Archive for Colorado Rockies

This offseason, I decided to roll out this series as an extension of my own fantasy draft prep. By sifting through National Fantasy Baseball Championship (NFBC) draft data, I’ve gone position by position through average draft position (ADP) info to identify players who I believe my fellow fantasy owners are overrating or underrating. By doing so, I’m able to better identify potential sleepers, and get an idea for what price I’ll pay for them. So far, I’ve written posts on third basemen, shortstops and second basemen, and today I’ll take a stab at first base.

As you might have guessed from reading the headline above this article, today’s comparison involves Rockies rookie Ryan McMahon and Brewers veteran Eric Thames. I’ll lead off by saying that this one boggles my mind more than any of the other underrated/overrated pieces I’ve written this offseason.

Let’s take a quick look at where these two are being drafted:

Essentially, Thames is a 16th-round pick in 12-team standard leagues, and McMahon is a 30th rounder — or in other words, he’s basically being drafted as an NL-only guy. I wondered if these numbers might be changing as we get closer to the season, so I took a look at Yahoo, which has only even had their fantasy baseball site up for a little over week. However, it’s the same story there, where Thames is 86% owned, compared to just 9% for McMahon. My goal for today is to help close that gap.

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Spring is here, and with it comes a renewed sense of optimism for yours truly. The never-ending cold rain and oppressive grayness of my first winter in Seattle is giving way to slightly warmer rain and a lighter shade of gray, and the sun even made an appearance last Tuesday. I’m more excited for baseball season than ever, seeing as I finally live in a major-league city for the first time in my life. Also, WrestleMania and Opening Day — objectively the best two days of the year — land on consecutive days in 2017.

Unfortunately, this time of year also means I get my annual opportunity to make a fool of myself with my Bold Predictions column. The last time I did well with these, I was still in my twenties and The Undertaker’s undefeated WrestleMania streak was intact. I’m not saying that turning 30 (or 31…or 32…) definitively altered my ability to make borderline-crazy-yet-somewhat-possible baseball predictions. However, right around that same time, I developed a bald spot on the top of my head. Without the protective layer of hair, a great many thoughts started escaping my head, and I became much less smart.

What’s changed now? I’m so glad you asked. I recently discovered the incredible Thought Screen Helmet! Originally intended to shield your brain from alien mind-control waves, it turns out that the Thought Screen Helmet not only keeps the aliens out, it also helps keep your thoughts in! Furthermore, the Thought Screen Helmet sports a great track record, with “Only one failure since 1998.”

With my Thought Screen Helmet firmly strapped in, I’m ready to unleash my new and improved Bold Predictions, now featuring occasional accuracy! Hopefully.

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Chad Bettis is on the Rockies. You might be inclined to move on after the very first sentence of this post, but let me convince you otherwise.

Chad Bettis finished 2015 with a 4.23 ERA and 1.41 WHIP. However, on July 7th, he was shellacked in Colorado by the Angels. Excluding this 2.1 IP start, he would have ended the year with a 3.50 ERA and 1.33 WHIP. That has utility in most, especially deep leagues. I personally just drafted him in the 47th round of my only NFBC Draft Champions League thanks to his Arsenal Score, which is sandwiched between Dallas Keuchel and Max Scherzer.

Don’t get worked up. Bettis should not be in the same sentence – or matrix – as Keuchel and Scherzer. The matrix should be updated next week with pitch usage weights (increasing the Fastball value due to usage approximately three-fold to approximate MLB rates). This will drop Bettis in the rankings significantly. If we look at his 2015 sabermetric outcomes on his Brooks Baseball Player card, we can see that his Fastball whiff-per-swing rate is -0.74 standard deviations worse than the average fastball.

Still, the rest of his repertoire is great from a whiff/swing perspective:

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Even though I owned Nick Hundley in a league this year, I was still surprised to see that he finished 2015 as fantasy’s No. 7 catcher. Despite receiving far fewer plate appearances than any of the other top-ten backstops, Hundley’s robust .301/.339/.467 slash line was enough to place him comfortably within those ranks. In his age-31 year, Hundley had the second double-digit homer season of his career, and his .301 AVG was well above his career average of .249.

Hundley got 389 PA this year, and that was actually just 19 shy of his career high (408 in 2013). There are two reasons he’s only surpassed the 400-PA mark once. For one, he has some significant injuries in his past, losing parts of three previous seasons to various maladies (wrist [2009], elbow/oblique [2011], knee [2012]). This year, a cervical neck strain ended his season in early September, but should be a non-issue for 2016. The bright side of his injury history is that none of his ailments have been related to one another.

