Archive for Elvis Andrus

In most drafts, I hit a point where I look at my queue and the remaining player pool, and I’m not excited about any of my options. I am currently participating in one of Justin Mason’s 2EarlyMock drafts, and as we enter the final rounds, I have yet to have that feeling. A number of players went in the middle rounds whom I had stashed in my queue several rounds before they were taken. The ones that I drafted felt like tremendous bargains, and the ones that I missed left me envious.
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As I write this, Mike Trout is sporting a .556 batting average in Spring Training. I also had the pleasure of drafting him first overall in my NFBC Draft Champions league. To celebrate his feat and my luck, I am shooting for at least five of nine of the following bold predictions.

Here goes (extra ballsy right from the start):

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The infield is definitely the strength of the current roster the Rangers have assembled. We have them projected for 32.2 WAR, and their main infielders, counting projected platoons at catcher and second base, account for 14.9 in projected WAR. That’s about 46% for those of you without a calculator handy. But despite being such a strength, the positions on the right side of the infield are wild cards. Read the rest of this entry »

The left side of the Texas infield will look the same as it has the last three seasons, but the right side will be completely different with Ian Kinsler being shipped to Detroit for Prince Fielder. Jurickson Profar will slide into Kinsler’s spot. The real baseball implications of the deal are complicated on Texas’ end, but it was definitely a good thing for fantasy owners in that we have three guys who are fantasy options instead of two.

But is Profar a good option? In 324 plate appearances last year, Profar had just a .291 wOBA and 75 wRC+. From a roto perspective he hit just .234 with six home runs and two steals. Profar’s best skills in the minors were his plate discipline and ability to make contact. Of the two, his contact translated better as his contact rate was basically what it was in the minors. And he didn’t just make contact, he made good contact with a 23.4% line drive rate.

His plate discipline, however, didn’t translate immediately. Of course, he’ll never be able to replicate the single digit O-Swing percentages he posted in AA and AAA the last two years. But we can expect his strikeout and walk rates to improve because Jeff Zimmerman has showed us that K% peaks around age 25 and BB% peaks around 27 while ISO and BABIP tend to peak immediately. That’s a long-winded way of saying that an adjustment period was to be expected. Profar’s going to get better quickly, probably a lot better. Read the rest of this entry »

On Monday I took a look at Paul Goldschmidt’s strange home/road splits. Despite a basic park factor of 105 in Arizona in addition to a 105 factor for home runs for right-handers, Goldschmidt has been noticeably better on the road. And as I was trolling around looking at numbers this week, I came across Joey Votto who has also been quite a bit better on the road despite a very favorable home ballpark.

So I decided to see what other players were seeing some backwards home/road splits. I took all players with 600+ PA both at home and on the road since the beginning of 2011. And I only included players that called the same ballpark home for that entire span. Below is a list of the players whose home wOBA is lower than their road wOBA despite their home park having an above average basic park factor. Read the rest of this entry »

Aw come on. I thought that was one of the better and more appropriate puns/play on words we could have used for Jurickson Profar, the latest rookie sensation to make a splash in the big leagues this season. Would you have preferred “Profar, So Good”? How about “Profar Away”? “A Bridge Profar”? Well how about “I Went To The Jurickson Store And They Were All Out of You”? I could probably continue this for a few more paragraphs, but all I’m really trying to do is distract you to the point where your enthusiasm for Profar’s arrival is tempered. Why? Because this isn’t going to last, people. Rein it in. As excited as you are to have Profar finally arrive, you need to relax because he is more than likely to be gone as quickly as he came. Read the rest of this entry »

I have to admit, when looking at Zach Sanders’ End of Season Shortstop rankings, I was initially slightly surprised to see that Elvis Andrus didn’t finish in the top 10. After all, Andrus is coming off another solid season, one in which he finished fifth among shortstops in WAR – that’s fourth if you don’t really consider Ben Zobrist a shortstop – and he grabbed the 50^th and final spot in Dave Cameron’s 2012 Trade Value series over the summer. With top prospect Jurickson Profar nearly ready to step in for Texas, Andrus’ name has become even more prominent lately as a possible trade solution over a fishing in a weak shortstop market, regularly coming up as a potential fit with Arizona as part of a deal for Justin Upton. At just 24 years old, Andrus would seem to be one of the brightest young shortstops in the game.

Then again, this might be a case where we need to separate things that don’t really matter in fantasy from things that do. The fact that he’s a well-regarded defensive shortstop matters a lot more to the Rangers than it does to fantasy teams, and you could say the same thing about the team-friendly contract that helped to land him in the Trade Value series. For fantasy purposes, what you have here is a durable player with little power (only three homers, better than just four of the thirty-three other shortstops on Sanders’ list), a good but non-elite batting average, and a stolen base total that declined from 32 or more in each of his first three seasons to just 21 in 2012. Read the rest of this entry »

Each year, there’s always one pick in the draft that always seems to cause the biggest stir amongst the fantasy community and leads to the greatest number of emails seeking added opinions.  It used to be closer to the tail end of the first round when an owner was deciding between whichever offensive treat was left or the number one overall starting pitcher.  This year, I’ve received a number of emails from people with the 4th pick.  People with the 8th and 9th picks are rolling their eyes right now, but truly, the 4th pick can cause quite the conundrum.

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Today we’ll continue our look at Pick Six values by looking at middle infield and outfield.  You can see our discussion of catcher and corner infield values here.  As a reminder, the production numbers you see below (FP/PA = Fangraphs Points per Plate Appearance) are weighted averages of THT’s Oliver and BPro’s PECOTA.  I didn’t include ZiPS, but feel free to click the players and look up those numbers as well.

Middle Infield

Elite Three (they cost a fortune, but they’re worth it):

Troy Tulowitzki, 1.57 FP/PA, $56.75
Hanley Ramirez, 1.53 FP/PA, $51.50
Robinson Cano, 1.40 FP/PA, $46.75

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For two of the last three off seasons, Michael Young dominated the headlines with his contempt for the Texas Rangers and his demands for a trade.  He was angry with the team for asking him to move from shortstop to third to make room for Elvis Andrus back in 2009 and then the whole story repeated itself this past winter when the team signed Adrian Beltre, asked him to move to DH and then traded for Mike Napoli, who was supposedly going to steal some at bats from him.  The fight was getting bitter and every time you turned around, there was a new rumor popping up as to where Young was going to land. Read the rest of this entry »