trade candidates, but I’ll look more in depth into the interesting names.
More than a month into the season, we are in full-fledged buy low and sell high mode. Though I always say it is much harder to execute these trades than all the fantasy advice articles you read will have you believe, it is still worth making an attempt. Today, I won’t be writing your standard buy low post, but rather analyze several pitchers who have been disappointments thus far and look at the reasons why you should buy low and why you may want to pass. Hopefully, we can then come to a verdict.
Injuries are the theme in this installment. As in, one former top prospect’s current DL stint is costing him a golden opportunity, a used-to-be-can’t-miss player needs another shot before he suffers yet another ailment, and a future big leaguer could use some more aches and pains to befall those ahead of him if he’s going to make his debut this season.
Last season, I drank the Adam Dunn Kool-Aid. He was coming over from the the National League. He would likely be in the lineup everyday, even if hurt, with the option of the D.H in the AL. What could go wrong? Pretty much everything. It couldn’t happen again I figured, so this season I drank the Albert Pujols flavored Kool-Aid. With him getting up in the years, he would be able to get a rest from fielding, DH a bit, continue hitting, win the MVP, and most importantly, lead my fantasy team to a title. Yea … that is not happening.
Even though we are over a month into the season, a hitter’s BABIP and resulting batting average are still rather meaningless. In fact, neither statistic stabilizes within 550 plate appearances. That means that it has little predictive value at this point and should have limited weight when evaluating a player now. Therefore, hitters with extremely high or low BABIPs should potentially be looked at as trade bait or acquisition targets, respectively. Let’s first look at the possible targets, or those with abnormally low BABIP marks.
“Hello, boys! I’m baaack!”
–Russell Casse from Independence Day
Much like the so-crazy-he-has-to-be-right Casse from the 1996 summer blockbuster Independence Day and his never-ending efforts to prove non-believers wrong about his alien abduction, I am bringing back the Mining the Minors column to continue my quest to keep fantasy owners aware of lesser-known minor leaguers who are nearing the majors — and (crazy, I know) just might make an impact on fantasy teams in deeper and/or keeper leagues.
Or put another way: Just because many of these non-big leaguers are currently unowned in the vast majority of fantasy leagues doesn’t mean they should be, ahem, alien to you, dear fantasy owner.
For those of you new to this space, of if you just need a refresher on the method behind this column, I invite you to read the inaugural Mining the Minors from last season.
In the interest of staying current, I’ve taken the liberty of updating the above link with examples from last season of the various types of minor leaguers I’ll be checking in on this year.
1) Lesser-known prospects making names for themselves
2011 Impact Examples: Paul Goldschmidt, Jose Altuve, Ryan Lavarnway, Juan Nicasio, Brad Peacock, Addison Reed
2) Solid but non-elite prospects
2011 Impact Examples: Jemile Weeks, Eric Thames, Henderson Alvarez, Lance Lynn, Josh Collmenter, Javy Guerra
3) Former top prospects whose careers had stalled or fallen off
2011 Impact Examples: Danny Duffy, Todd Frazier, Fautino De Los Santos, Alex White, Zach Stewart and Nick Hagadone
4) Triple-A veteran types
2011 Impact Examples: Ryan Vogelsong, Nolan Reimold, Brett Pill, Jose Constanza, Tom Wilhelmsen, Michael Fiers
We already have a month of baseball in the books and pitcher ERAs are not surprisingly still all over the place. This is my favorite time of the season as it is hard for many owners to ignore a bloated ERA, and the opportunity to improve your staff by buying at a discount is there. If you have a tough time yourself ignoring ERA, you must be strong! Look at the underlying skills and be confident that eventually the ERA will match it. Now for some American League starting pitcher talk…
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%.
We’ve posted several articles hypothesizing whether certain players might be had on the cheap or if you might be able to sell high on others. Typically, comments are mixed inasmuch as actually believing you could buy low/sell high on Players X, Y, or Z. This is pretty standard fare for fantasy baseball in April. But the uncertainty of what opposing managers might think about particular players got me wondering what the actual value of players might be if the draft were held today.
