I hate the word sleeper. The very definition of the term in fantasy circles isn’t completely clear to begin with and the players typically labeled as such are just young guys with upside. I tend to define a sleeper as anyone I believe to be undervalued, resulting in strong profit potential. But then that simply makes sleeper and undervalued synonyms. So be it. Anyhow, Ryan Zimmerman…sleeper? It’s odd to consider slapping the label on an established veteran, but considering I drafted him 89th overall in an early slow mock draft, I’m thinking that he may end up falling too far after his injury-marred season.

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How often does the hotshot rookie generate tons of hype, just to disappoint fantasy owners who expected the player to be a force from the get-go? It seemingly happens all the time. Owners then give up rather quickly on said player and move onto the next big thing. And that’s exactly when the former top prospect breaks out. It’s precisely why the post-hype sleeper term was coined to begin with. Will Xander Bogaerts follow this path?

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David Freese likes to keep you guessing. In 2011, he was a hero. From 2012 to 2013, he went from very good to very bad. This season he went from very bad to kinda alright, sort of. And I’m not altogether sure what to think of him for 2015. Allow me to explain.

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Plouffe ranked 10th in Zach Sanders’ third base rankings.

A pleasant development in another otherwise-dreary Minnesota Twins season was the rounding into form of Trevor Plouffe. In fact, Plouffe’s +3.5 WAR this year isn’t only easily his finest season, it actually pushes him to just +3.1 for a career mark.

Or in other words, he was below zero prior to this season.

The funny thing is, without digging a bit deeper, Plouffe’s 2014 doesn’t look wildly different from what he has done before. Read the rest of this entry »

Nolan Arenado certainly proved a whole lot of people wrong this year. Just two years ago, Arenado’s media perception took an unreasonably large hit. A rumor floated around that he was unhappy about not being promoted, he put up a bad month, and suddenly he was labeled as a whiner. He now had “makeup issues.”

Even if it was fair to be asking questions about his character, Arenado’s fall from grace in the eyes of the baseball media was nothing short of amazing. MLB.com dropped him from their top 50 list, ESPN dumped him from their top 100, Baseball Prospectus bumped him down a full 37 spots on their list, etc. The point here is not to single out any of these outlets. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. The point is to illustrate how pretty much everyone took the “makeup issues” narrative and ran with it.

One notable exception? Our own Marc Hulet, who kept a level head, writing in February 2013 that “questions have been raised about his maturity level, but most young men his age (21) have questionable behavior at times, so he probably deserves a mulligan.” This is exactly what I didn’t understand at the time. What 21-year-old doesn’t have some maturity issues? (For example, when I was 21, I still thought that mixing box wine with Mt. Dew was an acceptable practice.) Read the rest of this entry »

Fantasy baseball players can, at this point, feel pretty safe in making the judgment that the 2012 season represents an outlier in Chase Headley’s statistical ledger.

The switch hitter went yard 31 times and led the National League in RBIs with 115 that year. He tied a career best with 17 swipes, to boot. He also played in 161 games for the second time in his lifetime; that much playing time isn’t exactly baseline performance level, either, although it’s hardly the No. 1 factor in his limitations both before and after that career year. He posted extremely similar rates in each of the past two campaigns, and they aren’t much different from the three he produced before that legendary rotisserie line.

The object at RotoGraphs is to point out the obvious, so, case closed. Please surf the Interwebs safely. Don’t forget to tip your cloud.

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Entering the season, a typical projection for Kyle Seager was about 75 runs, 20 home runs, 75 RBI, 10 stolen bases, and a .260 average. What we got was slightly better – 71/25/96/7/.268. Headmaster Sanders pegged that line as worth $16, making him the fifth most valuable third baseman. FantasyPros had his average cost at $11 with a high of $16. Basically, you got what you paid for with Seager.

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I find third base the most interesting position in terms of eligibility in fantasy. It seems to be the crossroads that connect all other positions. Shortstops with poor range often end up at third. Third basemen with poor arms often end up in the outfield. Carlos Santana tried some third this season to get him out from behind the plate, and many future first basemen try to survive at third so teams can add an extra power bat to their lineups.

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Another year older and another year in which Adrian Beltre has simply refused to age. Hitters in their mid-30s aren’t supposed to perform so consistently well. They are supposed to decline. But Beltre has failed to receive the memo. As a result, he finished fourth in value among third basemen this year.

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It figures. He’d entered the two seasons prior amid expectations that he’d emerge as his club’s regular third baseman, but he failed to lock down the position. Lonnie Chisenhall didn’t have a regular place to play for the Cleveland Indians in this past campaign, however, so, naturally, he produced early on and, thus, elbowed his way into the lineup. He finished with a .280/.343/.427 slash line and 13 bombs in 533 plate appearances.

Did Chisenhall truly experience a breakthrough? After a hot start to the 2014 season, his output declined pretty steadily. As a left-handed batter, he wouldn’t need much good fortune in order to exceed expectations. But he also made some gains which suggest that he began to establish a new baseline performance level. The magnitudes of those gains should be pretty telling.

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