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Prior to just a few weeks ago, Chad Bettis was an absolute after thought; he had struggled in previous chances in the bigs, even when pitching in relief, and didn’t seem to be a part of Colorado’s plans. A couple Rockies injuries and some ineffectiveness later, and Bettis has a sub-3.00 ERA in four MLB starts and a near 4/1 K/BB ratio. In order to get a better sense of what Bettis has been doing, I watched his start from last Sunday against the Giants, where he struck out seven in over eight innings of work.

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Justin Morneau’s place on the Colorado Rockies didn’t make much sense when the deal was announced. It was written about here, by Paul Swydan, and pretty much everywhere else. And Swydan was right, in my opinion: the Rockies did have a better player sitting there in Corey Dickerson (who ended up playing a ton anyways, thanks to injuries). All it would have taken was moving Michael Cuddyer to first to hand Dickerson the right field job. Well, Cuddyer got hurt, along with Carlos Gonzalez and Troy Tulowitzki (shocker). And Morneau – his production, anyways – ended up having a place after all, even if the process that got him there wasn’t prudent in its nature.

Morneau has done a ton of good with the plate appearances he’s taken this season, posting a .371 wOBA (120 wRC+), and performing as a top-15 fantasy option at first base in standard leagues. Interestingly enough, though, he can’t really thank a power rebound: his .175 ISO is better than last season’s mark of .152, but is still well below his career average. Morneau’s value has almost solely come from his ability to hit for average, something his new home park undoubtedly helps with.

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As my first RotoGraphs post, I dwelled way too long on this title: Coresistency Dickerson? Too corny. Corey Dickersplits? Too dirty. In any case, you can see from any of these titles where I’m going.

As the season winds down, I’m in trade mode, and I keep finding myself in trade discussions with Corey Dickerson owners. I am a win-now type of guy and therefore am all-in on trading prospects for sure-things when it comes to dynasty/keeper leagues. Dickerson was in an interesting boat for me: Do I buy? In the one league I have him, do I sell? While I would love to see him in front of or behind Carlos Gonzalez, Troy Tulowitzki and Nolan Arenado on a more consistent basis (he’s full-time now, but the trio is rarely healthy), his Splits Page has me convinced.

Usually I stroll down the splits page and get excited by some segments and turned off by others, but I was satisfied throughout…

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Wouldn’t it be better if every rookie debuted like Mike Trout or Bryce Harper? Major League Baseball would always have this exciting new crop of game-breaking superstars and we fantasy baseball owners would never have to worry about whether a strong debut was just a fluke performance. Unfortunately, that’s not the way it works and when we look at some youngster’s successful rookie campaign, we still have to sift through a variety of things to determine whether he’s worth the attention next year or not. So goes life for those whose interest has been piqued by Rockies third baseman Nolan Arenado. On the surface, there’s not much that excites a fantasy owner about a .267-10-52 batting line for a corner infielder, especially coming from someone playing half his games in Coors Field. But considering the 22-year old produced that line after basically making the jump straight from Double-A ball (he played just 18 games at Triple-A to open 2013), he deserves another look as he enters 2014 with the job in-hand. Read the rest of this entry »

Last week when I published the September Catcher Rankings, there were a few people who questioned the ranking of Colorado Rockies backstop Wilin Rosario, who was sitting fourth in the second tier. The first to question Rosario’s ranking was Cuck City who threw a little sarcasm my way and said, “Lets just ignore that Rosario outperforms tier1 in everything but AVG,” which was quickly followed up with another splash of the tongue-in-cheek from manjun who noted the catcher’s .290 batting average. And so when Check YoSelf asked, “…what’s the deal…?” I decided to actually check myself and look into Rosario a little deeper and see if these readers were right. Is Rosario the top catcher in fantasy baseball? Read the rest of this entry »

Most prospect hounds are beginning to take notice of Rockies pitching prospect Eddie Butler. He entered the 2013 season with significant pedigree–he was selected 46th overall in last year’s draft–and has pulled off the rare feat of advancing two levels in his first full professional season. Butler made nine starts with Low-A Asheville and thirteen with High-A Modesto before the team deemed him done with the lower minors; he’s thrown ten scoreless, walkless innings with 12 strikeouts across his first two Double-A outings. That’s some serious prospect helium over the past four months.

Of course, this is a fantasy website. The notion of betting on a pitching prospect in fantasy can be terrifying in its own right, but betting on one destined for Coors Field is certainly unappetizing. Unfortunate environmental situation aside, Butler is definitely an arm to keep track of.

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