Archive for Alex Rodriguez

I’ve done a fair amount of reading on third base rankings headed into the 2011 fantasy baseball season. While most prognosticators and enthusiasts recognize some elite talent at the tippy-top of the list, references such as “terrifying,” “black hole,” and, ahem, “talentless batch of hackers” have described the rest of the list, which I might venture to simply call not terribly deep. Third base will present many managers with a challenge, but I’m not so sure there aren’t some gems to be had in this list.

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Here are the results from this week’s groundbreaking editions of ADP Crowdsourcing, as it was our first time trying out a closer, a player who missed all of 2010, and a top-25 talent.

Joe Nathan
My vote: 8
Average: 11
Median: 11
Std Dev: 4

So, none of us really have much of an idea where Nathan will go, do we? If there’s one thing we can all agree on, it’s that Nathan would go somewhere around the seventh round if he were healthy, maybe even earlier if a closer run gets going. But, we just don’t know how he’ll respond coming back from his injury, at least not yet. If we did this with Nathan in spring training, when we have some sort of read on his status, our results would probably be very different. If he looks healthy, an 11th round selection is obviously a steal. But if he’s healthy, you aren’t going to get him in the 11th, are you? Just because of the inherent risk involved, I’m probably not going to draft Nathan this year, but if I did, it’d be in the 10-12 range.

Alex Rodriguez
My vote: 2
Average: 2.21
Median: 2
Std Dev: 1.05

Reader “Jason B” brought up a very good point in the comments on Wednesday, wondering why I didn’t group the selections for A-Rod by pick number rather than round number. I probably should have, but I did want to see how the format worked with an early round talent. I’ll probably try an early round guy soon, and will try out pick number instead of round. But, the old method held up fine, showing that A-Rod will likely go in the early second round, and he probably won’t fall further than the early third. I think he’s a great 1-2 turn candidate this year, and I’d be more than happy to take him there.

Today’s ADP Crowdsourcing comes from a suggestion by RotoGraphs’ own Mike Axisa. Snaps for Mike.

Alex Rodriguez’s 2010 had some ups, but it also had more than it’s fair share of downs. He started out his season with a very lackluster April, but bounced back and had an outstanding May, when he hit 5 homers and had a .330 batting average. Then in June, he was down again, but he did have some decent power numbers during the month.

July and August were really scary, because A-Rod had a LD% in the single digits, yet still managed to hit 10 homers in those two months. A-Rod ended the year with a bang, hitting 9 bombs in September with an average just below .300, giving some of us hope for a much better 2011.

A-Rod is 35 years old (36 towards the end of next season), and with his recent injury history, it’s not a surprise to see his production dip a bit. But, who are we to say a season with 30 HR and 125 RBI is bad? It just seems like it because of the problems A-Rod had in the middle of his season.

Believe it or not, A-Rod ended 2010 as a top-5 third baseman, and I don’t think anyone realizes it. However, he never would have done so without his outstanding September, and those numbers came right when fantasy owners needed them most. Will the average owner buy him based on his name value, last year’s overall production, or will they let him fall this year? That’s for you to decide.

Below is a link to the voting form, and please read the wording carefully. This is not where you would draft him, but where you think he’ll be drafted in most leagues. For the voting, we’re assuming a 12-team standard league, using 5×5 scoring.

To submit your vote, click here.

Alex Rodriguez finally hit his 600th, but his owners have noticed that there was something wonky going on before the race to the benchmark ever started. A look at Jack Moore’s piece on the moment gives you a hint, but just look at the Rodriguez and his ISO over his career and it comes into sharp focus:

His offense has been declining for some time now, and power seems to be the reason. His flyball percentage is not the culprit, as it has stayed remarkably steady. Even though his HR/FB percentage has hit a career low this year, it was within his career range before this year, so that seems to be a lagging indicator. Is there an indicator out in front that might have been a harbinger of this power slump?

His hit tracker information is interesting. Using HitTrackerOnline, we can see that the average speed on his home runs has not been the same since 2008:

Of course, that was about the same time that Rodriguez started having hip troubles that has led to surgery and soreness since. In the spring of 2009, the news dropped and he hasn’t been the same since. Fanhouse scout Frankie Pilliere had something interesting scouting things to say, that also centered on the hips. It’s About the Money Stupid spotted this great piece:

Essentially, it all comes down to his lower half. When he’s right, no hitter has the balance and strength in the lower half that he does.
[…]
The swing we see from Rodriguez now is one more reliant on his upper body, with far less explosive torque and his hips following his stride.
[…]
Without creating that coiled spring effect before he releases his hands and with less drive of the hips toward the baseball, bat speed is going to suffer. And while there is no official measurement of actual bat speed available, we’ve seen Rodriguez get beat more often by the fastball without that powerful base from which to hit. It’s just not possible to produce the same bat speed.
[…]
If you’re an optimistic person, and expect the Rodriguez of old to return, what you’ll see is a smaller, abbreviated leg kick where he has very little movement in his lower half before he drives his hips at the ball. You’ll also see his head stay much more centered over the middle of his body and far less upper body involvement. If he can accomplish all that, we’ll see his bat speed return and the more prolific home run numbers will follow.

