Archive for Adam Dunn

Friend of RotoGraphs Jimbo posed this question in the comments of an earlier article:

How do you weigh a pick like Ichiro that early when there’s still power left to draft…and it’s a scarce resource?

I thought that would make an excellent question for the debut of our newest feature, the RotoGraphs Panel. Here’s how our writers responded:

Marc Hulet: I personally have Ichiro ranked as the 10th overall outfielder (based on 5X5) in mixed leagues and 4th overall in AL-only format. At 36, you have to start worrying about his age and the slip in steals in ’09 (from 43 to 26). With that said, he has nine straight 200 hit seasons, hit .352 last year and has scored 100+ runs in eight of the past nine seasons. I have him nestled at No. 10 between Jayson Werth at nine and Adam Lind at 11.

Power is a scarce resource, but so is reliability; the only pieces missing from his game are power and RBIs and I would rather go hunting on the waiver wire for home runs than steals and/or batting average. I will admit that Ichiro is getting credit in 2010 based on his reputation but I’ll personally keep believing in him until A) He slips for two straight seasons or B) He hits 40 years of age, whichever comes first. I expect his average to drop to between .310-.320 but I am hoping for a return to 100 runs scored and 30+ steals. Call me optimistic.

Zach Sanders: Ichiro has been a top-50 fantasy player since his move to the Major Leagues. I remember him going in the second round in years past, due to his awesome steal and hit totals. Now that he is older and the steals aren’t as bountiful, he still has great value. Drafting Ichiro (around his ADP) over a power hitter is perfectly acceptable for two reasons.

First, he does contribute to the steals category, even if it is only 20 a year. Second, his AVG is so high that it can change the way you draft. Since he comes to the plate so often, his average is even more influential, and can make up for other guys on your team. Since he makes up for guys with low averages, you can draft power players that slip through the cracks for this very reason, and still be fine.

Dan Budreika: Ichiro’s been wowing us for years. He put together a nice year offensively last year after a lackluster 2008. But he is not getting younger and he will be 36-years-old this season. He did battle some injuries last season but what disturbs me is his un-Ichiro like 26 steals. He was also caught 9 times. I just don’t see Ichiro approaching the 40 marker in the stolen base department again and those have generally been one of his biggest fantasy strengths. He doesn’t offer much power and you can really only expect 10 homers. Power ages better than speed and Ichiro is no young buck anymore. Take the safer route with a big bopper over the aging Ichiro early in your draft.

Eno Sarris: Ichiro Suzuki is a tough nut to crack. He hit .311 on 0-2 counts last year! Nutty. On the other hand, minus the batting average, he looks like Denard Span (ADP 125.46) – a guy with barely-double-digit power that is likely to steal about 30 bases. That’s a guy that should be picked in the late rounds to boost a team flagging on speed, not in the mid-rounds as a foundational player. Managers shouldn’t normally build their rosters around him… except in certain instances. Let’s say you are hoping to get Adam Dunn (ADP 55.95) after Ichiro (ADP 40.46) – then he fits like a glove. Consider that taking those players in the fourth and fifth rounds would give you two players that, using last year’s numbers, averaged out to a .313 batting average with 25 home runs and 13 stolen bases. That fits. Ichiro gives you domination in one category that allows you to pick people like Russell Branyan (ADP 293.50) and Chris Davis (159.89) later in the draft, too. That’s added value, in flexibility, that shouldn’t be poo-pooed. It’s not easy to answer this question, and that’s why Ichiro gets drafted as high as 29 and as low as 57. But there are plenty of high-power low-batting average sluggers that become much more attractive as soon as you bring Ichiro! into the fold.

David Golebiewski: Ichiro is one of the more difficult players to project in all of fantasy baseball. We know that he’s not going to draw many walks or hit for much power (his .113 ISO last season was his highest mark since 2005). But he has consistently posted well above-average BABIP figures (.357 career) by virtue of his Olympic-level speed and ability to beat out infield hits. Over the last three years, Ichiro has the second-highest infield hit rate in the majors. His career batting average on ground balls is .306. For reference, the AL average hovers around the .240-.245 range.

