Archive for Christian Yelich

I mean, it’s not that surprising. It’s the only outfield with a Giancarlo Stanton, which would be enough to elevate any outfield out of the cellars. It has a Christian Yelich, too, who hits the ball hard but had been somewhat of a fantasy disappointment, having failed thus far to live up to any kind of power potential he once had.

Still, the Marlins are the game’s second-best offensive outfield, per wRC+ (weighted runs created). That’s kind of surprising. I mean, we knew the Pittsburgh Pirates’ outfield, which currently ranks first, would be good. And we probably thought the Chicago Cubs’ outfield, with all its talent and depth, would generate solid offensive numbers, but they’re only 10th.

While it’s a feel-good story riding on the high of a finally-vindicated Marcell Ozuna, it doesn’t look entirely sustainable. But it doesn’t mean we can’t dream, and there are some reasons to be optimistic about the already-established Stanton and Yelich as well as the still-young Ozuna.

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So there’s this table I’m going to show you. Actually, you can already see it. I know you can. But humor me and pretend that only the next word appears after you read this one, and that the table simply hasn’t manifested yet. This table holds within it Christian Yelich’s career statistics, parsed by year. It’s unlike a normal table because I prorated all of the counting stats to 600 plate appearances. The rest, however, are rate statistics, or component metrics presented as rate statistics. Basically, everything is comparable on a playing time basis. What it will all tell you is what ended up being a discarded title for this post:

Christian Yelich is a remarkably consistent hitter.

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Last year, I hit .300 on my Bold Predictions, which is about what I aim for. That feels like the boldness sweet spot. This year, not so much. It saddens me to report that I was overly bold this year, getting just one Bold Prediction right. However, one other was incredibly close, so I’ll say that I hit .150 this season. Still, I can and will do better next year.

I have failed you, dear readers.

1. Jorge Soler is a top-ten outfielder.

Well, he was a top-100 outfielder, slotting in at No. 99 on the season. Soler battled his fair share of injuries this year, but even when he was healthy enough to play, he hit just .262/.324/.399, with 10 home runs in 404 plate appearances. For the year, he registered a 0.0 WAR. Here’s hoping he turns it around next season.

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I have never thought much about, or given much attention to, FanGraphs’ fan projections. It’s primarily a matter of stubbornness: I run my own projections, and I develop my own strategy, so why should I listen to you? At least there’s a trace of rationale behind it: I know how I created my projections (whether or not they’re any good is a topic for another day), but I have no idea how you created yours. Thus, I am more likely to blindly trust a computer-generated projection system such as Steamer instead of random fan projections.

Still, there is a sort of bizarre, secondhand wisdom to fan projections. For every person who is high on a particular player, there could be another person who is equally-and-oppositely down on him. Solicit and aggregate enough fan projections and you could produce a very reasonable prediction of a player’s performance by sheer chance.

Which is why fan projections intrigue me. If, for example, Steamer predicts the most likely outcome from a wide range of possible outcomes for a player, then the fans convey the anticipated outcome for a player. The difference between them, you could say, is what amounts to a market inefficiency (aka a price distortion). The larger the difference, the greater the inefficiency. We see these inefficiencies arise every year — 2014’s most prevalent example is probably Corey Kluber — and they typically manifest because of a lack of information about certain players.

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We published our Top 300 lists today and it was a fascinating project for me. I’m more accustomed to doing positional rankings so this was somewhat new for me. I’ve made overall lists before, plenty of times, but only for myself so I could eyeball adjustments very easily in the midst of a draft. This required more precision because I couldn’t just assume the adjustments. I want to discuss five players where I really diverged from the final group ranking.

Dellin Betances, RP, NYY

(My Rank: 62, Group Rank: 130, Difference: +68)

I’ve completely bought in on the Yankees reliever. Obviously if he doesn’t get announced as the closer ahead of Andrew Miller, I’ll have to adjust, but I’m betting on him getting the role and excelling with it. I know he’s not just going to repeat last year with 35 saves. First off, he won’t get 90 innings as a closer and his crazy ratios are set to rise because it’s hard to maintain that kind of historical rate.

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Last week I took a look at the three hitters who were not included in the initial Steamer preseason projections who are now projected to be above average fantasy players for the rest of the year. Today I want to look at the hitters who were included in the preseason projections who have seen their projected value increase the most one month into the season. I explained the methodology in the last post, but the short version is that each player is assigned a standardized score for each roto category (using z-scores) and when those are added up and an adjustment is made for positional scarcity we get a number called fantasy value above replacement (FVARz). Full disclosure: I’m using the numbers I calculated using the rest-of-season projections on April 29. I didn’t have time to re-run the numbers for this post, but that shouldn’t have a huge effect. Read the rest of this entry »

Are the playoffs here yet? Because I’m a) tired of watching the Rangers lose, b) sweating out the day-to-day fluctuations in my big money roto league, and c) trying to find something new to say in this article twice a week. So after the jump I’m going to repeat a couple of things. First, I’ll have a chart showing how each of today’s probable starters have performed against batters of each handedness this year. And then I’ll pick a few players and recite some familiar analysis alongside them.

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A lot of factors to consider when picking hitters have discussed in this space this year. Weather factors like temperature and wind are more important than I realized at the beginning of the year. Park factors are a big deal. The extent to which the opposing starter is susceptible to the long ball matters. And on and on and on.

But before I look at any of those other factors each day, I start by looking at whether the batter has the platoon advantage. As both Blake Murphy and I have discussed, some guys have reverse splits when it comes to the handedness of the opposing pitcher. But, for the most part, having the platoon advantage should be requirement numero uno when selecting hitters. I know I’m not breaking any news by harping on the platoon advantage, but because it’s the first thing I look at, I wanted to give everyone a reminder of its importance. Below is a chart showing how batters have performed with and without the platoon advantage so far this season. Read the rest of this entry »