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Below are the results for this week’s ADP Crowdsourcing. If you have any suggestions for next week, leave them in the comments for consideration.

Adam Jones
My vote: 10
Average: 10.05
Median: 10
Standard Dev: 2.91

The votes were pretty clear on this one, and the results didn’t really move much throughout the day. By being taken in the tenth round, it looks like we’re assuming owners are projecting him to hit another four or five homers, with the rest of his numbers staying relatively unchanged. Also, a tenth round projection means he will be around the 30th outfielder taken, making him a third outfielder on most teams or a second outfielder on clubs who focus elsewhere earlier in the draft. Makes sense to me.

Edinson Volquez
My vote: 16
Average: 14.08
Median: 15
Standard Dev: 4.46

There was quite a bit of disagreement about Volquez, and you can see that clearly from the standard deviation of the data set. In fact, as late as Wednesday evening, the average was around 13.5 while the median stayed a 15, showing the pull of some lower outliers on the data. Being picked in the 15th round, that means owners are probably hoping for an ERA around 4.50 with high strikeout numbers and normal wins and WHIP around 1.35. This may be feasible for Volquez, and his ERA could be even lower if everything clicks. At this price, Volquez is going to be worth the risk.

Once again, if you have a suggestion, leave it in the comments for consideration. Tune in next Monday and Wednesday for the next two installments.

“Freddie Freeman looks stiff. Freddie Freeman looks uncoordinated. Freedie Freeman looks awkward. Freddie Freeman can still hit.” Jason Grey, ESPN.com

It seems that there are few reasons to poo-poo Freddie Freeman’s minor league record. He usually walked at an average rate (7.6% overall), never struck out in as many as 20% of his at-bats, and the only time he hit below .300 above rookie ball he had a terrible BABIP, especially for the minor leagues (.263). As a bonus, Freeman was always young for his league. That .896 OPS he just hung on Triple-A? He was 20.

But watch him play, and some doubt creeps in. The word stiff does come to mind. Then you look at his isolated power as he progressed through the minor leagues (.112, .206, .145, .094, .200 in order), and you wonder a little how much boom his stick will have – especially given his position. Last but now least, you might realize that the Braves just traded for another infielder, and counting Freeman now have five. You might get a little nervous.

In the end, his 2009 season may teach us more about Freeman than his excellent 2010 season at Triple-A. At 19 years old, he showed he could handle High-A, and his .145 ISO, paired with a 16.1% strikeout rate, was good enough to promote him to Double-A. There, the average age was 24.4, and perhaps it wasn’t surprising that Freeman struggled some against players five years older. Sure, his slugging plummeted to middle infielder levels, but the league-wide slugging percentage in the Southern league that year was .380, so it wasn’t the most slugger-friendly of leagues. Bryan Smith rated it as perhaps a touch pitcher-friendly when he showed that the league-wide ISO was .127.

2010 did happen. He put up a .200 ISO in a league where the average was .147, and Justin Inaz at The Hardball Times did not have the International League as a particularly hitter-friendly. What we can see is that there’s a chance that Freeman struggles at first when he gets to the majors next year, as he struggled when he first got to Double-A. He’ll be seven-and-a-half years younger than average when he joins the Braves, and the leap from the minors to the majors is similar to the leap from High-A to Double-A.

Eventually, he should get it right. That’s what he’s always done, and no matter how stiff and uncoordinated he looks, he can hit. But fantasy owners looking for a 2011 sleeper in a re-draft league may want to hold on to some of their skepticism. It may not happen right away, and the Braves do have a beefy glove-second second baseman with first-baseman-type power now. They have options and they may have to use them before the year is through.

Alright, let’s take a look at your thoughts on where Brandon Morrow and Jay Bruce will be drafted this coming year.

Brandon Morrow
My Vote: 12
Average: 10.7
Median: 11
Standard Dev: 3.56

This was actually really interesting if you had the ability, as I did, to sit around and watch the average move throughout the day. For the first few hours, we were hovering around the start of the ninth round, but that moved back to around the tenth as the day wore on, and eventually reached it’s final destination in the second day.

