Archive for Adam LaRoche

According to MockDraftCentral.com, the Nationals infield has a couple of top 100 players, a top 150 player, and two others who are on the edge of fantasy viability. But as far as value goes, I think the three that drafters like the most are probably the ones I like the least. And one of those two the drafters have on the edge of viability is not within the realm of viability if you ask me.

Catcher

Ramos’ ADP is 244th, placing him just on the edge of fantasy relevance. With the projection I’ve listed above (projections are my own), I have him as the #11 catcher this year. Last year, 11 catchers finished with an ESPN player rater number in the top 250. The drafters are spot on having Ramos going at the tail end of shallow mixed league drafts.

Ramos is interesting because there is a possibility that he could be a top five catcher or completely irrelevant. They key is simply playing time. In the last two seasons combined he has come up just shy of 400 PA. My PA projection is fairly optimistic, and the Fan projections are slightly more optimistic coming in at 467 PA. The higher that PA total gets above 450, the higher he’ll finish among catchers. Read the rest of this entry »

If there is a flaw in the pricing of hitters on daily fantasy sites, it’s that recent performance seems to be weighted too heavily. Just as an example, Jason Heyward was among the cheaper options for awhile after his slow start, but all the underlying numbers portended that he would rebound. And he has. He’s hitting .296 with four home runs over the last 30 days. If you rode Heyward until his price crept back up, you got some nice value for awhile.

If you can identify other guys with bad traditional numbers but good underlying numbers in the most recent sample, you can find some value plays to ride almost daily until the price catches back up. I like to start by looking back at K% over the last month or so. I’m looking for guys who are showing better plate discipline than they have in recent years but whose production and fantasy value is being depressed by some other factor. Below is a list of the hitters with the biggest improvements in K% over the last 30 days (min. 60 PA) compared to their K% since the beginning of 2012. Read the rest of this entry »

Going into the season, Davey Johnson, Mike Rizzo, and the rest of the Washington Nationals’ decision makers certainly expected to get strong production from their first basemen and that’s exactly what happened. Nationals’ first basemen combined to hit .285/.355/.547 with 40 HR, 118 RBI, and even a single, solitary stolen base. That .902 OPS was the third highest mark in baseball behind the Tigers — the honorable Prince Fielder presiding — and the Reds pair of Joey Votto and Todd Frazier, though the Nationals were the only team to break the 40 home run barrier. So all went exactly according to plan as Washington changed the old saying around to “first in war, first in peace, first in the NL East.”

Except it wasn’t nearly so simple as that. Read the rest of this entry »

RotoGraphs is embarking on a series of player pro/con debates in an effort to thoroughly cover players that are particularly popular in either a positive or negative way.  Today, I’ll be discussing the pros of Nationals 1B/OF Mike Morse and Eno Sarris will tackle the cons on Monday.

The title of this post actually says it all and if I wanted to just type out his batting line over the last few weeks with the phrase, “nuff said,” that would probably cover it.  But for the sake of argument, and knowing that Eno will shred me if I don’t come up with enough evidential proof as to why Mike Morse is, indeed, fantasy gold, we’ll go a little further. Read the rest of this entry »

The Nationals found their Adam Dunn replacement today, reportedly agreeing to a two-year deal with journeyman Adam LaRoche. Only 31, this will be his fifth team – so another new team for LaRoche and another Adam at first will make this transition seamless for both sides, right?

Er, not quite. Dunn had a lifetime ISO of .271 and a 16.3% career walk rate while LaRoche comes in at .216 and 9.2% in those two categories. That’s a lot of lost offense. It can be as obvious as looking at Dunn’s constant home run totals around 40, while LaRoche’s hover around 25. Old-school stats actually work in this case.

LaRoche has been passed around so often because, well, he’s so average. Since 2008, qualified first basemen have averaged a .219 ISO – LaRoche had a .216 ISO over that same time period. The same group of first basemen had a collective 21% strikeout rate. LaRoche has a 25% career strikeout rate. They walked 11.5% of the time, LaRoche 9.5% of the time. They averaged 25.9 home runs per season, LaRoche has hit exactly 25 in each of the last three seasons. LaRoche has had a 116 wRC+ over the last three years, which looks okay until you see that the average first baseman has had a 130 wRC+. In fact, since each part of the package is so close to average or just below, he hasn’t even been an average first baseman.

