This is a post about small sample sizes and luck, terms that get tossed around so much these days that we may have lost sight of their meaning. It’s also, I suppose, about Will Venable.
Venable kinda sorta broke out in 2013, which Robert J. Baumann covered earlier this week here. But the player inspired more thoughts, so here we are.
Think about the Giants’ infield, and inevitably you wonder if the large mound at third can rebound from a disastrous year at the plate. Of course, there’s a breakout candidate at first base, and two deep leaguers up the middle, but you can’t help thinking about Pablo Sandoval first.
Hey! Let’s get all of these depth chart discussions in one place, right?
Will Venable broke out a bit in 2013, hitting a career high 22 homeruns while also stealing over 20 bases for the fourth consecutive season. His power/speed combo is bound to garner attention going into 2014 fantasy drafts and auctions. With a middling batting average—his .268 mark in 2013 was also a career high—and while playing for a team that is likely to keep both his Run and RBI totals in the 50-60 range, much of Venable’s allure will be tied up in whether owners think he’ll continue to be a 20/20 player going forward.
His stolen base potential is a matter for a different day (and probably a different person); instead I’ve compiled some information to try to determine from whence Venable’s 2013 power surge came, and whether we can expect it to continue.
There’s been some talk about the ideal auction budget mix on twitter recently. Perhaps, if you click this link, you can see some of the conversation between Chris Liss, Mike Gianella, Steve Gardner, Peter Kreutzer, and Jeff Erickson upon which I was snooping. It’s a fairly complicated conversation, and far-reaching. Let’s jump in.
The Alex Rodriguez news will send a lot of fantasy owners scrambling for a new 3B, but it has other implications on the Yankees infield that may present an opportunity for savvy fantasy owners.
Brad Johnson looked at what the A-Rod suspension means for the Yankees yesterday. Not long thereafter, New York added Scott Sizemore and Ken Rosenthal reported that the Yanks are unlikely to add another MLB IF, which means the in-house options Johnson considered – along with Sizemore – are basically the only options in the Bronx.
The woman or man in your life, depending on your lifestyle, that doesn’t care about fantasy baseball….
The holidays have now come and gone and hopefully you and your significant other rang in the New Year in style. But here we are just nine days into 2014 and already you’ve been inundated with an unusual amount of senseless baseball chatter. Tom Glavine in the Hall of Fame over Craig Biggio or Mike Piazza? Shin Soo-Choo and Prince Fielder hitting in Texas? The Rays want to trade David Price? And who the hell is Masahiro Tanaka? It seems like every year the winter gets shorter and shorter and you’re starting to feel like they’re just making stuff up just to have an excuse to jaw with their buddies about a game you really couldn’t care less about. Read the rest of this entry »
Today on the front of the site, I wrote about Bronson Arroyo, and how he’s been better than his peripherals for five years now. The two-second version of the piece is that he’s played in front of a defense that was tops in the National League over that same time frame. The longer version led to a few more questions that I’d like to explore here.
Not much in injury news over the past week, so I decided to dive mainly into the effects of major knee injuries.
• The Mariners recently signed Corey Hart who missed all of 2013 after left knee surgery. I went through my injury database and found 60 outfielders who either tore or had surgery on a knee. Additionally, I added those outfielders who missed 90 days or more because of a knee issue. In all, I found 60 outfielders who met the criteria. I looked at the weighted average from the season before … to the season of the injury… to the season after the injury. Here are the results:
I spend a lot of time analyzing baseball, but sometimes you need to take a step back and analyze yourself. With New Year’s Eve coming up fast, now is just one of those times.
Between January 1, 2013 and the end of the regular season, I offered a lot of advice in my articles here on RotoGraphs, and thought I’d take a look back at each measurable piece of advice and grade myself.