In 2009, Ichiro managed a .384 BABIP, and hit an obscene .353 on grounders. Even for a guy who has time and again posted lofty BABIP figures, it’s likely that those numbers will regress in 2010. A simple Marcel projection forecasts a .319/.365/.418 line and a .352 BABIP. If Ichiro’s BABIP trends back toward his career average, then he’s a .320 batter, as opposed to last year’s .350+ machine.

The big question regarding his fantasy value is, will a 36 year-old Ichiro be great base stealer, or merely a good one? He missed the beginning of the 2009 season with a bleeding ulcer, but his 26 steals were a career-low, and his SB percentage (74.3) was his lowest since 2002. Ichiro’s Speed Score (5.2) was a career low, and well below his 6.6 overall mark in the majors. If I had to conjure a guess, I would lean toward the conservative side and project somewhere in the range of 25-35 steals next year.

MockDraftCentral currently has Ichiro at number 39 overall, which strikes me as reasonable. Just how one values Ichiro’s steals compared to another player’s power depends largely on the league format, but I’m a big advocate of going for the best available talent in the early rounds. Owners can get themselves in trouble by feeling that they must take a player who does X in round Y. I still think Ichiro is worthy of a relatively early-round pick.

Brian Joura: I have not owned Ichiro since 2005. I like taking him in mock drafts but not in real leagues. And the reason is that he is very unpredictable. Everyone says you take him and you have a stud in AVG. Some years that is very true and other years he is simply not that dominating. Yes, he has four years where he’s posted marks over .350, including last year. But he also has five years where he was at .322 or lower.

If he reaches that .350 mark, than the early pick on him works out great. But if he finishes at .310 like he did in 2008 then you are sort of left holding the bag. It would be like drafting Adam Dunn and only getting 30 HR. It’s a good total but not what you were expecting. Eno mentioned that he has gone as low as 57 and I would certainly take him there but I will not pull the trigger on him at pick 29.

RotoWorld reports today that Jack Cust will re-up with the Oakland A’s for $2.5 million, a slight paycut from his $2.8 million salary last year. Considering that he is pretty much a DH these days (-23.1 UZR/150 career in the OF), that salary seems just about right for a guy that produced 8.8 batting runs above replacement last year. The market seems to be paying under $4 million a win, and the A’s will pay about a million less than they ‘should’ given those market characteristics… if Cust performs at the same level in 2010.

And there’s the rub. Fantasy owners, too, will be wondering if Cust can put up another season with a .350+ OBP and 25+ home runs – especially those owners in OBP leagues that could use a late-round value pick with some pop.

Cust has long been a “three true outcome player” in that his career walk (17.8%), strikeout (39.5%) and home run (5.8%) rates comprise the results for the bulk of his at bats. There’s been a little play in those rates as he’s aged, though. Last year, Cust put up three-year lows in walk rate (15.6%), strikeout rate (36.1%) and contact rate (69.2% last year, 66.8% career). Still, those look like enough like his career numbers to say with certainty that Big Jersey (6’1″, 240 lbs, born near Somerville, NJ) will walk, strikeout, and hit the ball hard next year.

He definitely has what most call “old-people skills.” These are skills, like walking, whiffing and swinging for the fences, that players develop more as they age. Some players begin with these skills, and most develop them, and they stand in opposition to more “young-people skills” like speed and contact that you either have or you don’t. Bill James famously found in his New Bill James Historical Abstract that players with these “old” skills peak earlier and decline faster. Here’s the money quote, taken from a passage about Tom Brunansky, courtesy Tommy Bennett and a fruitful and lively twitter conversation today:

The outfielders that had “old players skills” did in fact peak earlier and fade faster than the players who had “young players skills.” From ages 21 to 23 the two groups of players were equal in value, 614 Win Shares for the “Young” players, 615 for the “Old” players. But from ages 24-26 the players with “old” skills had 7% less value (1482-1379), and as time passed the gap widened steadily… from ages 31-33 they had 10% less value (1340-1207).

