Archive for edwin encarnacion

Edwin Encarnación had been overshadowed by bigger-name free agents throughout the Hot Stove season, but he had the Christmas Day headlines all to himself. That’s when reports emerged of the 36-year-old slugger reaching an agreement with the White Sox on a one-year, $12 million contract with a 2021 team option. There had not been much buzz over the market for Encarnación, possibly because he will turn 37 in January and his main appeal is as a designated hitter. Perhaps he also received less attention because of missing the vast majority of the final two months of the 2019 season due to a fractured right wrist and a strained left oblique.

Despite missing a substantial chunk of the season, Encarnación smashed 34 home runs. This was two more than he hit for the Indians in 2018, and his .287 ISO was his highest ever. Encarnación wasn’t hitting the ball harder — his 94.4 mph exit velocity on flyballs and line drives (EV FB/LD) was within 0.2 mph of his averages from 2017 and 2018 — but he was hitting it a lot higher. His 22.5 degree average launch angle was more than four degrees higher than any of his previous averages during the Statcast era, and his 50.6 percent flyball rate was a career high.
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Is this thing on? Mic check… 1, 2, Mic check. “Were Doing it LIVE”. This is my first time here at the Roto Riteup so be gentle. I may not be Justin but I’m pretty sure standard procedure is to use a GIF in the intro…

We're more excited than @JustinMasonFWFB watching Chris Stratton right now pic.twitter.com/On7NmACtyQ

— RotoWear (@RotoWear) April 2, 2018

Am I doing this right?

On the Agenda:
1. Mookie the Great
2. Various News and Notes
3. Streaming Pitchers

Mookie the Great

Have a day why don’t you Mookie Betts… WOW! Betts, yesterday against the Royals, went 4 for 4 with three solo home runs. Currently, Betts leads the league in home runs, runs, slugging percentage, on-base plus slugging, and is second in batting average. If you can name the five best hitters in baseball and you leave him off the list, chances are you are just wrong. Also if he is not in your top five hitters you should probably consider what other bad life choices have led you to this point.

Various News and Notes

Edwin Encarnacion and his home run parrot got quite the work out against the Rangers. Encarnacion hit two home runs off Matt Moore and then another in the ninth for good measure. Going into the game Encarnacion was hitting just .171 but he made up a ton of ground with just a few swings on Wednesday.

Bryce Harper stole his fourth bag of the season yesterday, tying his 2017 season total. With the wheels in motion for Harper, he is currently on pace for 49 home runs and 22 stolen bases. Four players in major league history have hit 50 home runs and stole 20 bases… Willie Mays (1955), Brady Anderson (1996), Ken Griffey Jr. (1998), and Alex Rodriquez (2007).

James Paxton was almost unhittable on Wednesday night. Yes, technically he gave up five hits but he also was able to get 31 swinging strikes on 105 pitches and a total of 16 punch-outs. When the A’s made contact, which wasn’t very ofte,n it was extremely weak contact. Paxton held batted balls to just 83.6 MPH on average in this one. Think of it this way… Paxton turned a top-five offense in baseball into a team full of Adam Engel’s.

Streaming Pitchers

There is not a ton of streaming options but if you are feeling lucky, Mike Minor against *cough* the Red Sox could be a decent one. Now, wait before you blast me in the comments section or say mean things on twitter (fantasy_keith), hear me out. Boston is probably the best team in baseball but against lefties, they have struck out 25% of the time and hit for a league-worst .202 batting average. Minor on the other hand has managed to keep base runners off the base paths this year (1.14 WHIP) and has a 3.01 ERA in his last 104.2 innings pitched.

There is still a smorgasbord of outfield and middle-infield waiver wire options. Let’s sort using 20% ownership in Yahoo leagues as our qualifier.

Using a combination of contact percentage and isolated slugging, here is the 2015 zCt+zISO leader board:

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On 9/3, I posted Adjusting Fantasy Value with expected (x)BABIP and xHR. These were used to adjust batting average, OBP, SLG and OPS for your different leagues’ formats.

Based on xBABIP, Michael Brantley and Anthony Rendon jumped in value sandwiching in Mike Trout as the top 3 adjusted Fantasy Values for standard 5×5 formats (HR, SB, R, RBI and AVG).

