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A regular season in the books does not mean my work is over. I still have 27 recaps of pre-season articles to share! Yes, 27. Hope you’ll stay with me through the playoffs and the NFL season to grade my advice performance and many, many lists. We’ll start with the Pod’s Picks & Pans series, which compares my rankings to the RotoGraphs consensus, highlighting those players whose rankings I differ from most. I’ll use the final CBS rankings as the determinant of end of season value. Let’s see who was right on those headscratching hitters at the catcher position.

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In the two previous years I’ve curated the RotoGraphs staff picks, I evaluated them during the post-/offseason to determine which staff writer had the best time pickin’. What good are our allegedly “expert” picks if we don’t hold ourselves accountable?

You can find this year’s preseason picks here. The best pick in each category is an indiscernible blend of talent (duh) and uniqueness (like, Andrew Benintendi as a Rookie of the Year candidate is not very original, so I’d dock you points for that). Most correct (with air quotes) picks wins. Let’s go!

(Shallow) Sleeper (ADP 201-300, per NFBC ADP)

Pitcher: Robbie Ray (Brice Russ, Jeff Zimmerman)
Hitter: Domingo Santana (Al Melchior, Birchwood Bros., Justin Vibber)

There are three standout picks here, but one stands above the rest. I have written repeatedly (aka twice) about Ray’s rollercoaster career and baffling peripherals. He has delivered consecutive seasons of extreme outliers; his true self is probably a perfect blend of 2016 and 2017, which is roughly a mid-3.00s ERA with league-leading strikeouts and potentially league-trailing walks (and, also, league-trailing contact management). He is Yu Darvish’s stateside-produced clone, and early evidence (#2early mock drafts, henceforth) suggests he’ll be drafted as such.

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I take immense pride in my ability to set a sufficiently low bar. Exhibit A: 2016’s Bold Predictions. I got one. One right. The downside to that is self-explanatory. The upside is that any improvement would make for a dramatic one.  So let’s see how I did?

All rankings used are from ESPN’s Player Rater  Read the rest of this entry »

Charlie Morton generated some buzz in the spring, and I was part of the buzzing crowd. A little over a month into the season, I checked back in on Morton and remained high on him. Still, I wasn’t quite high enough on him. Heading into his final start of the regular season tonight, ESPN’s player rater has him ranked as SP29. The 33-year-old hurler is having a career year, and the reinvention that he teased in an injury-abbreviated 2016 in four starts turned out to be a precursor of his big 2017 season. Read the rest of this entry »

It seems that since Yoan Moncada was signed by the Boston Redsox in March of 2015 for $31.5 million, he has been a staple atop MLB prospect lists. Top-5 by Baseball America in 2016 and 2017. Number 1 by Fangraphs’ Eric Longenhagen this season with KATOH+ also ranking him in the top-10. This list goes on. He is an elite prospect. If you play Ottoneu, you already know that.

However, given the pedigree (and the likely fact that he has been owned since his signing in nearly all leagues) it is likely that Moncada’s performance is viewed as a disappointment to Ottoneu owners. I mean this purely on a performance basis. With an average price across in all Fangraph Points leagues of nearly $12, owners are likely expecting production from a premier prospect. With the relative ease at which young players have transitioned to the major leagues over the past few seasons, who can blame them?

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The organization is rich in third bas prospects. MVP candidate and Gold Glover Nolan Arenado isn’t going anywhere, which is causing a backlog with MLB-ready Ryan McMahon looking for another position to play. Behind him, the club has 2016 draft pick Colton Welker (.904 OPS in low-A) and 2017 draft pick Ryan Vilade (.934 OPS in Rookie), who played shortstop in his debut but is expected to move off the position shortly.

The Graduate: German Marquez, RHP: The Rockies graduated an impressive number of starters to The Show in 2017 including Jeff Hoffman, Kyle Freeland, Antonio Senzatela and Marquez. The other three arms generally got more love at the beginning of the year but I put my money on Marquez and he responded with a 2.3 win season – pacing all Rockies starters. Using predominantly a two-pitch repertoire (mid-90s fastball and curveball), he showed swing-and-miss stuff as well as above-average control. Marquez has been understandably better on the road (4.50 vs 3.86 ERA) but hasn’t really been that bad at home. He’s a good bet to continue to get better in 2018

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Giancarlo Stanton has gone crazy recently, hitting 32 home runs in 48 days. Last I checked, anyhow. It could be up to 36 by now, you never know with that guy. There have been many talks about his MVP consideration, as well there should be. However, Stanton is not the only guy in that Marlins lineup who is hitting the cover off the ball. Oh no, you have Christian Yelich raking behind Stanton, and then Ozuna behind Yelich.

In the second half, Yelich is batting .295/.387/.530 with a .389 wOBA. Marcell Ozuna is batting .292/.378/.522 with a .379 wOBA. Both of these players are sitting high among the second half offensive leaderboards, Yelich 25th and Ozuna 34th. Together with Stanton, the oft forgotten Derek Dietrich, and JT Realmuto the Marlins have 5 of the top 112 batters in the second half, including 3 of the top 34 and, of course, numero uno.

This is the offensive production the Marlins expected to see throughout the course of the entire season. Unfortunately for them, it took a few months for this to gel, in large part due to the relative poor performance of Christian Yelich in the first half.

I am not saying Yelich was terrible, because he wasn’t. He was average in April and May. But Yelich isn’t on the team to be average, he is a core piece, and his performance over the past month and a half shows just how dynamic he can be for a ball club. In April and May, though, he was not hitting nearly as well as he is right now. So let’s see if we can find a reason. Read the rest of this entry »

My favorite part of this year’s World Baseball Classic, aside from the baseball, obviously, was the television broadcasts’ frequent reference to players’ swing speeds. I was floored, even if only because I didn’t know (but should’ve known) we had the technology capable of measuring it. Regarding Major League Baseball and Statcast’s adoption of such a metric, a little birdy told me I shouldn’t hold my breath. Disappointed, I moved on.

Then yesterday, while fooling around in Baseball Savant’s Statcast database trying to diagnose the misalignment of Miguel Cabrera’s outcomes with his peripherals, I noticed the database query’s “sort by” function offered an option to sort by “estimated swing speed.” A quick Google search indicates to me the Statcast and MLB Advanced Media team(s) has (have) yet to formally announce this; sprint speed has been the more exciting recent development, apparently.

Not to me! I quickly got to work querying the data. I also quickly learned downloading the raw data files that underpin the swing speed summaries previously linked do not include swing speed, which is unhelpful. In other words, swing speed is not communicated to us from Baseball Savant’s organs on a play-by-play basis. I imagine this is by design. So, I was resigned to running a single query that summarized swing speed data at a high level: the average swing speed for every hitter with at least 100 at-bats in a given season, from 2015 through 2017.

Here’s what I found.

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A pair of speedy outfielders have caught my eye this week as being under owned across fantasy providers. One of the duo ranks within the top-15 in stolen bases this year, but inconsistency and a recent injury are almost certainly to blame for his availability. The other has been inefficient on the bases this year and isn’t a sure thing to be a major asset on the bases, but his speed is elite and the rest of the profile is excellent. Read the rest of this entry »

If at first you don’t succeed, try again? Well, I’m once again suggesting taking a shot on a hitter who struggled out of the gate. Also, I was shocked to see the ownership rates tied to a stat-stuffing outfielder in Cleveland. The toolsy rookie is owned in over 50% of leagues on just one of the three heavy-hitter fantasy providers. Read the rest of this entry »