Crowdsourcing Results: Gonzalez and Reynolds
Here are your results from this week’s round of topical crowdsourcing.
Adrian Gonzalez (Red Sox / Padres)
My vote: 16 / 25
Average: 13.3 / 23.2
Median: 12 / 23
Std Dev: 5.3 / 6.6
Good news: 95% of you read the instructions and voted based on the pick, not the round. These numbers started out around the 15 and 25 marks in the beginning, and slowly crawled their way down as the hours wore on. Perhaps I was a bit bearish with my predictions, because the numbers you all came up with make sense. Essentially, Gonzalez will be taken at the turn in every draft, and I did just that in a mock draft yesterday. If I can start a team with Gonzalez as one of my two cornerstones, I’m happy.
Mark Reynolds
My vote: 10
Average: 7.8
Median: 8
Std Dev: 3
This is probably the farthest I’ve been off thus far. Reynolds is an interesting guy coming off a poor year, and I thought the 10th round was generous enough for owners hoping for a bounceback. I believed a 10th round pick was pretty safe due to his move to the AL East and some expected regression in his batting average. Apparently, I was wrong. If it’s going to cost a seventh or eighth round pick to nab Reynolds, I’m probably staying away. That risk isn’t worth it to me with so many other players left on the board, even with the weak third base class. That’s just me, and I’m wondering if any of you are willing to take that leap of faith with Reynolds?
Zach is the creator and co-author of RotoGraphs' Roto Riteup series, and RotoGraphs' second-longest tenured writer. You can follow him on twitter.
Wouldn’t it really depend on what was left on the board though? If he’s the top 3B out there and there are plenty of solid corner OF’s out there I’d draft Reynolds before any of them. I’d rather take my chances on Maggs later than miss out on a guy that could be huge in a CI spot.
Also, with the scenario above, would Reynolds be too much of a reach at the end of the 8th vs the start of the 10th? I mean, lets look at the top 3B next year (not in any real order): Longoria, A-Rod, Beltre, Zimmerman, Youkilis, McGehee, Wright and perhaps Prado. Then after that you get into riskier / platoon picks like Sandoval, Stewart, Figgins or the bottom of the barrel guys that are more or less warm bodies at 3B. Reynolds has by far more upside than the rest of the group. I just can’t trust Rolen and AmRam (too few games last year) and Bautista will be picked way too high for my taste.
Lets also not forget that Reynolds is more of a big ‘name’ than Prado or McGehee, some one will most likely reach past the 8th for him hoping to get a stud.
I think with Reynolds that there’s every reason to think that his babip will rise, so his avg. should be expected to be higher; on the other hand, it will still be bad and, I think most importantly, his one high SB year will, in my best guess, remain an anomaly … looking at his WPA, it appears that people have recognized that he’s only safe to greenlight in very low leverage situations, which should put a low ceiling on that number. For my money, SB and AVG are really important, so I could see your 10th round choice, while early will still probably be more likely because many more people will be happy with 30-90-90 from 3rd base.
Not sure why you should be expecting a regression of batting average due to being in the AL East, more appropriately you should be expecting a different type of regression – regression to the mean – of his average. Meaning that his terrible BABIP last year was unsustainable low. You presume to know the reason for this (him swinging for the fences) but that is an assumption (since that’s all he’s ever done anyway). Assuming he has a .230-.240 batting average as a most likely (which could range from .200 to .260) and taking ballpark factors into consideration (moving from middle of the pack HR park to top 5-10 range HR park) you could put a most likely stat line at .235 85/37/90/7 area, which would not be too much off of what you get from Adam Dunn but from 3B. I see that as pretty good expected return for a 7th round pick.
I think that’s what he meant – a regression to the mean, not to get even worse.
I can’t see the rationale that the AL East has better pitching than the NL West, which has a slew of aces. I think its a push if anything, mainly because MR won’t face the the Orioles lackluster group. Also, the DH may mean he gets less AB. Thirdly, Reynolds had a torn thigh most of the year, and later a bum thumb.
“Apparently, I was wrong.”
You ask voters to pick an ‘expected’ round, but are viewing your own vote through ‘logic’?
It only takes 1 owner in the 7th round to be without any CI and jump on Reynolds. Especially teams near the turn–they tend to reach more for needs they fear will be gone by their next at bat (20+ picks away).