It looks like the numbers and the scouting facts align: Alex Rodriguez does not have the same juice in his hips that he used to. It’s hard for the average fan to notice, but watching the leg kick and his hips is one key. But, as we fantasy fans know, it’s much easier to watch the speed off his bat and trust the numbers once they turn around. Until they do, we’ll have to assume we are watching the decline of a great hitter.

It’s time for another episode of “You can get with that, but this is where it’s at,” boys and girls. This week, we take a look at the heroes manning what may prove to be the thinnest position on the diamond. Where shortstop had such frugal luminaries as Everth Cabrera, Ryan Theriot and Elvis Andrus, and catcher featured thrifty backstops like Miguel Montero and A.J. Pierzynski, we may have a harder time finding values at the hot corner.

As usual, we’ll start in the first tier. You can’t really fault anyone for going big with Alex Rodriguez (despite the hip and the age, 3.37 ADP), David Wright (despite the power outage, 14.76 ADP), Evan Longoria (I don’t see a problem here, 10.28 ADP) or Mark Reynolds (the king of the whiff, 20.17 ADP). Why is Ryan Zimmerman being drafted at the end of the third round (39.78 ADP)? I guess people are suspicious of his career high .233 ISO (and 33 home runs) last year. I take the view that nothing seems out of place for a 25 year-old top prospect with a .229 minor league ISO and a slowly increasing fly ball rate, who is also on the correct side of his peak. Sign me up for some of that in 2010.

The next tier has some svelte athletes (Pablo Sandoval, 44.83 ADP), some slow-footed plodders (Chone Figgins, 77.84 ADP) and some low-contact sluggers (Michael Young, 93.51 ADP). Scarcasm aside, why not take a player with possibly the same amount of risk (and yet bundles of upside) a little bit later than the fellow members of his tier? Gordon Beckham (93.87 ADP) had a good rookie season despite a low line drive percentage (16.6%) that kept his BABIP down (.294), and therefore his batting average (.270). But look at the good side, if you prorate out his stats, he had a 21-home run, 11 stolen-base kind of year, and his line drive rates were much higher in the minor leagues. Even if he just finished out the pro-rated string next year, he’d be an ADP value in his tier. Bend it like Beckham!

Let’s move past mixed metaphors to the final tier. This tier makes you realize how turdly third base truly is this year. You can gamble on next year’s Mark Reynolds with Ian Stewart (131.84 ADP) or put your grandfather Larry Wayne Jones (ADP 134.39) in the position and cross your fingers. The projection systems don’t like the bearded wonder Casey Blake (ADP 162.64) for good reason, as late bloomers are usually early exits. You could say the same about Mark DeRosa (ADP 246.44), really. Who’s to like in this tier?

The answer, in the immortal words of Homer Simpson, is “I… don’t… know.” I’d probably try to avoid the whole situation altogether by drafting a third-sacker earlier. But I think I might take a pair of players from the bottom, and those two might be Adrian Beltre (ADP 199.55) and Alex Gordon (245.03). Some may say that splits aren’t statistically significant, but perhaps that’s not true in Beltre’s case, who has a grand total of 3272 away at-bats away from pitcher’s havens in Los Angeles and Seattle. In those (probably significant at-bats), he’s put up a .287/.338/.488 career line (compared to a .726 OPS at home). I’d just cover my butt with a post-hype sleeper like Gordon, who had been making nice strides in walk rate, strikeout rate, ISO, line drive rate, and reach rate before injury sidelined him last year. I’ll be owning him more than once this year, I’d reckon.

Ah! Let me stop you right there. Jorge Cantu is ranked as a first baseman.

Before we all got fat off of Pecan Pie this week, we checked the position at the hot corner and found that the final tier was lacking and the position was relatively shallow for those in mixed leagues. Let’s take a look at a couple of third basemen that came in just below the fold and could outproduce their draft positions in deep leagues.

