Archive for Adrian Beltre

I’ve often stated that I was going to run a fantasy baseball team simply by rotating players in my lineup coming off of terrible offensive weeks. I’ve never spent enough time to actually formulate a plan (and frankly, when I spend any time on it at all, the whole thing blows up in my face) but you know where I’m going with this. The idea is simply to play the regression game, for better or for worse.

Would it work? Probably not, because as a dedicated reader, you know there’s a lot more behind a BABIP than whether a ball happened to be a frozen rope right at the third baseman or if a ball Texas-leagued itself in the Bermuda triangle between the 5, 6, and 7. Or if you get your hits like this.

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Mike Trout is a stud.  No question about it.  At 20 years old, the Angels outfielder has taken MLB by storm with a .341/.397/.562 slash line that comes with 12 home runs, 40 RBI, 57 runs scored and 26 stolen bases. He’s delivered all of that and, mind you, he was in the minors for the first month of the season. The production has been phenomenal and as an owner of Trout in my primary keeper league, the smile is so wide, it makes the Kool-Aid guy look like a crying fool. But while the old adage is not being able to see the forest through the trees, so many keeper league owners are so hell-bent on building up their future that they fail to see the season at hand and are so willing to dismantle their entire squad simply to acquire Trout and hand me the league this year. Read the rest of this entry »

So he’s a third baseman who doesn’t wear a cup, he can deliver unmatched death stares to teammates, he’ll freak out if you touch his head, he likes to appeal his own check swings to the first base umpire, and he frequently drops to one knee when crushing a pitch. For these and for many other reasons, Adrian Beltre is just a lot of fun to root for.

On top of it all, he’s been a terrific third baseman in fantasy baseball circles as a player you can rely on for a plus batting average, great power, and tons of RBI. But there’s been an interesting trend in 2012 that might be a short-term quirk, or perhaps a sign of a problem going forward.

Beltre owns a current slash line of .296/.325/.483 with ten home runs, 30 runs scored, and 37 RBI, so he’s performed as most would have expected on the season. But his last couple of weeks haven’t been at all useful to fantasy owners. Since May 28th, Beltre his hitting .233/.292/.283 with no home runs and just three doubles over 65 plate appearances, and he’s struck out 16 times. His BABIP during that period is fully .318, so he’s actually getting lucky bounces right now. This is, of course, a small sample and it’s likely to register on the spectrum of what goes up must come down. Still, there are a couple of other interesting tidbits to be aware of.

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We’re about a third of the way through the season, and while the proverbial gloves aren’t going to come off, I think I’ll stop coddling some and for others, I’ll be giving credit where credit is due. I wouldn’t say this is a “if the draft were held today” kind of list, but perhaps some amalgam of ranking based on current performance and anticipated performance for the rest of the season. I’ll do my best to tease out a rationale for the higher tiers.

The top tier of third basemen has historically been quite small, in large part due to the dearth of real superstars at the position. But since Jose Bautista has been acting like he might actually be mortal, it’s left room for some others to join him at the top.

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Just a month in and we’ve seen players like Danny Valencia and Lonnie Chisenhall lose their jobs, kids like Kyle Seager and William Middlebrooks defy expectations, and we’ve seen big guns like Evan Longoria and Pablo Sandoval go down to injury, among others. Third base has had a degree of volatility that has made it a particularly difficult position to manage.

While I’ve typically been more conservative in May in the past, there are definitely some movers early on. I wouldn’t say this is a list that represents “if the draft were held today” kind of a sentiment, it’s more a melding of injuries, expected future performance, but also performance to date.

Tier one is pretty unsurprising.

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Tiers seem to unearth the mighty wrath of fantasy baseball enthusiasts, but since we’ve already seen the third base consensus rankings and my general reactions to them thereafter, it’s time to categorize the gentlemen at the five into tidy little compartments of descending desirability.

As you well know, the tiers are not hard and fast — they change (sometimes dramatically) over the course of the first few months of the season. In fact, there’s been movement in these tiers even before I had a chance to publish them! It’s important to remember that these are not keeper tiers — they simply attempt to arrange rough approximations of value in standard 5×5 leagues as you prepare for what might be your final draft(s).

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The first tier to the third base keeper rankings was decidedly small, featuring only Evan Longoria and Jose Bautista (for those of you wondering, yes, Jason Catania and I have decided that he’s awesome enough to be top keeper at two positions). There was a moderate degree of discontent regarding the decisions revolving around the first tier, although I’ll admit I was expecting a greater degree of vitriol.

Many of you seem to have concluded (as several of us around here have), that third base is riddled with land mines relative to keeper status and it’s hard to use one of your few keeper picks on guys that are either old, ineffective, or so young that predicting future performance remains rather tenuous. Nonetheless, the second tier features some first tier talent based on 2011 performance not to mention some formerly high-ranked players who didn’t live up to expectations in 2011. The second tier, in fact, is long enough to consume two posts, featuring (in no particular order) Brett Lawrie, Adrian Beltre, Aramis Ramirez, Ryan Zimmerman, David Wright, Pablo Sandoval, and Kevin Youkilis. I’ll take a look at half that batch today.

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– Despite being nearly ready to return in early-August, Adrian Beltre is going to be on the DL for a little while longer. Beltre aggravated his injured hamstring while running earlier this month, and has essentially had to start his rehab over from scratch, making an August return unlikely. It’s a shame for Beltre owners, as the third baseman was putting up good power numbers and could have expected his batting average to rise. His injury may have hurt his fantasy owners, but it has helped owners of Mike Napoli and Mitch Moreland, as the two have have been seeing extremely consistent playing time.

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The trading deadline is behind us and we’re knocking on the door of the stretch run. Somehow, it’s already August. And it was just a few short months ago that Evan Longoria was the consensus #1 third baseman and just a couple months ago that Aramis Ramirez appeared to have lost his eyesight. It’s been said more than once on this platform that the one constant is change, so with that in mind, I give you the updated third base rankings for August.

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When I first sat down to write this week’s column, I was all set to spend my time bashing Adam Dunn.  You know, talk about how I built up the rest of my infield with the first two picks, grabbed King Felix in the third round and then, when all the other first base mashers were off the board, swoop in and steal Dunn and his 40 bombs in the fourth.  It was the “perfect” strategy right up until the part where Dunn decided he couldn’t hit anymore.  But then, as I was wrapping up my introduction, I got a text that changed my whole plan.  You know the text I’m talking about — the one from that guy in my primary league. Read the rest of this entry »