From the mouth of a legend. We can’t take that number as a lock-down predictor, but it seems safe to say that a 31-year-old Cust is at least 10% more likely to decline faster than a player with a nice batting average and tons of steals. And there are some other signs of decline there anyway: his HR/FB and line drive rates are in a three-year decline, which would be more worrisome if they weren’t still decent last year (17.7% HR/FB and 19.8% line drive rate in 2009).

So that trip down memory lane was a roundabout way to say that fantasy owners should probably not expect a “bounce-back” season from Cust, and shouldn’t draft him expecting a return to his .500 slugging percentage days. The older he gets, and the closer that home run total inches to 20, the less likely he will provide enough value elsewhere to offset his always-poor batting average. Cust is an exponentially riskier play as every year passes, thanks to starting out with “old people skills.” (In case you were wondering, Adam Dunn just turned 30.)

When we checked the center field position and created tiered rankings, there were a few players that were suggested as possible values at the position.

Carlos Gomez and Cameron Maybin could provide some nice speed – at the cost of risking your batting average. Since the rankings were for rotisserie baseball, that risk pushed those players off of the rankings.

But what if we were talking about head-to-head baseball, where punting a category is a strategy many deep leaguers employ? In such a format, you are competing in ten categories every week and can easily ‘punt’ a category if it provides an advantage elsewhere. Imagine the value you could get out of eschewing batting average – your lineup could employ Jimmy Rollins, Mark Reynolds, Adam Dunn, and Jayson Werth, all without the problems that lineup would normally entail.

With that strategy in mind, is Chris Young a viable option in 2010? If Bill James is to be believed, Youngs’ power and speed could return and answer that question affirmatively. The fans have yet to chime in (but should take this chance to give their input).

After famously being demoted to the minor leagues last year, Young returned to a post-All-Star-break line that could help batting-average-punters (.236/.343/.444) – at least in the power department. He didn’t steal a base. We can be forgiven for feeling confused.

Looking at his plate discipline stats may just muddy the waters. Every statistic is going in a different direction. His strikeout rate has gotten steadily worse (24.8% in 2007 to 30.7% last year), but he’s reaching less often (22.9% in 2007 to 18.0% last year). Perhaps it’s all about his contact rate, which is definitely getting worse (79.7% in 2006 to 73.9% last year), but there are plenty of players that succeed with a 75-ish% contact rate (Evan Longoria and Adrian Gonzalez most prominently), and with his still-strong walk rate (9.1% career, 12% in 2009), he has his good qualities.

There’s also something interesting going on with Young’s take rate. As RJ pointed out, Young takes a lot of pitches in the zone, and a good portion of those pitches could have been called balls last year. But again, Victor Martinez and Chris Coghlan both also took about 40% of the pitches they saw in the zone, and they had pretty good years last year.

It may just be that a player that both takes a lot of pitches in the zone and doesn’t make contact is going to have a hard time in major league baseball. Let’s set the bar at Young’s career levels of swinging in the zone (around 60%) and contact rate (around 76%). How many other players in the last two years have had good seasons with those rates?

Last year, the list was short: Mike Cameron, Jason Bay and Brandon Inge all had passable years sporting percentages close to Young’s numbers (but none took as many pitches in the zone, with Cameron swinging the least at 63.7%). In 2008, it was Jason Bay and Mike Cameron again (but Bay made contact on 77.1% of his pitches, and Cameron swung at more pitches than Young.)

