Eno Sarris will start you off at 115 and then Christopher Cwik will tag in later to give you all the fantasy chatting you can handle for the start of the second half. Get your questions in early!
Last week we updated the closer rankings, so now let’s update the guys setting them up. Here are our June holds rankings, we can take you back to previous months. Here’s the holds leaderboard for reference as well.
Ug. In the FanGraphs home league on ottoneu, the fantasy guy in the room has been embarrassed. It’s a Perm needs to open up its doors and sell, sell, sell. I hang my head in shame. My team of old dudes that take walks didn’t take enough of them and proved to be too old.
Maybe you guys can help me spot my most sellable veterans. So far the sharks are circling for Jonathan Papelbon, mostly. He’s not real old, but I have to think about possible returns too. Help me out here. And if you do, I’ll give you a tip on a good deal.
Just when you were getting used to the “new normal,” it normalizes on you.
A lot has been written about Mark Reynolds this year, and rightly so, as he’s had one of the more head-scratching performances of the season. Back in May, he looked like he was on a “designated for assignment” path as he was hitting 9th in the batting order and every single one of his offensive statistics were just laughable. Many people pointed to his increase in walks and decrease in strikeouts as improvement and yet the results only got worse.
In an earlier post, I observed that pitchers seemed to have changed their repertoire versus Reynolds, that he was having somewhat rotten luck on batted balls, and that he was struggling mightily versus left handed pitchers, and I’d like to revisit both charts, as well as delve into the remarkable turnaround he’s seen in the last two months.
I’ve shown my fondness for power hitting shortstops in this space befor; writing about Asdrubal Cabrera and Jhonny Peralta. Today the focus turns to one of the most overlooked players in fantasy thus far: J.J. Hardy.
Like Peralta, Hardy had success a few seasons ago then struggled with both performance (.292 wOBA in 2009) before seemingly righting the ship this season. Hardy is injury prone, which hasn’t helped his quest to get back to All-Star status. He was released after a moderately successful season, yet injury prone, season in Minnesota that saw him hit just six home runs in 375 plate appearances. In fact, before this season Hardy had just 17 dingers over his last 840 PA’s. That’s after back to back seasons with 26 and 24 respectively. The Twins traded him to Baltimore which looks to be the perfect landing place for the 28 year-old.
He’s missed a few weeks this season due to injury – did you expect something less? – but now that it appears he’s finally healthy he’s putting up numbers that will place him near the top of the shortstop rankings. Camden Yards is a great hitter’s park and Hardy is taking full advantage. In June, his one fully healthy month, Hardy hit .362/.409/.686/.324 (ISO) with 9 home runs and a .468 wOBA. Obviously he can’t keep that up for a full season, but it shows what he can do when healthy, especially in that ballpark. Currently Hardy is ranked 13th among shortstops in Yahoo! leages after only 237 at bats, and his .361 wOBA would be 4th in baseball if he qualified. His 13 home runs put him 4th at his position, just three behind Troy Tulowitzki. As our own Mike Axisa pointed out nearly a month ago, Hardy is hitting fly balls at a career high rate (49%) which translates into good things in Camden Yards.
The ZiPS projections have Hardy hitting .269/.323/.443 with 8 home runs and 26 RBI from this point forward. That would leave him with a .349 wOBA, which would have ranked 4th among all shortstops last season. Currently Hardy is owned in just 67% of leagues. That’s a crime. Yes, he gets hurt, but with a position as scarcely populated with good players as shortstop that number deserves to be much higher.
Time to update the ranks! As always, this ranking is more about performance the rest of the way than performance in the bank. On the other hand, this is not just a ZiPs RoS ranking. Human opinion introduces human error, but our minds are plastic and there’s at least the chance we can get ahead of the trends. So let’s try. Oh, and arrows denote a change in tier, not a change in rank.
Everyone’s All-Stars
Ryan Braun
Matt Kemp
Matt Holliday
Andrew McCutchen
Carlos Gonzalez
Justin Upton
As the season progresses, teams will be looking to sit rookie pitchers to prevent injuries. Here is a look at the work loads of previous rookie pitchers and what to expect from the current crop of good rookie pitchers.
Teams have always worried about injuring the arms of young pitchers and this worry has expanded after the Verducci Effect was published. Some studies have shown the negative effects of over throwing young pitchers to be minimal, but that has not stopped teams from shutting down their young arms, especially rookies.