At 31, this isn’t likely to change, especially given LaRoche’s move from Arizona to Washington. Washington’s park has a 94 park factor for home runs by lefties, and a 108 factor for doubles. That seems fine, except that LaRoche played in a park that showed a 114 home run park factor and a 115 doubles factor for lefties last year… and showed the third-worst ISO of his career along with the second-worst batting average. The boost barely showed.

Doesn’t matter, we can pencil him in for a .270ish batting average and 25 home runs, right? After all, that describes most of his seasons despite the different home ballparks. Well, maybe, but the Nationals’ park will have the worst park factor for lefty home runs of all the parks he called home. 20 home runs is just as much a possibility as 25. If he pairs last seasons’ career-worst strikeout rate (30.7%) with a BABIP more in line with his career number (.330 last year, .315 career), he may have another year with a .260 batting average – or worse.

Now you’re looking at a possible .260/20 HR guy. In a recent set of projections, I had LaRoche around 30th, but that was before he signed with a team that could afford him regular at-bats, so the projection only had 416 at-bats. With 500+ at-bats, he could ‘zoom’ up the charts… to about 27th or so. Would you rather have LaRoche, or take a chance on someone like Brandon Allen or Matt LaPorta? Or, if you like veterans, LaRoche or Garret Jones or Luke Scott?

Looks like LaRoche is almost toast, in fantasy terms.

It’s a tough offseason to be a veteran free agent first baseman. Though it may normally be a difficult position to be in anyway, there are now too many lumbering older dudes looking for too few chairs and the music will eventually stop. Who will win this round of musical chairs? Will any of the bunch succeed and therefore become a fantasy value pick in 2011?

By the current count, the Cubs, Jays, Nationals, White Sox and Rays don’t have a traditional first baseman on their roster, and they probably represent the best opportunities for an every-day first base job for Adam Dunn, Lance Berkman, Derrek Lee, Paul Konerko, Carlos Pena, Adam LaRoche, and Lyle Overbay. Someone will probably be on the outside looking in.

Perhaps that is over-rating the dire state of the market. There might be a chance that the Red Sox, Rangers or Orioles buy a first baseman on the market. They have options at the position, but they could also move players around. Still, the Orioles and Rangers are more likely to solve the situation with their cheaper internal options – Luke Scott and Nolan Reimold could be good enough to man DH and first base for a rebuilding club, and Mitch Moreland and Vladimir Guerrero (provided he re-signs) could do the job for a Rangers team that might be looking to spend money on pitching.

If you drafted today, you’d have to downgrade the whole bunch – save Dunn – because of the uncertainty. But you’d also have to downgrade the older men in the crew because of their age. Only 18 firstbasemen over 35 have put up better than an .800 OPS since 1975, and only Mark McGwire, Andres Gallaraga, Jeff Bagwell and Carlos Delgado hit more than 30 home runs over that age. Most likely, only one of Lee, Berkman and Overbay will join the .800+ OPS crew – and none fit in the second group when it comes to power.

Really, the decision comes down to Lee and Berkman if you’re looking for a bounce-back value at the position at the end of your deep-league draft. Lee had back problems, and Berkman has a degenerative knee problem – neither state of health induces much hope for a clean bill of health in 2011. Berkman has said that the Cardinals, Cubs, Rockies, A’s, Pirates and Blue Jays are interested – but the NL teams on the list would most likely want him as a backup (save the Cubs), and the AL teams are rumored to be interested in him as a DH. Players often suffer worse numbers as they transition to DH, and Berkman’s .255/.358/.349 line in New York at DH doesn’t offer much hope. The market for Lee so far has been deadly quiet, which may have something to do with his offseason thumb surgery – or his age.

In any case, it’s a tough season to be a free agent first baseman, and it’s a tough time to be drafting – this is why we schedule drafts as late as we can before the season starts. Once the actual deals come through, we’ll evaluate their situations more fully, but this serves as a general warning. There’s not much upside here as history doesn’t like 35-year-old first basemen. Temper any excitement you might get when looking at their historical statistics.

If you asked fantasy players to name a player who performed well in a split, the vast majority of them would name Adam LaRoche and his play in the second half of the season. True to form, LaRoche has a .323/.366/.570 line in the second half. Before the All-Star break, LaRoche had a .787 OPS.

But it is another split that is really making things interesting for LaRoche. For the first time in his career, LaRoche is punishing LHP. Coming into this season he had a .251 lifetime AVG versus southpaws. Only in 2007, when he hit .299, did LaRoche have a good AVG versus lefties. While he had decent to good ISOs versus southpaws, he batted .250 or less in five of his six previous seasons.