Alex Gordon, perhaps because of his draft position or because of the uniform he wears, has been oft-discussed as a figure of projection more than production so far in his career. There’s no doubt that if he puts together a season close to his upside, he will be a huge value to those that select him. At times he’s shown the selectivity at the plate, the power in his bat, and the speed on the basepaths that had people thinking good thoughts. In his sophomore season, he improved his walk rate, strikeout rate, reach rate, fly ball and contact rates. Though all of the increases were incremental, the thought was that he was on his way, just a little slower than we all expected. Then came the hip surgery.

With his struggles after his return, where is Gordon now? On the good side of the ledger, even in 2009, Gordon held on to his gains in his walk rate, reach rate, and contact rates. He took a little step back in his strikeout rate, didn’t hit any line drives, and hit a few too many ground balls. If we blame the line drives and lack of power on the hip injury – not everyone can heal as well as Alex Rodriguez, who also had the surgery earlier than Gordon and also struggled in the early goings in 2009 – then we can regain some of our optimism about the young Royal third baseman. Bill James, ever the optimist, has Gordon down for .272 with 20 home runs and 12 stolen bases. If you are willing to blame the hip, you can take a chance on those numbers and get them for cheap in 2010.

Andy LaRoche is another once-hot prospect that has struggled so far in the big leagues and finds himself on the fringe in positional rankings once again. Of course, his big league team won’t be complaining any time soon – with his good defense (+3.9 UZR/150 career at third) and passable offense (.324 wOBA), he’s already outproducing his cost. And knowing that the Bucs are likely happy with his production is valuable – at least he should stick all year. But will fantasy owners want his stats all year? His fantasy stats (.258, 12 home runs, three stolen bases) were underwhelming, and this was despite his ‘luck’ evening out from early-career lows (.287 BABIP in 2009, .177 BABIP in 2008). The problem seems to be that though he has decent walk and strikeout rates (around 9% and 16% respectively in the last two years), he doesn’t make good contact (17.1% line drive rate career).

On the other hand, the good news in the numbers also come from his contact rates – LaRoche has improved his zone contact rate from 78.6% to 91% and his overall contact rate from 69.3% to 83.2% over the last three years. If he can continue that arc and get the line drive rate up to 20% he could outproduce his projections. It’s worth noting that his line drive rates in the Los Angeles system were consistently around 18%, so there’s a sliver of upside here. Don’t overpay for it, because it’s clear that he has issues making contact, even if he’s making strides.

We will revisit some of the other deep league options in future posts. Let us know in the comments if there is a particular third baseman you’d like to know more about.

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, second basemen and first basemen.)

These rankings are for 5×5 rotisserie fantasy baseball. Eligibility was determined by where the player had the most at-bats last year.

To be absolutely precise, there should be down arrows next to Alex Rodriguez and David Wright because they used to be in a tier of their own and now have a little company at the top of the leaderboard. Despite his injured hip, Rodriguez basically replicated his 2008 season and an offseason of rest can only help. RJ Anderson and Dave Allen both covered David Wright and his power outage, and both agree the power should return. The only addition that I have, however crude, is that according to the hittracker, Wright would have only lost two of his 2008 home runs had he played in Citi Field that year. With power and speed, those two still rule the roost, if not as definitively as they have in the past. Ryan Zimmerman and Evan Longoria have joined them at the top and there’s not really much to say other than they just don’t boast the speed upside. They’re still pretty good players, though.

Aramis Ramirez used to be in the top tier. He could still be there. But last year just reminded everyone that he’s a 32-year-old third baseman that has dealt with injuries his whole career and is clearly post-peak. He’s fallen into a tier with some exciting names with risk attached. Pablo Sandoval is everyone’s favorite Panda, but as a BABIP outlier (.356 career, .317 career xBABIP) even his most ardent fan has to admit the risk that the batting average falls and leaves him as a slightly under-powered third baseman minus his best tool. There’s no risk with Mark Reynolds‘ power, but there’s also little likelihood of a nice batting average to go with his power/speed combo. As Dave Allen noted, he makes it work, but you’ll also need to make it work by making up for his batting average if you pick him. Dave Cameron showed how Chone Figgins has upped his walk rates through his career and made himself into a better player, but any 32-year-old that makes his living with his feet carries inherent risk. Plus, he offers no power. Gordon Beckham has a nice power/speed package going, but he’ll need to hit more line drives (16.6%) next year in order to get the batting average up. Michael Young doesn’t have the batting average problem, but he has power that oscillates from poor to mediocre.