It looks like we have a (rather obvious) comp in Mike Cameron then. Except that if you compare Cameron’s career numbers in the two categories (63.9% Z-swing%, 75.4% contact rate), you’ll notice he doesn’t take as many pitches in the zone. He also plays solid center field defense (+5.7 UZR/150 in CF, career).

And you have your two things to work on for Chris Young the Outfielder. In order to be Mike Cameron, he needs to swing at more pitches in the zone and play better defense. Then he’ll always have a place on the field. The good news is that Young swung at more pitches in the zone last year than he did the previous two years. The bad news is that his defense needs to take a serious step forward this year (-4.9 UZR/150 in CF, career). The good news means that he may be ownable in the right league next year. The bad news means that he won’t be ownable in any keeper leagues going forward if the defense doesn’t improve.

Over the offseason we’ll take a look at each position on the diamond and see how the past season affected the positional rankings and where there might be some potential bounceback value picks going into next year’s drafts. (See shortstops, catchers, and second basemen.)

Rankings are the height of subjectivity, of course. Drafts are the expression of the subjective opinions of the different draftees, though, so lets see what we can learn by putting these players in their (subjective, fantasy-oriented) place. Oh, another note: these rankings are for 5×5 rotisserie fantasy baseball. Eligibility was determined by where the player had the most at-bats last year.

It’s probable that Albert Pujols is a tier of his own. He is a true stud in every category when compared to his peers. But without the 15 or so steals, he might belong right along side the other two metronomes in Mark Teixeira and Miguel Cabrera, two young studs at the position who are virtual locks for a plus batting average 35+ home runs, and gobs of runs and RBI. There’s not much to say here other than, since this is a deep position, it’s worth considering comparable middle infielders over these guys – just look how long and balanced this list is.

The third tier has three players that could, in the right year, outperform guys in the second tier. Prince Fielder, Ryan Howard, and Adrian Gonzalez have all had years with power production that has eclipsed that of the two players above them. But they also have their issues. Fielder alternates medium-power years with high-power years, Howard won’t ever put in a plus batting average with his high strikeout rates, and Gonzalez would be more exciting if only he could get his batting average out of the ‘neutral’ territory and into ‘plus’ like the guys in tier two. Maybe, when he walks fewer times with his next team as Dave Cameron seems to have predicted, his BABIP will also regress to his career levels and his batting average will rise, though it’s hard to predict anything more than a .280 number there.

The middle tier provides some real opportunity for value. Each and every member of this tier could easily hit .300 with 30 home runs and good run production next year. Justin Morneau, Lance Berkman and Kendry Morales have all done it before, and Kevin Youkilis has gotten about as close as you can get. Joey Votto seems poised to join their ranks with a full year of strong play. It’s also a well balanced tier – the aging sluggers on their way down sit in front of Youkilis, who seems to have found his niche with a good batting average and modest power for a first baseman. Votto and Morales sit behind him until they prove they can consistently provide more power.

The next tier is called the ‘Dan Uggla‘ tier. These guys will give you power, but in rotisserie baseball you’ll also need to work hard to over come Adam Dunn and Carlos Pena’s poor batting averages. In head-to-head competition, their value increases because of the option of punting batting average, but in rotisserie you really need to try and compete in every category and their big minus signs are a dark cloud over the rest of their positive contributions.

The last tier could produce some tier-jumpers if the stars align. Should Derrek Lee continue to hit 45% of his balls in the air, he may jut hit another 30 home runs, which would put him in tier four. Billy Butler is still hitting too many worm-burners (47.7% groundballs career), but if can get a little lift into those balls, he’s shown that he’s a strong producer in batting average. At 30 years old, it seems that Adam LaRoche is a strong bet to continue producing at the same mediocre level going forward. He’ll probably drop off the list when a young guy steps forward next year and joins the crowd, but with the strikeout rates that Chris Davis (34.7% career) and Russell Branyan (38.9% career) sport, it’s hard to rely on them to even keep their jobs all year in 2010.