Here, I’ll attempt to verify the BABIP potential for standard 5×5 leagues. I am therefore using column 2 (sum of the 5×5 descriptive/actual z-scores: HR, SB, R, RBI and AVG) and comparing it to column 3 (sum of the 5×5 expected z-scores: xHR, SB, R, RBI and xAVG). SB, R and RBI are not adjusted even though they should be so consider this a way to play down the overall effect.

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I’m going to use all things @jeffwzimmerman for this post.

First is xBABIP. During this past offseason, Jeff found an xBABIP equation which correlated better than just BABIP year to year with the use of new Inside Edge data and player speed scores. I believe his last full updated list was posted on July 25th of this season, but he and the team provided me with an updated list this morning in order to use the data to interpret expected(x)FantasyValue vs. actual/descriptive(a)FantasyValue.

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I don’t really like tiers, but it probably has something to do with the neatness of placing a player in a designated strata. I’ve never used tiers in fantasy baseball drafts because I think it tends to blind you to the nuances of each player and the specific needs your team might have. But now that the season has started, you should be all drafted up and it’s time to brand your cattle.

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Between unforeseen injuries and under-performances, the Blue Jays slogged through a season below expectations. The team won only 74 games after being a popular postseason selection in most preseason projections. Jose Reyes only played a half-season due to injury, while guys like R.A. Dickey and Mark Buehrle were unable to post ERAs under 4.00. In many ways, it was a season-long nightmare that wasn’t supposed to happen.

Heading into the 2014 season, Toronto could be flying under the radar due to their disappointing performance a year ago. The top half of the everyday lineup appears to be plenty potent, and if the organization can land either Ubaldo Jimenez or Ervin Santana, their starting rotation has a shot to be roughly league-average (assuming some bounce-back for Dickey and Buehrle). Such a combination could allow them to threaten for one of the two Wild Card slots if their bullpen performs well.

The fantasy outlook for the infield, on the other hand, is a bit of a mixed bag. Edwin Encarnacion and Jose Reyes should be high on fantasy owners’ draft boards, while players such as Ryan Goins and Dioner Navarro probably aren’t ownable in standard leagues.

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Over the past couple years, Edwin Encarnacion has transformed himself into a legitimate offensive superstar in Major League Baseball. He was the Reds’ top prospect when he made his major-league debut in 2005, but he ultimately wore out his welcome in Cincinnati with poor defense and inconsistent performance. The 30-year-old even scuffled for a couple years in Toronto before busting out in 2012 by launching 42 homers.

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Ever since the boss, Mr. Eno Sarris, showed me how to use the VLOOKUP function in Excel, I can’t stop comparing recent numbers to past rates. The function makes it easy to put this season’s numbers in one sheet, past season or career numbers in another sheet, and then pull the past numbers and place them right next to the corresponding season numbers for any sample of players.

Instead of billing a client from 1:15-3:05 yesterday afternoon at work, I toyed around comparing 2012 and career fly ball rates to 2013 numbers. I chose those two because we’re at the point in the year where most qualified hitters have a sample of 80+ balls in play, which is the point at which FB% stabilizes according to Russell Carleton.

The first thing I looked at was whether the hitters with the highest fly ball rates in 2012 had seen a shift so far this season. The idea was that the guys who cut down on the fly balls would see a corresponding rise in average given that fly balls go for hits somewhere in the neighborhood of 13%-15% of the time, while ground balls are hits roughly 25% of the time and line drives about 71-73% of the time. Read the rest of this entry »

Edwin Encarnacion had a breakout that few predicted and he carried many a fantasy team with Pujolsian-like production for bargain basement prices. Since this is kind of what we do — that is, try to sniff out those back-of-the-draft goodies — one has to wonder if we all should have seen this coming.

Perhaps the reason Encarnacion gnaws at me so much is because I wrote his FanGraphs+ profile last year, and had this to say:

“…(B)ut if Encarnacion is going to play every day and he gets into the 550 at-bat range, you can bank on 20+ home runs, 70 RBI, and he should provide at least a respectable batting average. About 45% of his batted balls are fly balls, and his home run per fly ball rate dipped to 9.4% in 2011 whereas his career average is 11.9%. Should he see an uptick in HR/FB and his isolated slugging returns closer to his .200 career level (.181 in 2011), there’s certainly potential for more home runs here.”

So yeah, 20+ cough cough. At least I said “+”.

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