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Last year, Jason Donald, Jayson (not Laynce) Nix, Drew Sutton, Mark Grudzielanek and Luis Valbuena played second base for the Indians. Andy Marte joined this stupendous crew once you include third base.

Not a single one topped a .307 wOBA for the year. Donald’s .253/.312/.378 made for the best of the bunch.

That is a crisis, ladies and gentleman. And crisis usually means opportunity in fantasy baseball. If you were able to guess the correct owner of the second and third base roles in Cleveland next year and beyond, you could take advantage of that opportunity in your keeper league now.

Of course, the leaders in the clubhouse are Mssrs Donald and Nix, as they finished the year in those roles, are under control, and the Indians are in no shape to push their prospects onto a team that most likely won’t contend next year. But Donald and Nix are flawed, and there’s little reason to think that they’ll improve next year.

Donald’s strikeout rate last year (23.6%) was just too close to his minor league rate (23%) to think he can reduce it too much, and he never even showed average power in Triple-A (.146 max ISO at that level). His career-high in stolen bases was 12, too, so speed won’t be the reason he sticks around. His defense could improve – he is a former shortstop – but will it be good enough to float a poor bat? Luis Valbuena showed us that former shortstops with poor bats and too many strikeouts don’t always stick as slick-fielding second baseman, right? Nix may have some upside – he has power, at the very least (.165 ISO) – but he’s over 700 PAs into his career and he strikes out too much and has a career .248 BABIP. He may or may not be a poor fielder, too. This is not a foundational pair.

Cue Jason Kipnis, Lonnie Chisenhall, and Cord Phelps. Somewhere in this trio the team hopes to find two infielders.

Phelps is coming off a great year (.317/.386/.506), and it was good enough to make Carson Cistulli’s MLE hot list. He’s the closest to the major leagues – he played a full year at Double- and Triple-A – and therefore he may get the first shot once Donald and Nix underwhelm. But his power sort of came out of nowhere (his .189 ISO at Triple-A was preceded by a .100 at Double-A, and a .102 in High-A). He may make a good re-draft name to file away, but as a long-term keeper don’t spend too many resources to get him.

Phelps does not have the upside of Arizona Fall League attendee Jason Kipnis, for example. His career .307/.386/.486 shows that he has a bat worth targeting. He’s walked about ten percent of the time, struck out about twenty percent of the time, and showed above-average power at every level. At the AFL all-star game, he flashed the leather with a great pick at third base and then hit a ringing double off of Chris Carpenter after the Cubs’ prospect hit triple digits on the stadium gun. Get excited.

Chisenhall had a poor 100+ at-bats Double-A in 2009 but he also had an inexplicable .176 BABIP there. Otherwise, he’s shown good power overall (.183 ISO) and the potential for more. He’s only struck out more than 20% of the time at one level, as well. Given a healthy and productive start to the 2011 season, he may also get a shot at a major league job soon, and his more extended power run also places his upside above Phelps’. Everyone will find a favorite among the three, but with a crisis on the infield in Cleveland, there’s assuredly opportunity for two of these men to step forward and provide value.

Chat after the jump!

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Another interesting name came up in the comments section when we did the shortstop keeper rankings last week. The Red Sox have a young shortstop from Stanford that had a good season, what’s his name again?

Right. Jed Lowrie. He of the nice walk rate (12.7% last year), booming ISO (.240 last year), and somewhat surprising 2010 slash line (.287/.381/.526), perhaps he should have been included? Perhaps.

But even before we get to his ability to repeat that performance, there is the fact that the Red Sox have an incumbent shortstop that may complicate issues. Marco Scutaro was just decent, but he’s predictable – he’s topped 2.1 WAR for three straight seasons now. Then again, Scutaro’s defense, now accrued in over 1400 plays, is below scratch (-3.5 UZR/150 career at SS). And he’s never shown a slugging percentage over .409, let alone over .500. If Lowrie can repeat his 2010 performance, Scutaro can easily settle into a super utility role… and there’s still the open job at third.