It is a different story in 2010. Overall he has a .327/.369/.602 line in 122 PA versus lefties. Since the All-Star break he is 18-44 (.409) with 4 2B, 3B, 2 HR and 10 RBIs against LHP. That works out to a .682 SLG and a 1.117 OPS.

Most of the damage came in one game against Jonathon Niese, when he had 2 HR and 6 RBIs. But LaRoche has also fared well against Jonathan Sanchez and Cole Hamels in this stretch and had big games against Scott Olsen and Ross Detwiler, too.

Lefties out of the bullpen are still having typical success versus LaRoche, as he is 4-17 against southpaw relievers since the break, without an extra-base hit or RBI. He is 0-3 against both Joe Thatcher and Oliver Perez.

We know in the aggregate that most splits have no predictive value. The most likely answer to LaRoche’s success this year versus southpaws is that it is merely an outlier in his performance and that he will regress towards his lifetime .784 OPS.

However, given LaRoche’s history of consistently performing well in the second half, fantasy players would be remiss not to track his performance versus lefties the rest of the season. If he adds hitting southpaws to his resume, LaRoche should move up from last year’s 219 ADP.

Today is supposed to be a waiver wire article, but we’ll have plenty of those. For those of you still planning one last draft (and the internal FanGraphs league is one of those), I thought I would present to you my second-ever auction draft. Yes, I’m a noob. But with more mocks and real-life auctions in my review mirror, I’ll be able to step up the auction coverage here at RotoGraphs.

Here are my results, with comments coming after:

Position Player $
C Brian McCann 22
C Jarrod Saltalamacchia 1
1B Adrian Gonzalez 31
2B Brandon Phillips 21
3B Gordon Beckham 17
SS Alcides Escobar 12
CI Paul Konerko 10
MI Chris Getz 1
OF Justin Upton 30
OF Carlos Lee 19
OF Matt LaPorta 4
OF Seth Smith 1
OF Scott Podsednik 1
UT Gaby Sanchez 2
BN Xavier Nady 1
BN Matt Joyce 1
Total Offense: $173

Position Player $
P CC Sabathia 26
P Josh Johnson 22
P Brett Anderson 16
P Roy Oswalt 6
P Ryan Franklin 5
P Ryan Madson 4
P Kerry Wood 3
P Ryan Rowland-Smith 2
P Jonathon Niese 1
BN Ian Kennedy 1

Pitching total: $87

This was a 15-team put on by MDS (MillionDollarSleeper), who I’m sure you’ve seen around the comment boards at this site and others. He brought in an impressive collection of talent including David Goleblahblah, Paul Greco from FantasyPros911, Tim Heany from KFFL, Rudy Gamble and Grey Albright from Razzball, Paul Bourdett from AOL Fantasy Fanhouse, Antonio D’Arcangelis from RotoExperts, Scott Swanay from Fantasy Sherpas, Chris Carbonell from the Starbonell BlogTalkRadio show, Charlie Saponara from FB365, and yours truly.

Given that it was a 15-team league and my second attempt ever, I don’t think I fared so badly. I’d say Adrian Gonzalez for $31 was a little much, but the top-tier first basemen went for closer to $40 and Albert Pujols went for $48, so I think I did okay there. Maybe $10 is too much for Paul Konerko, but Adam LaRoche went minutes later for $15 and I felt (much) better. Things happened a little differently with Alcides Escobar – ten minutes after wondering if I’d spent too much on him, Everth Cabrera went for $4 and I wondered if Escobar’s superior batting average (based on fewer Ks and minor league history) was worth $8. Maybe it will prove to be. Carlos Lee for $19 looks about as bad as he does in a uniform, but the crib sheet I was using from LastPlayerPicked.com had Lee worth $21 next year and I was happy to get the power production with a good batting average for relatively cheap. And as for Scott Podsednik and Gaby Sanchez, who both showed up on my NFBC teams, too: They were cheap. And I think they’ll play almost regularly all year. So that’s something.

On the pitching side, CC Sabathia went for less than Johan Santana ($28), Dan Haren ($31), Felix Hernandez ($33), Zack Greinke ($32) and Tim Lincecum ($41), so I was happy to get my ace for cheaper than most. I also preferred CC, despite his big innings totals, over Ubaldo Jimenez ($26) and Ricky Nolasco ($25) as much as I like the younger pitchers. Lord knows CC has put up big innings totals before.