Enter Yahoo! and their rather archaic in-season drafts. Drafting at the tail end of April always seemed like a pretty silly notion to me. But with their new pay leagues, I thought the results of a draft where other managers are actually competing for cash prizes might provide a bonafide pulse on whose stock has already risen and whose has dropped. You have to account for the fact that we’ve had some injuries not to mention relievers who have lost their jobs already, so the pool of players has changed a tad, but not significantly.
So yes, for you dear fantasy baseball enthusiast, I reluctantly joined a draft this past Sunday just so I could pass along the results. Note that there were no auto drafters up until the last three rounds. This was a standard 5×5 roto league with 12 teams and a snake draft format and the average draft positions I’ll reference are those found in Yahoo.
The first round went almost as expected. Guys like Albert Pujols and Jose Bautista still went #3 and #6, respectively, which is about where they were going in February and March. The biggest mover early on was Josh Hamilton, who was selected 11th overall while his ADP was 33. Hamilton is already nursing a sore back, so perhaps owners missed any opportunity they might have been looking for to peddle him at his highest value — but his hot start rather catapulted him up the draft list on this day.
Not far behind Hamilton was Pablo Sandoval, whose current .311/.361/.500 slash line had some manager all in a dither so as to draft him with the 16th overall pick whereas his ADP was 42. My guess was he’d go somewhere in the 3rd round, but holy cow — this was either a real reach or Sandoval’s mother is now playing fantasy baseball. I’m not saying he’s not worth an overall 16th pick at his current clip, so perhaps this manager has a more reliable crystal ball than I do.
The 3rd-6th rounds had Stephen Strasburg going 28th (ADP of 54), Jay Bruce 38th (56th ADP) and Yu Darvish 52nd (83 ADP). In the case of Strasburg and Bruce, it could be that their value might never be higher. At 70 overall was Kevin Youkilis, who had an ADP of 64, so while his stock has dropped some, it’s not quite as much as I assumed.
If you’re in a buy-low mood, some of the gentlemen selected well past their initial ADP include Ian Kennedy at 93 (79 ADP), Mat Latos at 126 (109 ADP), Ike Davis at 165 (137 ADP), Ubaldo Jimenez at 171 (150 ADP), Dustin Ackley at 169 (148 ADP), Carlos Marmol at 189 (145 ADP) and Justin Masterson way down at 264 (198 ADP). Of the group, I’d probably be most interested in Kennedy, Latos, and Marmol if you can find them at a significant discount. Masterson is already finding himself on waiver wires.
On the other hand, if you’ve got glaring needs and you’re thinking of trying to sell high, there were a good number of players that were drafted much higher than expected just a month ago. There was a real believer out there in Emilio Bonifacio and his nine steals as he was selected 88th despite an initial ADP of 142. David Freese went 108th (135 ADP), Jesus Montero went 112th (157 ADP), J.D. Martinez went 131st (242 ADP), Edwin Encarnacion went 140th (203 ADP), and Mark Trumbo went 171st (194 ADP).
In the case of Montero and Trumbo, it might have a lot to do with position eligibility as Montero now qualifies in most leagues at catcher and Trumbo at third base. But the hot starts by Freese, Martinez, and Encarnacion definitely impacted this draft — and if you own them, it’s your call as to whether or not they’ll be able to keep it up or if it’s time to strike while the proverbial iron is hot.
Today, I am going to do a quick look at the 2B that have been dropped the most in ESPN leagues. I will look at what is wrong with each player and if there is any hope for improvement.
(Values after name are ESPN ownership %, % point drop in ESPN ownership and Yahoo ownership %)
Ryan Raburn (22%, -38%, 8% ) – Raburn is the 2B being dropped the most in ESPN leagues. I am going to wimp out a bit and recommend another recent Rotographs article where David Wiers does a great job examining Raburn’s struggles.
