Archive for Albert Pujols

I’ve written about Luis Valbuena a couple of different times this winter: once in regard to the third basemen available on the free agent market and then again as a comparison against Chase Headley, as it looked like the New York Yankees were in pursuit of the veteran third baseman. With Valbuena now suiting up for the Los Angeles Angels (of Anaheim) thanks to a recent two-year deal, now comes the time that we evaluate whether or not he’ll be a fantasy asset in the coming year.

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Mike Podhorzer and Chad Young embarked on a journey–quest to find an offensive expected (x)HR/FB rate.

Based on batted ball distance and angle, you can go to Baseball Heatmaps (BHM) and find expected versus actual homers or verify HR/FB ratios through HR+FB average distance.

Here’s an uber simple descriptive balls-in-play (BIP) expected homer (xHR) formula:

xHR = PA*Contact%*OFFB%*HR/FB. Looking at the outcomes from last year we have the following list first ordered by the most likely regressions:

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It’s quite possible Albert Pujols’s obituary was written a little too soon. I wrote him off; not entirely, but basically. Projection systems liked him fairly well early on; I didn’t, mainly due to injury concerns. Perhaps, that’s indicative of the leagues I play in, and their setup – OBP leagues mostly, where he hasn’t been quite as valuable lately. Either way, I didn’t want much to do with King Albert this season. I owned him in one league – an Ottoneu points league, purchased for $23 ($400 budget). I wish I had owned him in more. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s official. 100% of my value is bothering @jeffwzimmerman to run data and then use that data for said content. I did just that this morning for updated shift data. I believe the last time he posted related content on RotoGraphs was here back in May looking at: Early Hitter Shift Data.

It was because of this post and his balls in play (groundball and pop-up rates) that led me to believe Albert Pujols was going to drop off/continue his downward trend. I guess I pushed out the fact that he was the best hitter of his generation. While the .375 BABIP (from the above link) against shifts did not last, he’s at a very respectable .284. Between this and additional discipline (best contact rate since 2008 and hacking less at stuff outside of the zone), he is able to hover around a .280 BA, which remains elite in conjunction with 30HR, 90R and 100+RBI.

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First, the ?’s.

Second, the historical K%’s.

And of course, the Grid…

1) The ?’s

Angels at Twins: Glen Perkins has a sore neck (received a MRI after tingling, but there was no structural damage). Ron Gardy said he should be back within a few a days so I wouldn’t jump to the waiver wire for anyone. We didn’t get a chance to see who would have had the opportunity to close out the games for the Twins tonight. While it was presumably Jared Burton, he received the loss, getting beat by a Albert Pujols double after a single (Cron) and walk (Trout) and then Anthony Swarzak let in the inherited runner.  Huston Street earned save #37. That’s 3 straight appearances for Street and he could potentially use the day off tomorrow. He only has 2 k’s in through his last 5 appearances, and his win yesterday came from a blown save. He induced only 1 whiff from 6 swings tonight.

Astros at Athletics: Sean Doolittle had a successful bullpen session today and should be activated next week. Until then, it’s still Eric O’Flaherty closing out games. David Wiers called O’Flaherty a wild-card for the closing role prior to the season and the ground ball rate (58+%) and weak contact (.213 BABIP) holds true. Tonight, Luke Gregerson pitched a scoreless 9th for the win. Heck, if you’re own a hold league, why not own the entire Oakland bullpen next year?

Chad Qualls remains under the weather with a case of the shaky qualls. He let both of Scott Feldman’s inherited runners score and then gave up the winning single to blow a 3-1 lead in the bottom of the 9th. I would think and hope that Tony Sipp is next up  for the closing role. Other than a shellacking on 8/25 (4BB and 4 ER without recording an out), he’s been lights out since 8/12 (12 K’s, 0 BB’s and only 1 hit). Yesterday, he struck out 4 of 7 batters. I’d like to see him with the gig.

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The discussion below does not involve bizarre predictions. In fact, it doesn’t even include bold predictions. Essentially, the discussion is just the opposite of my bold predictions post last week. Or opposite in that I’ll be discussing players I dislike compared to the average as opposed to players I like. As for what ‘the average is,’ I’m using the expert consensus rank (ECR) from FantasyPros.com. If you’re still confused on the premise of this post, maybe the image below will help.

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With the fantasy baseball season coming to an end, we can all now sit back, relax and enjoy the MLB playoffs. If you’ve got a dog in this hunt, I wish you nothing but the best. If not, then pick someone you’ll at least enjoy watching should they win the whole thing. This should be a fun October. But in the meantime, it’s my turn to step up and review the 10 Bold Predictions I made back in late March. I felt pretty good about them going in, and here’s how they ended up coming out… Read the rest of this entry »

Whatever happened to the power of positive thinking? Obviously it’s a lost art form when you’re talking about a certain percentage of fantasy baseballers. If you recall a Kicking Rocks piece I did  during the spring called Draft Characters, you’ll remember the outline I provided of the different types of people you’ll likely face in the war room on Draft Day. The first “person” discussed was the Know-It-All — the guy loaded with information and always willing to endow you with his wisdom. Well, what I didn’t tell you is what happens to this person once the season begins. The best way to describe it is to equate him to a petulant child who just learned the word ‘no.’ No player you like, does he like. No trade that you make, would he make, and heaven forbid you play with him in a league where you vote on trades. The transformation takes place shortly after the start of the season and your league know-it-all sadly becomes The Naysayer. Read the rest of this entry »

Back in 2009, Eric Seidman wrote a piece here that looked into when samples become reliable for certain statistics. The piece was based off work done by Pizza Cutter. You can read the piece here for a full explanation of how the conclusions were reached, but below is a list showing how many PAs it takes for a statistic to become reliable. Read the rest of this entry »

Is it really that time of year again? Somebody pinch me. We are less than a week away from the 2013 MLB season’s first official game and with that, the starting gun for the fantasy baseball season will have sounded. I’ll be damned if that doesn’t give me the warm fuzzies in my belly and that tingly feeling in the nether-regions that us married guys don’t get to feel too often anymore. What? Too much information? Well look at the damn headline, people! It’s all about being bold today and while I would like to boldly predict that my wife will be so turned on by my fantasy prowess that I’ll get that tingly feeling all year long, I’ll just stick to baseball here. Here are my 10 bold predictions for the 2013 season. Read the rest of this entry »