Archive for Carlos Delgado

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.

Some notes on three first baseman to start your Tuesday.

Carlos Delgado | Red Sox | 1% Owned

Recently signed by the Red Sox, Delgado has already had a setback while playing for Triple-A Pawtucket. He had some stiffness in his back during Sunday’s game, leaving the game after only three innings. The 38-year old has only had fifteen trips to the plate in the minors, so we can’t judge how his bat looks. He has also admitted to his surgically repaired hip being sore, so he is going to need some things to go right for him to make it to the big leagues before sometime in mid-September. For those of you who stashed him when he signed with the Red Sox, he’s not going to be worth the trouble.

Mitch Moreland | Rangers | 0% Owned

After Chris Davis struggled (once again) in the majors, the Rangers turned to their next young first baseman. Rated as the Rangers seventh best prospect by both Marc Hulet and John Sickels, Moreland excelled in Triple-A while playing first base and right field. Just like he’s shown in 43 major league plate appearances, he won’t give you a ton of power, but will reach base at a good clip and smack line drives all over the field. He’s worth a pickup in AL-only leagues, and is a good option in keeper leagues.

Ryan Raburn | Tigers | 4% Owned

Raburn put up huge power numbers last year, but has fallen back down to earth this year. He’s caught fire in August, hitting four homers in 14 games, but his decision to hit fly balls in an attempt to hit home runs will end up killing his batting average. His second base and outfield eligibility helps his value, and he’s worth a shot in AL-only leagues if you are looking for some power.

Nick Evans is now a major league baseball player, and he’s getting some at-bats in left field and in a first-base platoon with Daniel Murphy. The flailing Mets seem to be looking to catch lightning in a bottle with Evans, but the fan base is clamoring for a more impressive solution.

Could they possibly ’solve’ their temporary 1B problems with a Murphy/Evans platoon? Murphy’s career minor league split OPS against lefties is not great at .725. Well, at least Nick Evans can handle lefties, as his his .914 OPS against lefties in 421 minor league at-bats can attest. Put together the two half-players and you could actually have a decent stop-gap first baseman for the time being.

But should that keep the team from trading Evans should a better solution come along? His minor league progression has been a halting one. He started poorly and didn’t crack an .800 OPS in his first 500 plate appearances.

In fact, he didn’t have a strong full year until he hit St. Lucie in his fourth pro year. In 2007, he hit .286/.374/.476 and burst onto the Mets prospect scene. It does matter, though, that the park factor for St. Lucie that year was a 1.15 for home runs, and that the park has played as a hitter’s haven. Plus, he still had those three full years of poor play behind him.

When he hit AA Binghamton in 2008 and followed up with a .311/.365/.561 line, though, the Mets might have gotten a little giddy. They might have been forgiven for thinking they had Carlos Delgado’s future replacement in their hands. They probably felt that he would play his way into some major league playing time after a little seasoning in AAA.

Ooops. The old, that is to say young, Evans showed up in Buffalo, and his .093/.218/.227 start was too nasty for the brass. The team demoted him back to the friendly confines of Binghamton, where he put up a mediocre .276/.350/.467 slash line in 117 at-bats. Then, all of a sudden, it didn’t matter what he was actually doing, since the major league team needed a warm body. As of now he’s playing well in the major leagues… in very few at-bats.

There will be some that will say that he’s a keeper. Murphy is done, they’ll say, and thank heavens for Evans! That’s a bit short-sighted. There’s not actually that much to like about Evans: as he’s advanced in the minor league system, his strikeout rate has gotten worse, and his walk rate (mediocre at around 8%) has stayed the same. His .462 slugging percentage in the minors is nothing to write home about, and both of his career years in the minors came in parks that played as hitters parks. Neither was his .768 minor league OPS versus righties.

This is not to rain on the parade. He might be a really good fourth outfielder and backup first baseman. If he can improve his split against righties, he may even rise to about an average level as a first baseman. In a platoon situation, he can rake against lefties and can help in the short-term, so he has value on the bench.

He’s no savior, and the odds are still against him being a regular. If Omar Minaya can improve the team by shipping Evans out, he should do it.