Here is a list of the top 3 rookie pitchers (removed K-Dice from 2007 data because he was not a real rookie) in IP from each of the past 4 completed seasons:
| Name | GS | IP | Year |
| Matusz | 32 | 175 | 2010 |
| Niese | 30 | 173 | 2010 |
| Davis | 29 | 168 | 2010 |
| Hiemann | 30 | 180 | 2009 |
| Cahill | 32 | 178 | 2009 |
| Romero | 29 | 178 | 2009 |
| Blackburn | 33 | 193 | 2008 |
| G. Smith | 32 | 190 | 2008 |
| J. Jurrjens | 31 | 188 | 2008 |
| Guthrie | 26 | 175 | 2007 |
| Chico | 31 | 167 | 2007 |
| Bannister | 27 | 165 | 2007 |
| Average | 30.2 | 177.5 |
The average number of IP from these top throwing rookies is 178 IP with the top value being 193 IP (Nick Blackburn in 2008). The average number of starts is 30 with the highest number being 33 (also Nick Blackburn). Using these numbers as a general rule, I would use 180 IP and 30 GS as a top limit for projecting GS and IP for rookie pitchers this season.
Here is a look at a few of the top rookie pitchers this season and a projected number of GS for the rest of the season:
The GS (ROS) is based on using subtracting 30 GS from the number of GS they have so far this season. GS (ROS based on IP) is found by taking 180 IP subtracting the IP pitched so far and then dividing by the pitcher’s IP/GS.
| Name | GS (so far) | GS (ROS) | IP (so far) | IP/GS | GS (ROS based on IP) |
| Pineda | 18 | 12 | 113 | 6.3 | 10.3 |
| Britten | 18 | 12 | 104 | 5.8 | 12.7 |
| Ogando | 17 | 13 | 104 | 6.1 | 12.0 |
| Hellickson | 16 | 14 | 103 | 6.4 | 11.6 |
Owners of these players may need to look at finding possible substitutes for these pitchers once they are shut down. If the league is not a keeper league, just drop the player when the team is done starting them and find a starter that will be facing expanded/water downed September rosters.
Owners of these pitchers in keeper leagues, may need to trade them off before the deadline if their team looks to have a chance of winning. This is especially true in H2H keeper leagues. One or more of these rookie pitchers may have helped the owner get to the playoffs. If the rookie is not available in the playoffs, the owner only has himself to blame for not trading him off earlier for a pitcher that may go the entire season.
Howard Bender will be by at 1:15 but you can leave your questions starting now! Happy Friday.
You’ve heard about Howard Bender’s draft. And you’ll hear about Jason Catania’s draft and Jeff Zimmerman’s draft. Because we all got together and decided to pick six, deep league style. Our CI, MI, OF, C, SP and RP all had to come from a pool of players that was owned in less than 10% of Yahoo leagues. Here are my picks and why. In the order I drafted. I had the third pick of four.
Chris Heisey
A disclaimer about deep leagues and waiver wires: One thing you want are live bodies with some upside. It’s the usual caveat. So Heisey has flaws — he’s now struck out in 18.2% of his at-bats in his first 396 plate appearances, so he might have that flaw. Then again, his minor league rates were closer to 20% most years. He could improve in that category. His BABIP is fine (.308) and though his current ISO (.209) would rank high in his minor-league work, it would still fit. And he’s got a .192 ISO so far in the majors. He stole 27 bases against two caught-stealings in High-A, and had very good success rates all along. So he has good speed. And power. And could improve his strikeout rate. And is battling for playing time with a guy with a .245 career batting average and a strikeout rate over 33%. Yes please.
It’s been a little while since we’ve updated the shortstop rankings. There’s been some substantial movement since the last edition, including a new number one. Please feel free to debate the rankings/call me an idiot in the comments.
Tier 1:
Jose Reyes
Asdrubal Cabrera
Troy Tulowitzki
Reyes has easily jumped to the number one spot rankings, taking his place back amongst the fantasy elite. He’s easily having the best season of his career, hitting .354/.398/.529 which would all shatter his previous highs. Even though the slugging percentage is excellent he’s only hit three home runs, which may have to do with CitiField more than anything as Reyes is on pace for career highs in triples and doubles. The BABIP is .375, which is likely to go down, but Reyes is the type of player who could sustain that for a single season. Ranking Cabrera second over Tulowitzki and Peralta was tough for me, but his 12 steals was the deciding factor. I’ve written enough about him this season, and as long as he keeps up the power numbers he’ll maintain a high ranking. Tulowitzki has the potential to make a run at Reyes with a strong second half, but until he can improve on his current .256 BABIP that’s going to be hard.