The Washington Nationals’ roster is, to say the least, jumbled at the moment. Between first base and the outfield, the Nats have a consortium of promising youngsters, former and failed top prospects, injury risks and overlapping parts. Short of petitioning the league for an extra outfield spot or two, Washington is going to need to sort out how to deploy newly-signed Adam Dunn (1B? OF?), Elijah Dukes, Lastings Milledge, Josh Willingham, Austin Kearns, Wily Mo Pena and Willie Harris, and will also need to figure out if the brittle $10.5M combo of Nick Johnson and Dmitri Young can provide any value. Dave Cameron summed up GM Jim Bowden’s circus-like roster construction best:

“If Bowden was a general contractor, he’d build houses with nine bedrooms, six garages, no bathrooms, and half a roof.”

According to Washington’s official depth chart as well as this MLB.com story, Dunn will be taking over duties at first base for the Nats. While the 29 year-old is allergic to all things leather (-12.6 career UZR/150 in the OF, -11.3 at 1B), shifting him to a corner infield spot is the lesser of two evils in the non-DH league.

There’s not much to say about Dunn’s offensive profile: while not aesthetically pleasing to those who fancy batting average, the former Red and D-Back has tremendous plate discipline and a ton of raw power. He has posted wOBA’s of .365, .399 and .383 over the past three seasons. Granted, those wOBA figures aren’t park-adjusted, but Dunn’s offensive production is still very impressive once you strip away the benefit derived from Great American Ballpark and his short time at Chase Field. Dunn’s park-adjusted batting runs above average over the 2006-2008 period: 17.9, 34.5 and 27.4.

The slugger who has eerily posted exactly 40 home runs each of the past four seasons will now reside in Nationals Park. We have only one year of data for the new stadium, so making any sweeping conclusions about the offensive environment of the park would be fruitless. It played as a slight hitter’s venue overall in 2008, though it slightly suppressed homers. Odds are, Dunn’s production will slip to some extent without GABP (128 HR park factor from ’06-08), but the park adjusted runs show that he’s still a very productive batsman.

If Dunn will be settling in as the everyday first baseman, then that leaves Nick Johnson and his partner is medical commiseration, Dmitri Young, without a place to play.

In case you have forgotten (perfectly understandable, considering he missed all of ’07 and accumulated just 147 PA last year), Johnson is a wonderful offensive player when he’s healthy. With a career .370 wOBA and a near-.400 OBP, “Nick the Stick” could be a fantasy beast in a utopian society where world hunger, global warming and war have all come to an end. Unfortunately, Johnson remaining upright for a full season might be the least probable of those four scenarios: Nick’s 2007 season was wrecked by a broken leg, and his ’08 campaign was derailed by a tendon injury in his right wrist. He has taken 600 PA in one season exactly once in his career (2006). Owed $5.5M in ’09, Johnson could find himself on another roster come April. The Indians, Angels and Giants seem like possible fits.

If the gifted-but-breakable Johnson seems superfluous in Washington, then it’s doubly so for Dmitri Young. Young came to the Nats at perhaps the lowest point of his professional career, having played poorly for the Tigers while dealing with personal issues in 2006. The minor league free agent resuscitated his career in ’07, posting a .374 wOBA in 508 PA. However, GM Bowden got the warm fuzzies for Young and his other minor league scrap heap find, Ronnie Belliard, and signed them both to misguided, multi-year extensions. Young took just 180 trips to the plate in 2008, as complications from diabetes led to weight problems. Outrighted off the 40-man roster during the fall, Young is currently listed as a non-roster invitee. $5M commitment or not, his chances of making the club appear between slim and none.

Now that we’ve assessed the first base situation, it’s time to focus on the truly messy conundrum: the outfield. First, let’s get this out of the way: the two guys that positively, absolutely need to be playing on an everyday basis are Elijah Dukes and Lastings Milledge. While Washington has a lot of bodies for those three outfield spots, Dukes (24) and Milledge (24 in April) are two gifted youngsters who will be part of the next relevant Nationals team.

