Pod’s Picks June Update: Second Base
Today is the next installing of my updated Pod’s Picks, comparing my rank versus the other three RotoGraphers. We’re now up to the second basemen, of which the consensus rankings published two weeks ago can be found here. I’ll generally only consider those second basemen that I ranked within the top 20 for the bullish category and those the rest of the crew ranked in the top 20 for the bearish category.
Bullish
My Rank: 6 | Their Rank: 19
I guess this was mostly me being too stubborn to believe that the decline trend is continuing. Zobrist missed some time due to injury, which has hurt his counting stats, but extrapolated over his normal full season would still put him on a pace for 14 homers and about 11 steals. His batted ball distance is virtually the same as it’s always been, but his HR/FB rate has really bounced around. That said, his career rate stands at just above 10%, and given that his distance is similar, one might expect his home runs to pick up a bit, perhaps push into a pace of a mid to upper teen total.
He doesn’t seem to be interested in running as often as he used to, but he has attempted six steals so far, which can’t be ignored. The Rays offense has been terribly disappointing this year, ranking just 26th in runs scored, and that’s hampering Zobrist’s runs scored and batted in totals. You have to assume the offense as a whole improves, though losing Myers will make it more difficult to do so. Perhaps my ranking of six was silly, but I think 19 is certainly too far on the pessimistic side.
My Rank: 8/9 | Their Rank: 15/16
Funny, Carpenter appeared on my bearish list in the preseason, and now after he’s doing essentially exactly what I expected, he flips over to my bullish list. My ranking of him went from 10 to nine, probably because someone dropped out, but the rest of the crew has grown more pessimistic.
I lumped these two together because they are very similar players. Their ranking underscores the value of batting average, which is a category I believe to be routinely undervalued. Or I should say incorrectly valued. Although Carpenter’s strikeout rate is up, his SwStk% is down and Contact% is up. Prado’s SwStk% is up slightly, but still fantastic and suggests better contact moving forward. Essentially, I’m betting on these two performing just about what I expected from them in the preseason over the rest of the way.
Bearish
My Rank: 179 | Their Rank: 8
Kendrick’s already stolen a surprising nine bases, but at nearly 31 years old, it’s hard to believe that this pace will continue. His home run power has really yo-yo’d up and down, but it doesn’t really matter since he’s hitting a ridiculous 68% of his batted balls on the ground. With a fly ball rate of just above 16%, he has little chance of breaking into double digit home run territory. He has always relied on a high BABIP to contribute positive batting average value, but for some reason both projection systems expect him to post just a .275 average the rest of the way.
My Rank: 16 | Their Rank: 7
Who saw this coming? Last year was a surprising offensive performance in itself and Dozier has actually improved again. But his batted ball distance is just about league average, yet his HR/FB rate is nearly 18%. Something doesn’t add up. He has also never been a big base stealer in the minors and he’s not exactly a speedster. So this all just smells like a career two and a half months to me. It’s also easy to look at the .245 BABIP and figure that will rebound, but he’s a fly ball hitter who hits too many pop-ups. He’s not going to be an asset in batting average.
Mike Podhorzer is the founder of ProjectingX IQ, an advanced fantasy baseball analytics platform that transforms projection data and in-season performance signals into actionable intelligence. He is the 2015 Fantasy Sports Writers Association Baseball Writer of the Year and three-time Tout Wars champion. He is the author of the eBook Projecting X 2.0: How to Forecast Baseball Player Performance, which teaches you how to project players yourself. Follow Mike on X@MikePodhorzer and contact him via email.
179 seems a little low for Kendrick.
I had no idea second base was that deep
We’re talking better choices in High A than Kendrick.
Hmmmm, it appears you need to listen to your peers for fantasy baseball advice instead of spewing your bogus info. You are in over your head! I’m guessing your teams are buried in last yet you pull in a paycheck for writing this wayward info! #Sad
Yeah, valuing Matt Carpenter 5 or 6 slots higher than average based on solid underlying stats is sure to crush any fantasy team. Also, I’m not sure if the authors are aware, but hashtags inexplicably don’t work on Fangraphs! #SuperSad
Have you seen Mike’s tout team? That is the poorest only league team I have ever seen! Mike’s poor rankings killed his tout team and any readers dumb enough to follow him.
Thanks for following up, as always. But you didn’t rank Kendrick at 179, did you?
