Archive for Everth Cabrera

The only thing that has kept Everth Cabrera from topping 50 stolen bases in a single season is a lack of playing time. He only got 449 PA in 2012 because he didn’t get called up until May 17. Apparently Jason Bartlett needed to come to the plate 100 times first. And then last year he played his final game on August 4 thanks to his 50-game Biogenesis suspension. But presumably Jason Bartlett will not steal 100 PA from him and there will not be another suspension in 2014, so Cabrera has an excellent chance to steal 50.

He has stolen 81 bags on 97 tries in the last two years (83.5%), and he stole 128 bags in 1,535 minor league plate appearances (roughly once every 12 PA). And once every 12 PA was about the rate at which Cabrera stole bases last year. For you math whizzes, he’d get to 50 steals if he could steal bases at that rate over 600 PA.

Getting to the plate enough is important, but getting on base is at least as important for a base stealer, if not more so. Cabrera improved mightily in that respect last year when he saw his OBP go from .324 in 2012 to .355. The jump was due primarily to a vastly improved contact rate and thus a much lower strikeout rate. He swung a little less as well, but it was primarily the improved contact skills that facilitated the OBP improvement. A slight improvement in his line drive to fly ball ratio also helped out a little. Below are a couple of charts showing these improvements. Read the rest of this entry »

For all the years that I’ve been playing fantasy baseball, I’ve never really understood the idea of punting saves. Not that I don’t understand the concept, but that I don’t understand the rationale behind thinking that it’s a good strategy. You load up on starters with the hope of locking up wins and strikeouts while doing your best to stay competitive in WHIP and ERA. Perfectly viable strategy, right? But what about the fact that Wins is, more or less, an arbitrary category and while your guy goes seven strong and exits with the lead, some clown of a set-up man comes in, walks the leadoff guy and then serves up a two-run shot to tie the game. A great game for your starter, for sure, but you make no advancement in a category you’ve supposedly built your team to excel in. Read the rest of this entry »

With a fair amount of attention paid to my Michael Bourn man-crush piece and so many of you saying how you prefer to grab power early and wait on speed, I decided to put your methodology into action and see where it took me. In another industry mock draft that took place just last night, I painfully resisted the urge to take Bourn, picked around the available speed and made a few different choices. While I cannot divulge the full results of the mock draft out of respect for the site that will be using it as part of its upcoming draft kit, I can discuss a few things in relation to my selections and this particular topic. Read the rest of this entry »

Comparing Everth Cabrera to the likes of Davey Lopes, Willie Wilson, Otis Nixon and Tim Raines would be ridiculous, but Cabrera has something in common with all of them. Only ten players in Major League Baseball history have had fewer than 450 plate appearances and stolen 44 or more bases. Cabrera is one of them.

As you know, Cabrera wasn’t originally in the San Diego Padres’ plans for 2012. They started the season with Orlando Hudson at second base and Jason Bartlett at shortstop. After miserable starts for both (and an injury to Bartlett), the Padres recalled Cabrera in late May and he summarily turned in a nice little season.

Read the rest of this entry »

Positional flexibility is a handy thing to have when rosters aren’t particularly deep with bench space. But this time of year, I find it awfully useful to have one, if not two, players that have multi-multi position eligibility in my daily transaction leagues where I’m trying to maximize games played.

Why? For some reason, I always seem to have amnesia about this little late-season problem, but as teams start to fade into Bolivian, they tend to be more careful when little aches and pains crop up rather than risk some kind of catastrophic injury. Other players might see extra rest, just because it seems like a good idea. See Giancarlo Stanton, Dexter Fowler, Darwin Barney, Carlos Gonzalez, among others.

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With just three and a half weeks to go in the season, you should be targeting specific categories in which you can move most easily. Even if it’s just a couple of points, if you can take them, take them now.  In looking at the standings of my roto leagues, stolen bases still looks like the easiest category in which a move can be made in a short period of time, so here are readily available two guys who you might consider picking up to get a quick speed boost. Read the rest of this entry »

To the surprise of, well, absolutely no one, the Padres whacked second baseman Orlando Hudson on Thursday, sending him to the unemployment line thanks to a line of .211/.260/.317 and rumors of his unhappiness at his situation. At the same time, they placed Jason Bartlett on the disabled list with a strained knee that’s in no way as painful as his unbelievably poor .133/.240/.193 performance. Whether or not we see Bartlett in a San Diego uniform again — his release has been rumored for a while as well — it’s clear that the last-place Padres are committing to youth in the infield, starting with the promotions of second baseman Alexi Amarista and shortstop Everth Cabrera.

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It’s now summer by the American social clock (if not by the solstice calendar), and so you should be furiously checking your wire for injury replacements. It’s even time to start considering if a struggling player is ready to be dropped. We’re here to help.