Once I spent my top-closer money on Brett Anderson, I knew I’d be looking for value in the saves category. Advice from Baseball Prospectus’ Marc Normandin was ringing in my ear (punt saves!), but I decided I’d rather try to field a full team this time. Once he’s healthy, I happen to think that the Indians will want to run Kerry Wood out there at closer to pump up his value for a trade, meaning that between him and Ryan Madson, I think I might have a second closer in there somewhere.

It’s kind of a wonky team and seems devoid of elite, top-shelf talent, but it just might work. What do you guys think?

If there is one thing that fantasy owners like, it is consistency. One of the most consistent players in recent seasons is Adam LaRoche, who just signed a free agent deal with the Diamondbacks. Now that we know where LaRoche will play this season, let’s look at what he is likely to produce. Here are his fantasy stats for the past three seasons:

2007: .272-21-88-71-1
2008: .270-25-85-66-1
2009: .277-25-83-78-2

Of course, fantasy owners know LaRoche for something else, too. He is one of the players who has consistently performed better in the second half of the season compared to the first half. LaRoche has been in the league for six seasons and in five of those he has posted a higher OPS after the All-Star break, including four years where the difference was over 200 points. Here are his lifetime splits by halves:

First Half: .252/.326/.447 in 1785 PA
Second H: .300/.363/.546 in 1445 PA

Over at The Book Blog, MGL and TangoTiger have done a bunch of work on splits, specifically on halves. MGL said, “Using the ‘same weight’ method, I got an ‘r’ of -.004 (again, 6427 player seasons).

Using the second method, weighting by PA, I got an ‘r’ of .001.

Sorry guys, I see no evidence of these splits having any meaning whatsoever. None.”

MGL went on to offer a $100 donation to charity if anyone could find a predictive value to splits (aside from a few with previously documented small predictive values). Nearly 15 months later, nobody has posted any research looking for a reward.

But, what works for the aggregate does not necessarily work for the individual, as we see here in the extreme case of LaRoche. The question becomes, should we weight LaRoche differently given his track record?

Perhaps more importantly, are fantasy owners valuing LaRoche correctly, given his overall performance the past three years? Currently, he has an ADP of 255, making him on average a pick early in the 22nd round.

If LaRoche can duplicate what he has done recently, he will be a steal at that pick. And now he gets to call Chase Field home. After spending most of his career in Atlanta, where Turner Field has a multi-year park factor of 98, LaRoche will play half of his games in a good hitter’s park. Baseball-Reference.com gives Chase Field a multi-year park factor of 109. In his brief playing time so far in Arizona, LaRoche has a .661 OPS in 43 PA.

Perhaps those at-bats came early in the season.

Either everyone wanted Adam LaRoche last season, or no one did. It’s hard to tell. LaRoche started the year with the Pirates, and was traded to the Red Sox as the trade deadline was still on the horizon. 9 days later, Boston shipped him off to the Atlanta Braves, bringing LaRoche’s pre free agent career full circle.

LaRoche, a notoriously slow starter, ended the season with 25 homers to go along with a .277/.355/.488 line. He also had 83 RBI and 78 runs, and most importantly, 2 steals. His numbers are right in line with what one should expect from LaRoche, as he hit 25 HR and had an identical wOBA (.357) in 2008. The only year he hasn’t had a line drive percentage below 20% was his rookie year in 2004.

With LaRoche, MLB and fantasy teams know what they are getting: a .275 average with 20+ dingers and 80 RBI. No surprises here. Only problem is, the level of consistency he has is not always rewarded. Teams are more likely to go after a player with the upside for a better season than LaRoche can provide, even if it may come back to bite them in the end.

Because of this, LaRoche’s suitors this offseason will be limited. The most likely scenario is LaRoche going back to the Braves on a one or two-year deal. The Giants could also get in on the action if they decide to non-tender Ryan Garko and spend the bulk of their money in the left field market. After those two, it’s a crapshoot for LaRoche on the open market. I do not foresee any AL team pursuing LaRoche and envisioning him as their everyday first baseman.

If he leaves the Braves, his teammates will notice he is gone more off the field than on it. He was a part of the nice streak the Braves put together to end the year, but he is much better at the end of seasons, anyway. The Braves would likely replace him in house, and the numbers from whoever moves over to first will get a boost from extended playing time.

If LaRoche lands a starting gig, owners should prefer that it is with Atlanta. The talent surrounding him is better than that on the Giants, and the stadium is a little more power friendly. You know what you are getting with LaRoche, so make sure he’s starting before letting him sit on your bench next season.