Dukes’ highly promising 2008 season has been chronicled here before: he posted a robust .382 wOBA and was worth nearly 3 wins to the Nats, despite taking just 334 PA. Dukes’ plate discipline, pop and athleticism figure to make him a well-rounded contributor. To do anything but give the 6-1, 240 pounder a full season’s worth of at-bats would be a masochistic act by the Nationals.

Milledge remains a fairly raw player, having drawn a walk just 6.8% of the time in 2008 while swinging at about 32% of pitches thrown outside of the strike zone. However, he managed to post a decent .268/.330/.402 line, chipping in 24 steals in 33 attempts. A highly-touted prospect with the Mets, Milledge posted a career .303/.376/.477 line in the minors and possesses the skill-set to turn into a big asset for Washington in time. As with Dukes, Milledge needs everyday playing time to smooth out the rough edges in his game. Platooning a guy like this would be detrimental to the club’s overall rebuilding effort.

If Milledge and Dukes occupy center and right field, respectively, then the left field gig will likely go to newly-imported Josh Willingham. “The Hammer”, picked up from Florida along with Scott Olsen earlier this offseason, has been remarkably consistent at the plate over the past three seasons. From 2006-2008, Willingham has posted wOBA’s of .364, .365 and .363. 30 years old tomorrow, Willingham has some deficiencies with the leather (-6 career UZR/150 in LF), but his patience and solid pop make him a worthwhile contributor.

So, Willingham, Milledge and Dukes are the likely starters. That still leaves a couple of former top prospects and a defensive whiz to fight for roster spots. Former Reds outfielders are sort of like erstwhile Cincy GM Jim Bowden’s “White Whale”: in addition to bringing in Dunn, Bowden had previously swung trades to acquire Austin Kearns and Wily Mo Pena.

Kearns has been a pretty valuable player at times in his career. A plus defender with good plate patience, Kearns racked up 4.1 Value Wins between the Reds and the Nats in 2006, and was worth 3.6 wins during an ’07 season where he supplemented mild offense with great D. However, the 28 year-old’s offensive production has essentially fallen off of a cliff over the past two years. Kearns was never a hulking slugger (career .175 ISO), but he posted a .145 ISO in ’07 and a paltry .099 ISO in 2008. He still worked the count well and was the victim of poor luck on balls in play in 2008 (.251 BABIP), but the lack of punch is disconcerting. Kearns was beat up last year, dealing with a stress fracture in his foot and an elbow injury. Perhaps I’m just stubborn, but I think that Kearns could be of some value if he ends up taking his $8M salary elsewhere. It wasn’t that long ago that he was a solid contributor.

It’s almost impossible to fathom, but Wily Mo Pena has been in professional baseball since the end of Bill Clinton’s second presidential term. The Mets originally tried to snag Pena out of out the Dominican Republic, but later voided the contract. The Yankees swooped in during 1999, handing him a hefty $2.3M bonus. Later shipped to the Reds for another ill-fated prospect, Drew Henson, Pena was in the majors with Cincinnati by the age of 20. Pena has since played sporadically for the Reds, Red Sox and Nats, and owns a career .253/.307/.447 line.

One has to wonder what sort of player the 6-3, 245 pounder might have developed into had he been given sufficient time to hone his craft in the minors. That’s not to say that the 27 year-old is a lost cause, but the song remains the same for Pena: feats of strength sprinkled in with few walks (career 6.3 BB%) and a whole lot of whiffs (32.7%). Pena is coming off of a wretched 2008 (.227 wOBA in 206 PA) and appears to be lost in the shuffle with Washington. His skill-set just doesn’t appear suited to part time or pinch-hit duties: with a long, convoluted swing and a propensity to chase (33.2 O-Swing% from ’05 to ’08), Wily Mo might not be that useful off the bench.

