Archive for aaron hill

It’s been widely known since last winter that this free agent class would be a pretty brutal one, with much of the legitimately intriguing hot stove action taking place on the trade front. Outside of a couple of marquee names available, it’s more spare parts than anything to be had without having to surrender assets. This is especially true as it relates to third base, perhaps to the most extreme extent.

Only seven players that would fall under the third base category are set to hit the free agent market:

• Andres Blanco
• Aaron Hill
• Casey McGehee
• Adam Rosales
• Ruben Tejada
• Justin Turner
• Luis Valbuena

If you’re looking for a stopgap third baseman who can log a fair amount of games at the position and provide legitimate value, that number decreases even more. In fact, we’re talking about a list that probably only includes a small trio of this group: Hill, Valbuena, and, the only legitimate prize of the group, Justin Turner. And even that’s stretching it a bit, as only Turner had enough at-bats to qualify among the offensive leaders at the position in 2016.

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I used 10% Yahoo ownership as the cutoff for these selections. With these players available in nearly all leagues, boosting your middle-infield production isn’t as dire a situation as it may seem.

Derek Dietrich (9% owned) – With Dee Gordon suspended through July, Dietrich’s got a stranglehold on the second-base job in Miami for the next two months. For the most part, he’s been batting leadoff, although he’s hit in the No. 3 spot for the last two days, to accommodate a red-hot Ichiro Suzuki in the leadoff spot. Regardless, he’s hitting in the top third of the lineup, with a .293/.400/.485 slash.

The 26-year-old’s home-run power hasn’t shown up yet this year — with just two in 120 PA — but he’s got seven doubles and three triples. Don’t be fooled by that paltry ‘2’ in the HR column, because Dietrich has plenty of pop to get the ball over the fence. While his .355 BABIP suggests likely regression in his AVG, those of you in OBP leagues can reap the benefits of his 10.0% walk rate — and the fact that he’s strangely adept at being hit by pitches.

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Check out last month’s rankings here.

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No more bland, rote tiers from this guy! Thanks to the urging of commenter “Urban Shocker,” my eyes are now open to the fun that can be had with ridiculously labeled tiers. You see, I used to just write these monthly second-base columns with boring old numbered tiers. That is, until Urban Shocker convinced me in the comments section of my April rankings to name my tiers from then on.

To be perfectly honest, the task of doing these monthly rankings can get rather stale — for both me and you — as the season wears on. Eventually, it gets to the point where the rankings barely change, because 30-day samples don’t substantially change the way I/we think about a certain player.

Furthermore, there’s only so many ways I can say “Jose Altuve had a good month again,” or “Dee Gordon steals lots of bases,” or “Holy crap, Dan Uggla is so incredibly terrible!” (Actually, never mind on that last one. I will never get sick of making jokes about Uggla, who got paid $13 million last year to post a weighted offense 72% below league-average.)

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Life isn’t all about rainbows and butterflies. With that in mind, my bold predictions include some positive outlooks for a pair of post-hype sleepers, some young hurlers, a sophomore everyone is in love with and a veteran second baseman. However, they also feature some less than rosy prognostications for a speedy second baseman, a late-blooming multi-position eligible Pirate and a pitcher trading homer-friendly Great American Ballpark for the homer-suppressing Marlins Park. Read the rest of this entry »

On Monday I looked at bust candidates according to the 2015 Steamer projections. I ran the projections through Zach Sanders’ Fantasy Value Above Replacement system and then compared the rankings at each position to early ADP data from NFBC drafts. Today we’ll look at a sleeper candidate from each position. Read the rest of this entry »

We’re a month through the season, and fantasy owners are already jumping to huge conclusions regarding the 2014 season. These tiered rankings attempt to capture the production from the first month of the season, moving some players up and down where I felt it was necessary, but largely, I attempted to refrain from getting too caught up in the ebbs and flows of single-month performance. There are five months remaining in the 2014 season. Lots will change, and I didn’t want to make the tiered rankings a simple “who is performing well right now,” as that’s not overly useful.

Anyway, here we go.

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What I love about this series, this look at each team’s depth chart, is that we unearth a number of position battles that might not be on the radar of the casual fantasy player. In this case, the Arizona Diamondbacks, the infield appears to be well set heading into spring training. First, second and third base are locked down; as is behind the plate. But a deeper look brings us to a report on the team’s website that informs us that the starting shortstop job is actually up for grabs. The casual fantasy player will look at the depth chart and assume that Didi Gregorius owns the gig. After all, he’s the big name and didn’t Arizona trade a highly-touted Trevor Bauer to get him? That they did, but according to GM Kevin Towers, spring time for the Diamondbacks will feature an open competition between Gregorius and Chris Owings and the winner gets a place on the field come Opening Day. Read the rest of this entry »

If you hit 26 homers and lead your league in basically every offensive stat from your position, but no one notices, does it still make a sound? That twist on the classic thought problem seems to apply to Arizona’s Aaron Hill, who bounced back from two consecutive disappointing seasons to become the second-best second baseman in baseball in 2012, both by WAR and Zach Sanders’ end-of-season fantasy rankings. The hype, however, including an All-Star snub, never seemed to follow.

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So we’ve done a pretty thorough bludgeoning of the recent reader mock draft, looking at almost every round except for the fliers, and covering several of the positions along the way as well. Second base has me particularly concerned headed into 2012, so let’s break down how the readers handled the challenge of staffing their squads at that position.

The following chart is pretty self explanatory – where the player was selected in the reader mock, what their average draft position is over at Mock Draft Central, and the difference between the two to the right:

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One of the primary reasons that people give as to why they opt not to play fantasy baseball but are the first to form a fantasy football league is the sheer length of the season.  Six months is apparently two months too long for them.  However, those of us that are able to cope with the time frame know the real answer; the amount of work it takes to, not only prep for the season, but to stay active and alert all season long can be a testament to one’s patience, work ethic and mental endurance.

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