No way Kendrick should be any lower than 162!
😉
Ben zobrist LOL
The thing that you’re over looking about Dozier is both how many flyballs he hits and where he hits them. Sure, his flyball distance isn’t awe inspiring, but, according to the data supplied at baseballheatmaps.com, Dozier ranks 2nd in measured flyballs hit at 66 at a distance of ~279 ft (Pujols is at 281; Bautista at 280) at the 29th most ‘pull happy’ angle. All else being, the further a player pulls the ball, the greater the likelihood the ball leaves the yard. The number of flyballs a player hits at X distance matters, yes, but the angle which the player hits the ball cannot be overlooked.
I think you may be onto something. If you go to brooks baseball and look at his spray charts for this year, it looks like his approach is to try to yank the ball out of park. He doesn’t have a single HR to right or center field this year.
I haven’t actually seen that, but that seems as anticipated.
Though not perfect and rudimentary, I have an algorithm set up that essentially calculates ‘expected’ HR totals by weighing the # of flyballs hit, distance, and direction. The top performers on that are, in order:
Ortiz David
Encarnacion Edwin
Cruz Nelson
Moss Brandon
Dozier Brian
Pujols Albert
Gomez Carlos
Cespedes Yoenis
Bautista Jose
Abreu Jose
While Papi, Cruz, and Abreu just annihilate the ball (300ft+), as mentioned, Pujols, Dozier, and Bautista hover around 280 feet. Their HR totals are high, however, because they pull the crap out of the ball, which allows them to hit the ball harder to a shorter part of the park. Moss and E5 hover 290, but just like the latter 3, they are very pull happy, which accounts for their high HR totals.
Source: http://www.baseballheatmaps.com/graph/distanceleader.php
Thanks for the rankings, although I disagree on Dozier. This guy is a category juice box…dating back to last year, he has been putting up the same type of steals and homers. He strikes out and hurts average, but hits at the top of a (somewhat) potent twins lineup so the runs and steals will be there, and he has some pop for homers. if you can handle about a .240 average, he is worth it for the other counting stats. on top of that he walks pretty often so at least he gets on base.
Why do you think there’s such a large difference between Zobrist and Kendrick? I could certainly understand ranking Zobrist slightly ahead (though I would disagree, still), but 6 vs. 17? Kendrick’s career AVG is 30 points higher than Zobrist’s. That’s a big one category difference for Zobrist to make up. It’s hard to imagine him doing so with runs and RBIs, given the difference between the Angels and Rays offenses this year. Do you really think Zobrist, at 33, is going to get back to his 20 HR or 20 SB ways? That’s the only thing I could come up with to explain such a disparity between what I think are two very similar fantasy secondbasemen.
I’ll also add that Kendrick beats Zobrist in both ZIPs and Steamer projections.
I also don’t think it’s fair to say that Zobrist’s batted ball distance is the same as it’s ever been. It’s gone down literally every year since 2009 (299,290,285,279,276,274). I think 2012-2014 is more indicative of his current power ability than 2009-2011, certainly.
Heatmaps has separate entries for L and R for switch hitters. As a LHB, his FB distance is pretty consistently in the mid to high 270’s, while as a RHB, when he had enough FBs to make the leaderboard, seem to jump around more but are generally in the 280-290 range. It appears you were only looking at his first entry for each year on the list and mixing RHB and LHB distances together which falsely indicated a large decline.
I’m not sure what you mean. I just used the numbers here:
http://www.baseballheatmaps.com/graph/distanceleader.php
That’s what I’ve been going off of for tracking HR/FB distance for the last 2 seasons, so I really hope I’m not misunderstanding the data! Heat Maps is not a very clear website, unfortunately.
Oh, nvm, I get it now.
Man, I had noticed players appearing twice on the list before and didn’t catch the different stance, so I just thought it was an error.
Seems very odd to me that Heat Maps would split it up like that. I don’t see the benefit in it.
Thanks for pointing that out to me.
No problem. I assume it’s partially to get an accurate angle for both L and R stances. For example, Zobrist’s angle in 2013 as a LHB was 5.82, meaning he pulled slightly to right-center. As a RHB, his angle was 3.27, meaning he went oppo slightly, also to right-center.
Dozier’s last calendar year: .248/.337/.440, 26 HR, 78 RBI, 101 R, 23 SB.