The final tier is where the veterans go to finish their careers. Ian Stewart is the only upside play of the bunch, and he needs to strike out a little less (32.5% in 2009, 27.6% career) and hit some more line drives (14.1% in 2009, 18.2% career) so that the batting average can find its way to respectable. Obviously, he has power. Chipper Jones is the best of the post-peak guys, but he carries the most injury risk as well. Casey Blake, Mike Lowell, Mark DeRosa and Adrian Beltre can be picked out of the same bag using a blindfold. Admittedly, Beltre will cost the least, but getting him out of Safeco may mean that he will contribute similar stats to the other veterans in this tier.

In general, this is one of the more shallow positions in fantasy baseball. In a roto league, an owner betting on a final-tier third baseman is a step behind. The top two tiers offer some good value, but make sure you get your third baseman relatively early in 2010.

The deadline to make fantasy trades either has already happened or is just around the corner, depending upon your league rules. If your league still permits trading, start working the phones and see what you can do. In that regard, here are five guys to pick up and five guys to move.

Obtain

Alex Rodriguez – A lot of owners are worried about Rodriguez’ relative lack of power this season, especially given the way new Yankee Stadium has played. Rodriguez has not hit a HR since July 19th and 13 of his 19 HR this year have come at home. But his HR/FB rate is better than it was last season and Rodriguez is unlikely to maintain a .263 BABIP going forward.

Clayton Richard – In his second season with the White Sox, Richard held his own. He posted an ERA just slightly above league average and his K/9 of 6.67 was good. Now he finds himself pitching in the NL without a designated hitter and he goes from pitching in hitter-friendly U.S. Cellular Field to Petco Park, one of the best pitching parks in baseball. It should add up to make him a valuable fantasy pitcher for the rest of 2009.

Alex Rios – The expectations for Rios always seem to exceed the actual production. Some hoped he would threaten 30-30 while batting close to .300 and it just has not worked out that way. But Rios is on target to exceed last year’s HR and RBI totals while coming close to his career-best steal output. His BABIP is 30 points below his career mark and RoS ZiPS forecasts him to hit .282 for the remainder of the season.

Jeff Niemann – There is nothing in Niemann’s overall profile to recommend acquiring him, while his FIP and HR/FB ratio might even suggest him as a sell candidate. But since the middle of May, Niemann has been a steady and consistent fantasy hurler. In his last 14 games, Niemann is 8-2 with a 2.94 ERA and a 1.197 WHIP. Niemann has started throwing more curveballs, giving batters another pitch to consider.

Lastings Milledge – Many fantasy owners expected Milledge to have a breakout season in 2009 and that just has not happened. But the trade to Pittsburgh offers him a new start and he has two things in his favor now that he did not have earlier in Washington. First, Milledge is not a leadoff hitter and with Andrew McCutchen around to fill that bill for the Pirates, it frees Milledge to bat lower in the order. And while it does not appear on the surface to matter in fantasy, McCutchen also allows Milledge to play an outfield corner in Pittsburgh, where he is much more suited defensively. Milledge is only owned in 23 percent of CBS Sports leagues and is worth a flier if he is available on your waiver wire.

Exchange

Aramis Ramirez – Fantasy owners have been without Ramirez for most of the year, so it seems an odd time to be shopping him now. Since returning from the DL, Ramirez has posted a .321-5-17-15-0 fantasy line in 21 games. But Ramirez also has a .353 BA BIP, 58 points above his career average. And his HR/FB rate of 16.4 percent is his highest since 2005.

Joba Chamberlain – He has been lights out in his last three starts, offering fantasy owners the production they dreamed about when they selected him in the top half of their draft. But while he is doing his best pitching of the season, word is that the Yankees are going to cap his innings somewhere around 160 innings this season. Now, when push comes to shove, New York may not go through with that plan but Chamberlain owners owe it to themselves to see if they can trade him for equivalent value and minimize their risk going forward.

Alex Gordon – After spending most of the season on the DL with a hip injury, Gordon is back for the Royals. His first two weeks back have been nothing special. Like Rios, expectations for Gordon always seem to outstrip his production but Gordon is unlikely to offer the upside of Rios in any single fantasy category for the rest of the season.

Jarrod Washburn – He was exceeding all expectations this season in Seattle and now he has to keep that performance up in the heat of a pennant race in Detroit. Washburn has been through the playoff chase numerous times before while with the Angels but owners should be wary of how he will do moving away from Safeco Park and the vaunted Mariners defense. And for what it is worth, Washburn has a lifetime 5.33 ERA in eight starts in Comerica Park.

James Loney – In his last 14 games, Loney is batting .397 with 14 RBIs. But even in this hot streak, Loney has zero HR. Loney’s HR/FB rate checks in at a dismal 5.4 percent and in order to be a valuable corner infielder in fantasy, Loney will need a much higher AVG than his .293 mark this season with such puny HR production.