Today, I am going to have a rundown on some position battles and lineup movements for various 2B. Mainly, I am looking for any last minute changes in a player’s value.

Position Battles

Royals – Chris Getz ,Yuniesky Betancourt and Jason Bourgeois – When the Royals demoted Johnny Giavotella to AAA, Chris Getz looked to be the everyday 2B. With his supposed new found swing, he looked to be given the Royals 2B job. Almost immediately, it was stated that Getz and Betancourt would have to share the 2B duites.

Yost isn’t designating either of them as the starting second baseman.

“We’ll play them both there, we’ll mix-and-match now,” Yost said.

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Stock down

Aaron Crow

Aaron started out 2011 with a bang. He had a 2.08 ERA, which he rode into the All-Star game as the Royals’ only invitee. The problem was that he was riding a bit of a lucky streak led by a .243 BABIP. He regressed quite a bit in the second half of the season when his ERA jumped to 4.34 because of a .393 BABIP. Also in the second half of the season, he did not record 1 Save or Hold. He was though able to accumulate five Blown Saves during that time frame.

Going into spring training, he attempted to become one of several relief pitchers league wide to transition into becoming a starting pitcher. After a few weeks, the experimentation was stopped when Joakim Soria was lost for the season and Crow was moved back to the bullpen.

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Brandon Morrow has always been an enigma to me. He has great stuff, but just can seem to put it all together for one good season. I am going to try to look at similar pitchers from the recent past to see if there is any hope of him breaking out.

Since the right-handed pitcher broke into the league with Seattle in 2007, here is where he ranks among the 156 starting pitchers with 400 or more innings.

K/9: 1st (10.0 K/9)
BB/9: 149th (4.5 BB/9)
% of PA that end in a BB or K: 1st (37.3%)

Brandon is a true outcome pitcher with most at bats ending up as either a walk or a strikeout. Besides being a true outcome pitcher, his career ERA has been significantly worse than his ERA predictors:

ERA: 4.37
FIP: 3.85
xFIP: 3.94
SIERA: 3.71

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The season is bearing down on us, so it’s time for a roundup of where some hitting prospects stand in their attempts to make Opening Day rosters across baseball.

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Keeping up with some of my colleagues here at Rotographs, here are three of the players I’m avoiding in drafts this season.

Delmon Young*

I know Young is a popular sleeper, and I know he’s absolutely setting Florida alight with his .485/.500/.970 line with 4 HR, but I am not buying in. If anything, his 33 great at bats enforce my concerns with Young, namely that while he’s entirely capable of having a burst of tremendous performance, he can’t sustain it over the course of a full season. He had one of those bursts as soon as he arrived in Detroit, hitting .324/.336/.481 with 4 HR in just over 100 PAs, but the other shoe dropped as he hit a 4-for-43 skid just before the end of the season. Read the rest of this entry »

Andy Pettitte

Andy Pettitte will be joining the Yankees tomorrow to see if he can be a useful starter. Don’t get caught up in the recent hype. The 39-year-old will have a lower than expected fantasy value for a few reasons.

First, a production level needs to guesstimated. To get an idea of his possible production level, here are his K/9 and BB/9 levels over the last three years he pitched:

Year, K/9, BB/9
2008, 7.0, 2.4
2009, 6.8, 3.5
2010, 7.1, 2.9

We should expect a K/9 value near 7.0 and BB/9 near 3.0. For reference, here are 3 pitchers from 2011 with similar K/9 and BB/9 rates:

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Currently, Erick Aybar is being touted as the lead off hitter for the Angels. Even though he has held this position in the batting order before, it is even more important with Albert Pujols on the team. If he is able to get on base at any decent clip, he will be an excellent source of Runs.

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Michael Barr put up a great piece earlier this week on the siren song of spring stats, and why fans and fantasy players should enjoy the ride this time of year rather than worrying about diminished velocity or a 1-for-9 start. That said, not everything that happens this time of year can be chalked up to irrelevance; especially where playing time is concerned, now is the time that teams are a little more open with their plans for how they would like the season to go.

Most of the high- or even middle-round draft picks for most leagues aren’t going to be subject to these shocks, but the difference between a good sleeper and a bad sleeper can often be whether they get enough playing time to show what they can do. To that end, here are three players who got good news for their potential playing time this week. Read the rest of this entry »

From Hisashi Iwakuma to Matt Moore.

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One of the keys to winning at fantasy baseball, especially in deep leagues, is to have players that will actually, you know, spend time on the field. No matter how much ability a player possesses, they are useless if they aren’t getting playing time. I am going to look during this preseason for possible changes in playtime for various players.

Todd Helton –- The Rockies plan on playing Helton in only 100 to 110 games in 2012 even if he is healthy.

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