Would you believe me if I told you that Willie Harris was Washington’s most valuable position player in 2008? I swear, I’m not making it up: the light-hitting utility man somehow managed to pop 13 HR in 424 PA, good for a .340 wOBA. He also posted a +32 UZR/150 in about 700 innings the outfield. All together, Willie managed to be worth 3.2 Value Wins, surpassing Christian Guzman’s 3.0 (honest, that’s true too) and Dukes’ 2.9. Of course, there’s little reason to take Harris’ offensive outburst as more than a blip: the 30 year-old has a career .343 slugging percentage and .303 wOBA in the majors. With so many other bats ahead of him, Harris figures to use his outstanding glove (career 15.2 UZR/150 in the OF) to carve out a role as Josh Willingham’s legs in the late innings. For fantasy purposes, he’s a non-factor.

Every time I think about Washington’s outfield/first base glut, I keep on getting this image in my head. I mean, how are they all going to fit in there? Odds are, one or possibly two of the fellows listed above will be changing addresses sometime soon. With Dunn now in D.C., the Nats must not sacrifice the development of either Dukes or Milledge- those guys need to play.

Fantasy players love sluggers. And few sluggers have been more consistent than Adam Dunn, who has cleared the 40-HR mark five years in a row, with exactly 40 dongs the past four seasons. He’s also been right around the 100-RBI mark that same time span. Up until last year, he’s also been right around 100 Runs scored. But his fantasy value took a hit last year as he dropped from 101 R to 79 and saw his AVG fall from .264 to .236.

Dunn reached base via a hit or walk 239 times in 2007 and 244 times last year. But that increase of five was reached thanks to 22 extra walks. Dunn suffered a 47-point drop in BABIP, which led to a .262 mark last year. Most of that damage occurred in June, when his BABIP was .190 even after eliminating the 39 strikeouts in 87 at-bats. Interestingly, Dunn snapped out of his funk after Blue Jays general manager J.P. Ricciardi trashed him on a radio show, saying, “We’ve done our homework on guys like Adam Dunn and there’s a reason why we don’t want Adam Dunn.

“Do you know the guy doesn’t really like baseball that much?” Ricciardi said to the caller. “Do you know the guy doesn’t have a passion to play the game that much?”

Ricciardi’s rant occurred right before an Interleague Series between the Reds and Blue Jays. Up until the series against Toronto, Dunn was mired in a 6-75 (.080 AVG) slump. He went 4-12 versus the Blue Jays and hit .249/.387/.529 for the remainder of the season.

Because Dunn is so consistent with his HR and RBI, where he rates as a fantasy hitter depends a lot on his AVG. He provides fourth-round value if he hits in the .260s, like he did in 2004 and 2007. But when that mark drops into the .230s, like it did in 2006 and 2008, he’s only giving owners seventh-round (or later) value.

What makes Dunn so intriguing to fantasy players is that you can match him with certain players and come up with a really nice combination. He is a fine complement to Jose Reyes or Ichiro Suzuki, to name just two guys who will give you AVG and SB but who may be lacking in HR and RBI.

So, where should you draft Dunn in 2009?

A lot will depend if you (or any other owner in your league) decide to punt steals. But even ignoring that for a moment, it’s hard to think about drafting him before the end of the fourth round. There is simply too much variability in his track record to think about him in the first three rounds.

Even the fourth round is a bit of a stretch, unless you are trying to make up power and can take the AVG and SB hit. But if Dunn is still sitting there at the end of the sixth round any team, regardless of its makeup to that point, should consider adding him because he’s likely to bounce back in BABIP and AVG in 2009.

And if Dunn signs with the Cubs, he may be worthy of even a higher draft pick. He has a lifetime .664 SLG mark in Wrigley Field in 217 at-bats, the highest mark for any stadium in which he has more than 66 lifetime ABs.