On May 26th, Carlos Delgado went 0-for-3 with a sac fly, dropping his line to .215/.294/.387 for the season. The people who were not calling for his outright release were counting down the days until the end of the season when the Mets could refuse his option and look to fill first base from free agency.

Delgado got a day off on the 27th and from that following day until the end of the year, his batting line was .295/.378/.576 over 482 plate appearances. Many people want to point his resurgence to when the club fired Willie Randolph, but Delgado’s hot streak started nearly three weeks before Randolph got the ax.

Regardless, many fantasy players still view Delgado as a question mark. They are leery of him maintaining the production that he showed over two-thirds of the season in 2008 for a full year in 2009 when he will be 37-years old. But there are several reasons for optimism surrounding Delgado.

One might assume that his BABIP was unsustainable during his hot streak. But in the second half of the season it sat at .295 and for the year it was .284 or 25 points below his career average. Furthermore, neither his BB% (10.7) nor K% (20.7) were out of line with what he’s done the past few years.

The main reason Delgado’s 2008 stats seem mind boggling is that he had such a poor year in 2007. That season, he was recovering from right wrist surgery performed following the 2006 season and was also adjusting to being a first-time father. When his numbers suffered, it was easy to point out his age and say that he was just winding down as a player, a point seemingly bolstered by his start to the 2008 season.

But let’s remove his 2007 line and compare the fantasy stats Delgado posted in 2006 and 2008 and see how they compare to one another.

2006: .265-38-114-89-0
2008: .271-38-115-96-0

Those lines seem perfectly compatible and while Delgado’s 2006 season represented a decline from the previous year, he also suffered a 62-point drop in BABIP that season.

The big difference between 2006 and 2008 for Delgado was his batted ball profile. While his HR/FB rate was nearly identical – 22.9 percent in ’06 compared to 23.3 percent last year – Delgado traded fly balls for line drives. Last year he had a 24.5 percent LD% while posting a 33.9 percent FB%. In 2006, those numbers were 17.9 percent and 43.4 percent, respectively.

One might expect that last year’s big season for line drives would have resulted in a big bump in BABIP but as noted earlier it was just .284 as compared to .276 in 2006. Perhaps a reason for this lower-than-expected BABIP is the exaggerated shift that teams deploy against Delgado, as they move their shortstop to the right side of second base when he comes to the plate.

That makes the big question whether Delgado can maintain his HR output while hitting so few fly balls. His FB% put him between Johnny Damon and Brandon Phillips on the leaderboard, not the first two players who jump to mind when one thinks of power hitters. Of course, Delgado’s HR/FB rate ranked fourth in MLB.

But the fact that the 6.2 percent drop in fly balls from 2006 to 2008 was more than made up for by the 6.6 percent increase in line drives is a good sign. Delgado still has the bat speed to make solid contact. It would be much more worrisome if the line drive percentage dropped and the fly balls increased.

Furthermore, a 24.5 percent line drive rate is not unheard of for Delgado. He posted a 27 percent rate in 2003, the second year which we have the data. In those seven years, Delgado has a LD% over 20 percent four times.

One thing fantasy players should keep in mind about Delgado is his new home ballpark. There have been wild speculations about it being either a “launching pad” or a “Grand Canyon”. One thing we do know is that Delgado never hit for a high average in Shea.

Here are his splits in his three years with the Mets:

H: .237 (190-801) with 48 HR (21 in 2008)
R: .282 (242-859) with 52 HR

Even if the new park favors pitchers, it would be hard for it to depress Delgado’s numbers farther, as most players perform better in their home parks. And the chance exists that it will actually help instead of cutting 45 points off his batting average.

So, fantasy players should feel confident about taking Delgado’s 2008 numbers at face value. He was not particularly lucky, his numbers stack up well with his previous output, especially once you remove his dreadful 2007 numbers and the move to the new park should not be a concern as he never hit particularly well at Shea, anyway.

Of course, first base is stacked in fantasy so it is not wise to make Delgado one of the top players picked at the position. But last year he ranked ninth among first basemen with a $22.22 dollar value and he should approach those numbers again in 2009.