We can agree that Lowrie has more upside than Scutaro, and with 23 games at short under his belt, he’ll be eligible there – so now we can get to his ability to put up another OPS over .800. The variability in his possible 2011 performance kept him off the list at first, but perhaps it shouldn’t in deeper leagues. If Lowrie is to be an asset in fantasy baseball, he’s going to do it with his batting average and his power, so let’s unpack those portions of his game.

There’s no magic formula for a nice batting average. Lowrie, in his rookie season, showed a .258 batting average despite a strong .328 BABIP – and his strikeout rate was probably at fault (26.2%). In his lost 2009, Lowrie put up an eyesore of a .147 batting average by combining a terrible BABIP (.118) with lots of whiffs (29.4%). Lo and behold, once he ironed those two stats out last year (14.6% K%, .292 BABIP) and spawned this discussion most likely. That’s a lot of variance in his strikeout rate. Lowrie put up a 17.9% strikeout rate in the minor leagues (and over 20% in Triple-A), so it’s reasonable to expect him to strike out a little more next year. If he does, the batting average will most likely drop. This also meshes with his history well – even if you take out his lost 2009, he oscillated from .262 to .328 in the category down on the farm. Don’t pencil him in for a .280+ batting average.

Then again, plenty of players show value with poor batting averages, and a .500+ slugging percentage from a shortstop would paper over other flaws. He had a .161 ISO in the minor leagues, and his .172 major league ISO just barely topped the threshold for reliability (579 plate appearances). Since those plate appearances came over multiple years, it’s hard to say if even the .172 ISO is a repeatable skill for him. Looking over his minor league career, however, you will notice that he topped a .200 ISO in 2007 in Double- and Triple-A, and of course did so again last year. Only one qualifying shortstop last year topped a .200 ISO (Troy Tulowitzki), so this is no meaningless discussion.

Lowrie was a flyball hitter in the minor leagues – once he hit Triple-A, he never hit more than 33% of his balls on the ground – so at least he’s doing that part right. Sometimes players can have trouble with the line drive when they have so much loft in their swings, and even in his decent year last year, Lowrie showed a poor line drive rate (16.4%). There’s actually some upside left in him even if his strikeout rate returns. He could pair a strong line drive rate with all those flyballs and manage a decent batting average despite a worse strikeout rate – and of course his power stats would be happy with that combo.

Deep dynasty leaguers and AL-only keeper leaguers should find space on the end of their bench for Lowrie’s kind of upside. Because of the high level of variability in his possible outcomes, though, everyone else should probably just keep an eye on him in next year’s drafts.

While we use replacement level freely on the other side of FanGraphs, the idea of replacement level hasn’t exactly forced itself into fantasy baseball yet. I’m not sure why, because I’ve been using it successfully for a while. In fact, we all have, whether we realize it or not. If we didn’t use replacement levels, catchers, shortstops and second baseman would rarely be taken before the third round, yet we see them scattered amongst the top ranked players most years. To give you a better idea of the different strengths at each position, here are the players were valued at replacement level this year by my z-score rankings.

Catcher: Jason Kendall
Without the 12 stolen bases, Kendall wouldn’t even be close to replacement level. But, we do count those stats, and someone who could use an extra handful of steals wouldn’t mind having him hang around on their roster. The better example of replacement level is Ryan Doumit, who did it without relying on stolen bases.
Three Below: Yorvit Torrealba, Ryan Doumit, Ramon Hernandez

First Base: Ike Davis
Davis didn’t even get the chance to play a full season, yet turned out to be a somewhat useful player. A .265 average and about twenty homers with run and RBI counts around 70 do a very good job of illustrating how powerful this position can be.
Four Below: Buster Posey, Carlos Pena, Mike Napoli, Lyle Overbay

