Archive for Addison Russell

This is the best rookie class for fantasy baseball nerds in a long time, possibly of all time. Between hitters like Miguel Sano, Joc Pederson, Kyle Schwarber, Kris Bryant, Carlos Correa and pitchers ranging from Roberto Osuna to Lance McCullers, Noah Syndergaard and Raisel Iglesias et al. Rather than focus on the rookies that win roto-MVP awards or fantasy Cy Youngs, and since I’m a big fan of self-deprecation, I’ll be focusing on the rookies I gambled and whiffed on. I’m tentatively calling it the “Sigh, young” because sometimes I would see what my young players did and just audible sigh. Prospects can break your heart. If I were more clever, I’d think of a separate award for hitters and pitchers, but alas, I am not. Perhaps the comment section will help. I’ve limited the player pool by only including rookie hitters with a minimum of 100 plate appearances or rookie pitchers with at least 30 innings pitched.

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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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At the end of a long weekend that went by much too fast, as another absurd week of paper-pushing, traffic, and tension quickly closes in, I re-read The Stranger. In closing, Albert Camus writes, “I felt as if I understood why at the end of her life she had taken a ‘fiance,’ why she had played at beginning again. Even there, in that home where lives were fading out, evening was a kind of wistful respite. So close to death, Maman must have felt free then and ready to live it all again.”

Reading that, I was suddenly able to burst through my Sunday night anxiety. So here we are for another edition of Fantasy Baseball Existentialism. Last week, I read Joshua Ferris’ novel To Rise Again at a Decent Hour. The novel relates here because there are elements of existentialism and baseball. The main character is a Red Sox fan who is struggling to stay in love with the team after they’ve disappointed him by winning two championships, which creates nostalgia for a lifetime of the club’s familiar letdowns.

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When scouting we get a snapshot of a player. The hope is, the player we see today evolves into the player we envision him to be. Ideally, we can watch this progression and alter our perspectives as time passes. That brings me to today’s prospect, Oakland’s Addison Russell. Twice this year I’ve had the chance to see Russell with the Vermont Lake Monsters of the New York – Penn League. But, a year before I was able to see him live, my Bullpen Banter colleague Steve Fiorindo scouted Russell at the Perfect Game Showcase in San Diego. After several weeks and a promotion, Stephen Kuperman was able to see him against more advanced pitching in the Midwest League. It is my hope that these three individual looks at Russell demonstrates that prospects evolve over time and while we can learn a lot in a single look at a player, scouting in small sample sizes can be problematic if we aren’t open to new information and making adjustments. Of course, I’ll also talk about his fantasy outlook, but you’ll have to humor me for just a moment.

Before I begin, take a brief look at Steve’s video of Russell at the Perfect Game Showcase. Read the rest of this entry »