Archive for Evan Longoria

There are elements of baseball that the casual fan pays attention to and there’s the Tampa Bay Rays. The lack of notoriety that the Rays experience, as an organization, likely resulted in a lack of attention toward what was actually a stellar year for third baseman Evan Longoria, in terms of the power game. While he experienced some regression from the previous couple of years in certain aspects, his ability to make impact contact ranked among the game’s elite at the position. The concern moving forward, in addition to the regression he experienced in those certain areas, is whether we should expect the power to remain intact.

In terms of ownership, there were some drawbacks to Longoria’s game in 2016, something that was an obvious result of a change in approach. His walk rate dipped for the fourth consecutive year, falling to 6.1%, the lowest of his Major League career, as his 48.8% swing rate was the highest mark of his career. His Contact% fell to 75.4, his lowest mark since 2009. Subsequently, his on-base percentage dropped to the lowest in his career as well, at just .318. His strikeout rate wasn’t an overwhelming concern, though, as at 21.0%, it came in less than a full percentage point above his career average, even with that newfound aggressiveness at the plate.

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Maybe it’s because the Tampa Bay Rays are not a particularly good baseball team. Maybe it’s because there are other younger and perhaps more exciting infielders that have burst onto the Major League scene. For whatever reason, it seems that nobody really talks about Evan Longoria anymore. This is true at least from a national perspective. Which is perhaps unsurprising, given his market. At the same time, fantasy owners surely appreciate what Longoria has brought to the table this season. While he hadn’t exactly been a disappointment in recent years, the 2016 season has seen him re-emerge in at least one major facet of his game.

A player routinely selected outside of the top 100 players, Longoria currently finds himself inside of the top 15 in position player WAR (3.9 mark heading into Wednesday). He topped out at 4.2 last season, so he’s definitely on pace to eclipse either figure that he’s posted in each of the last two years. The trends across the board, in a number of different respects, are very interesting for Longoria over the course of the last three years. The good news there is that those trends are largely positive.

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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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The discussion below does not involve bizarre predictions. In fact, it doesn’t even include bold predictions. Essentially, the discussion is just the opposite of my bold predictions post last week. Or opposite in that I’ll be discussing players I dislike compared to the average as opposed to players I like. As for what ‘the average is,’ I’m using the expert consensus rank (ECR) from FantasyPros.com. If you’re still confused on the premise of this post, maybe the image below will help.

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With the fantasy baseball season coming to an end, we can all now sit back, relax and enjoy the MLB playoffs. If you’ve got a dog in this hunt, I wish you nothing but the best. If not, then pick someone you’ll at least enjoy watching should they win the whole thing. This should be a fun October. But in the meantime, it’s my turn to step up and review the 10 Bold Predictions I made back in late March. I felt pretty good about them going in, and here’s how they ended up coming out… Read the rest of this entry »

“May Day” is actually an appropriate call for third base because, holy hell, it has been one trial after the last tribulation. Third base has been so tough to staff on some of you, the consideration of just going without has been more attractive than what’s available on the waiver wire. As far as putting this cast of misfits into tiers, I ought to just have Tier One and then “The Rest” as punishment to everyone outside of Detroit. There have been some pleasant surprises of course, so let’s get to it.

A quick note about this particular batch of tiers. In the past, I’ve always liked to temper the rapid movement up or down rankings in May, suggesting that the tiers should represent something akin to a “if the draft were held today…” line of thinking. But given the dearth of production from some players and the rampant injuries, I’d like to think these tiers are a happy median between on-field performance and what we should expect going forward. The stats after each player are the Steamer rest-of-season projections.

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Is it really that time of year again? Somebody pinch me. We are less than a week away from the 2013 MLB season’s first official game and with that, the starting gun for the fantasy baseball season will have sounded. I’ll be damned if that doesn’t give me the warm fuzzies in my belly and that tingly feeling in the nether-regions that us married guys don’t get to feel too often anymore. What? Too much information? Well look at the damn headline, people! It’s all about being bold today and while I would like to boldly predict that my wife will be so turned on by my fantasy prowess that I’ll get that tingly feeling all year long, I’ll just stick to baseball here. Here are my 10 bold predictions for the 2013 season. Read the rest of this entry »

When we do this thing where we categorize players into tidy little compartments it tends to bring out the monsters in many of you. Had I given more attention to some of my cultural anthropology or experimental psychology courses, perhaps I’d have an explanation as to why. But nonetheless intrepid reader, I’ll attempt to put forth my best tiered assessment of the available third basemen to you on draft day.

As you no doubt know, the tiers shift. They move like like an Omar Vizquel with Arthur Rhodes on the mound. But I know that many of you like to aim for top three tier material at as many positions as possible, so perhaps this will help you assuming you haven’t already put together your squads. If you already have and your guy is in tier five, well, condolences.

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Looking at the recent ridiculously early mock draft from a stony selection of the Rotographs raconteurs, I was A) quite pleased that I didn’t participate and subject myself to the scrutiny of the learned readers here and B) struck by the fact that third base continues to give me the heebee jeebees.

Third base has generally been my beat over the last twelve months for Rotographs and the implications of the 2012 season haven’t helped me rest well when thinking about the hot corner. While this year might welcome Chase Headley to the fantasy super-duper we also saw the departure of Jose Bautista due to eligibility, Kevin Youkilis due to Kevin Youkilis, Alex Rodriguez to the girl in the fourth row, and Michael Young to relevance.

And this gives me pause.

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Just a month in and we’ve seen players like Danny Valencia and Lonnie Chisenhall lose their jobs, kids like Kyle Seager and William Middlebrooks defy expectations, and we’ve seen big guns like Evan Longoria and Pablo Sandoval go down to injury, among others. Third base has had a degree of volatility that has made it a particularly difficult position to manage.

While I’ve typically been more conservative in May in the past, there are definitely some movers early on. I wouldn’t say this is a list that represents “if the draft were held today” kind of a sentiment, it’s more a melding of injuries, expected future performance, but also performance to date.

Tier one is pretty unsurprising.

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