Second Base: Ryan Theriot
You couldn’t pick a better example of a replacement level second baseman, which is why I know the formula works. He did a decent job of scoring runs and stealing bases, but he’s not giving you anything else.
Three Below: Aaron Hill, Orlando Hudson, Freddy Sanchez

Third Base: Pablo Sandoval
Pablo had a pretty poor year, yet third base was so weak that he turned out to be a replacement level player.
Three Below: Jhonny Peralta, Chris Johnson, Alberto Callaspo

Shortstop: Starlin Castro
Castro makes sense, right? High average, but not a whole lot of counting stats. He was a very safe option, but nothing to get excited about.
Two Below: Erick Aybar, Jason Bartlett

Outfield: Ryan Raburn
Raburn hit some dingers, had a solid average, but didn’t contribute to the other counting stats. I’m surprised he’s this low, and if he stole another three or four bases, he’d be ranked five spots higher.
Three Below: Tyler Colvin, Jose Tabata, Josh Willingham

Starting Pitcher: Jonathan Niese
A WHIP above 1.4 killed Niese’s value, which was otherwise solid.
Three Below: Not Jason Hammel, Chris Volstad, Daisuke Matsuzaka

You’ll notice that relief pitchers aren’t listed, because it’s very hard to evaluate them. Do we include only players who recorded a save, or use a standard innings limit? Feel free to weigh in on that point below.

We did the shortstop keeper rankings last week, and one of the questions was succinct: “Yunel Escobar?”

If only the answer could be as short as the question in this case. Of course, if you are in a shallow league or contemplating even ten keepers in a mixed league, the answer probably is: No. Even if he has the upside to become a top-ten option at his position, after the season he just put together, he could easily be drafted cheaply in the re-stocking proceedings next year.

But let’s talk more fringe-y. Maybe you are in an AL-only league and spent your FAAB budget on your new shortstop and you’d like to know if he’ll return to grace and is worth keeping. Once again, we’ll have to assume you are not in an OBP league because then the answer is again probably easy: Yes. Before last year, his OBP was over .366 every year and his walk rate survived even his bad 2010 to hover near 10%. He’s an asset there.

The “problem” with Escobar has always been discerning a skill beyond the ability to get on base. He isn’t really speedy – his speed scores have always been below average despite his 18 career stolen bases. His batting averages have been good, but last year it was bad (.256) despite only a mediocre BABIP (.282). Even then, a one-category guy isn’t one to keep.

So it comes down to if his power will grow – an interesting thing for a man with a career seasonal high of 14 home runs. The answer to this question is not as easily parsed as the last two questions, however: Maybe. Because as bad as last year looked, there was a progression in his numbers that might give his owners some hope.

Here are his isolated slugging percentages, starting with his rookie year, and not including last year: .125, .113, .136. And his flyball percentages: 22.9%, 24.7%, 30.0%. And his groundball percentages: 56%, 58.2%, 50%. And his HR/FB: 7.9%, 9.1%, 10.1%. If only last year’s .062 ISO, 28.4% flyballs, 53.6% groundballs and 3.3% HR/FB didn’t spoil the fun, you could say that his batted ball profile was trending towards more power. More flyballs mean more power on a basic level, and that slowly increasing HR/FB was a great sign that more of those flyballs could turn into the home runs that we fantasy managers covet.

The good news is that he’s only 28 and that trends like this can regain traction even after a poor year. It’s possible that he’s older than his birth certificate says – and that would change the diagnosis slightly and make it possible that we’ve seen his best – but he’s been here a while and there’s been little speculation about his age so far. If he’s on the right side of thirty, he’s in the right place for a power resurgence and a career year. Perhaps the “Grip it and rip it” hitting philosophy in Toronto will make for a career year in 2011. Right place, right time?

There’s a chance that in the right league of the right depth, Yunel Escobar a keeper. Not quite the one-word answer for the two-word question, but it’s honest.