Archive for Ender Inciarte

The first full week of the second half is just about in the books. Let’s see which NL teams have lineups with different looks.

Arizona

The continued absence of David Peralta (shoulder) has meant there has been room for both Jake Lamb and Christian Walker in the lineup, even though the Diamondbacks have faced 11 consecutive right-handed starters. Peralta started swinging a bat this week, but he is not on the verge of returning. When Peralta comes back, assuming he is not traded shortly thereafter, Torey Lovullo will have a dilemma on his hands. Lamb has posted a .958 OPS in July, while Walker has an 1.133 OPS with four home runs in 35 plate appearances this month.
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We are now three full weeks into the season, and managers are starting to respond to players’ hot and cold starts. That gives the fantasy owners of players like Brian Dozier, Kyle Schwarber, and Ender Inciarte something more to think about, and owners of Yasmani Grandal and Manuel Margot something to feel good about.

Here are the lineup and batting order trends of note for each of the 15 teams in the senior circuit.
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It’s been a weird week for me, delaying this article by four days. I originally intended to have this up by Monday, but a spontaneous — and completely awesome — decision to attend the NCAA Tournament provided the first delay. I got to see Oklahoma/VCU and the historically unprecedented Texas A&M win over Northern Iowa, so I didn’t feel too bad about being a day late.

Unfortunately, I got myself concussed in a fender-bender the next day (not my fault!), and spent the last few days listlessly staring out my window, the owner of a half-working brain. Hopefully, I’ve recovered enough for the following to make sense, but the fact that my 31st birthday looms this coming Monday means I’m in the midst of my annual birthday-related existential crisis, brain injury or not.

Regardless of the circumstances, it’s Bold Predictions time! I did pretty darn well two years ago, but last year my success rate was roughly equivalent to that of the Brooklyn Brawler. (Fun fact: The Brawler briefly performed in WWF as “The MVP” Abe Knuckleball Schwartz, a bad-guy persona used to rile up fans during the MLB strike of ’94.) Let’s turn the clock back to 2014 and get my boldness rate back to the sweet spot.

Here are my ten Bold Predictions for 2016, roughly arranged in ascending order from safest to craziest:

10. James Shields is not a top-65 starting pitcher, despite throwing 200+ innings for the tenth straight year.

How do we value a 34-year-old coming off a season like Shields just had? He logged over 200 innings and made his annual 33 starts, but posted his worst-ever walk rate — and it’s not even close — at 3.60 BB/9. His HR/FB ballooned to another career worst, at 17.6%. Shields also experienced career bests in two areas, strikeouts (yay!) and strand rate (hmm…).

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On Friday, Adam McFadden wrote a piece in which he recommended nine players owned in less than 50 percent of Yahoo leagues. Adam’s work inspired me to do some digging of my own, and I managed to find some more widely unowned players who could give your team a serious boost down the stretch.

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He’s Back!

Drew Smyly (47%) – Although he looked pretty rusty in his first start since May on Sunday, Smyly needs to be owned pretty much across the board. He was dropped in a ton of leagues when he tore his labrum, to the point where he’s available in over half of Yahoo leagues. Dropping him was understandable, as the Rays initially said he was out for the year, only to retract that statement a week later.

I managed to snag him in a 12-team mixer where he had gone unnoticed on the waiver wire. Maybe you can too.

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