Don’t Denard Daily, Dummy

What I’m positing is: Don’t draft Denard Span at 2014 prices in 2015. I’m sure there are some daily matchups where he makes sense. And he’s a decent real-life player. But I’m not going to belly up to this bar. Not after he played to a top-20 outfielder season.

Span will be 31 next season. Look for that age on this aging curve for stolen bases:

By the population’s tendencies in the past, Span should lose eight stolen bases from this year to next. That makes a ton of sense. The dude just stole his career high in stolen bases in 2014 (31) and otherwise hadn’t topped 26. He hasn’t topped 21 since 2011 started. You could take the under on his 23 projected stolen bases by Steamer and I wouldn’t argue.

Span just showed his best power numbers since 2008. Those are likely to regress, and fewer doubles — even if he can manage five homers again — means fewer runs. Once again, his projection accounts for this, projecting him for five homers but only 79 runs.

Span has had some dicey seasons with injuries. Perhaps the last two full seasons should help us forget those, though. We do have an injury projection calculator we can use, and it spits out… 12 days missed. That might only be ten games, and that might allow him to get to 650 plate appearances again.

650 plate appearances atop that lineup should net more than 79 runs… wait no. HOLD ON TO THE NARRATIVE.

Four homers and twenty stolen bases. How many players managed 24 combined homers and stolen bases last year? GAR. 97. That’s not great, but chances are, your fantasy league will own 97 position players. Scratch that, it’s almost definite that your fantasy league will start at least 100 players.

Okay okay hold on what about this BABIP. .330 is above his career average! Regression! Well, it’s only ten points above his career average. And his hard-hit data xBABIP was… .318. Dammit, this is falling apart. He’s likely to beat his .312 projected BABIP and therefore his .282 average (which is four points below his career average). Only 35 batters with more than 550 plate appearances beat that batting average last year.

Harumph. I guess the narrative failed, despite the impressive alliteration. If you combine all his best facets — 550+ plate appearances, +.280 average, 20+ stolen bases — there are only 10 players in his cohort. One of ten!

Yes, he won’t steal as many bases as Dee Gordon or Jose Altuve. He won’t hit as many homers as Carlos Gomez or Charlie Blackmon. But he belongs in that group for better or for worse.

And that means he belongs in your fantasy lineups.