Brett Myers, Astros (10% owned)
Myers is a flawed pitcher. He may never again reach the strikeout-per-inning numbers of his early career, and he’s lost some velocity off of those days as well. The good news is that the fastball was never his best pitch – in fact, it’s never even been a good pitch (-89.6 runs career, and never once positive by linear weights). He’s still got his nice curveball and slider, and he’s actually snapping that slider at a career pace (32% this year, 9.6% career). This will count as good news because not only is the pitch his best this year (+6.6 runs), but it’s also been his best non-curveball pitch in his career. If this ‘new’ Myers can stay healthy, he seems likely to continue to pitch to the talent level indicated by his 3.89 FIP. Flawed, but helpful in deep leagues. When his .324 BABIP comes down a little bit, his poor WHIP might even improve.

Cliff Pennington, Athletics (11% owned)
Here’s another flawed player for your pleasure. In fact, it’s possible he’s over-owned for a shortstop with an underwhelming .209/.291/.322 line. Of course, his BABIP is .245 and should rise, especially since he’s relatively fleet of foot (5.6 career speed score, six stolen bases this year). In other good news, his contact rates are all up across the board, and his zone contact rate (93.4%) is actually okay. His good line drive rate (21.4%) suggests that he may even be able to better his ZiPs RoS (.250/.324/.348) and break 20 steals overall. If someone in your AL-only league dropped him, he can give you a little something from here on out. Just a little.

Jerry Hairston Jr, Padres (5% owned)
Boy, hit one grand slam and suddenly you’re on waiver lists, eh? Of all the numbers that we may cite about Hairston, however, there is one that is the most important once you get into deep enough leagues: seven. As in, Hairston has started seven straight games for the Padres. This, despite Everth Cabrera’s return from the disabled list. Hairston’s defense is scratch at best (-7.9 UZR/150 in 109 career games at the position), but right now his offense is perculating (10 for his last 26) and the team is winning. And anyway, it’s not like Cabrera was a whiz with the glove anyway (-11 UZR/150 in 127 games at the position). The Padres might best be served being honest about the talent level on their team, and going with the guy that could provide more value for longer in Cabrera, but that’s an argument for another space.

All ownership numbers courtesy of Yahoo Fantasy Sports

In lieu of updating the shortstop rankings – that will come next weekend – it seemed like a good time to check in with a shortstop that seemed like a decent deep league value going into the season. Now, though, Everth Cabrera is looking like a sunk cost on most fantasy teams. Despite special wheels, owners are wondering if he even deserves a roster spot at this point.

Any discussion of Cabrera’s value has to start with strikeouts. Strikeouts are negatively correlated with batting average – that much should be obvious because the batting average on a strikeout is just about zero. Strikeouts aren’t all bad, since they are weakly but positively correlated with power, but power is not Cabrera’s game. He has a .099 ISO (.150 is about the major league average) and his power is even down from last year’s mediocre level.

Last year, Cabrera struck out 23.3% of the time and had a .106 ISO. Only Michael Bourn struck out more than 23% of the time and had an ISO under .130. In fact, only Bourn, Cabrera, B.J. Upton, Dexter Fowler, David Wright, Chase Headley and Mark Teahen had strikeout rates above 23% and below-average ISO at all. And at least two of those guys won’t be on that list this year as their power has recovered.

Cabrera’s power, on the other hand, has gone the other direction. He now has a .073 ISO, which would have been worse than any BA-title qualifying player that struck out over 20% last year other than Emilio Bonifacio. And it’s Bonifacio’s name that should really start striking the alarm bells. The combination of a high strikeout rate and no power is a toxic one that we’ve seen before.

Of course, Cabrera’s defense has the potential to separate him from Bonifacio. While Bonifacio struggled at third and second, Cabrera has the ability to man a key defensive position up the middle, which would alleviate some of the pressure put on the team by his below-average to average offense. Then again, the Friars’ shortstop put up a -13.4 UZR/150 last year, which would have been second-worst in baseball (to Yuniesky Betancourt) had he qualified for the batting title. This year, Cabrera is better (+1.6 UZR/15), and we know from a recent Tom Tango post at The Book Blog that it looks like we could be looking, generally, for about two and a half seasons of fielding data before we draw serious conclusions. For what it’s worth, Cabrera’s defense rated about scratch in the minor leagues.

With a little better BABIP luck (he currently has a .260 BABIP compared to .325 last year), his batting average could approach last year’s mediocre .255 number. With his reach rate climbing, and his strikeout rates steady and poor, that might just represent his upside in terms of batting average. Added to his declining power, this package is one that will never be a great option in fantasy. So it’s really all about his walk rate in the end – if he can return to walking about 10% of the time, he’ll get on base enough to flash the one tool fantasy owners really care about.

Unfortunately, since scratch defense at an important position doesn’t count in most fantasy leagues, Cabrera will most likely give back most of his value gained from stolen bases in his poor batting average and utter lack of power.

Today is supposed to be a waiver wire article, but we’ll have plenty of those. For those of you still planning one last draft (and the internal FanGraphs league is one of those), I thought I would present to you my second-ever auction draft. Yes, I’m a noob. But with more mocks and real-life auctions in my review mirror, I’ll be able to step up the auction coverage here at RotoGraphs.

Here are my results, with comments coming after:

Position Player $
C Brian McCann 22
C Jarrod Saltalamacchia 1
1B Adrian Gonzalez 31
2B Brandon Phillips 21
3B Gordon Beckham 17
SS Alcides Escobar 12
CI Paul Konerko 10
MI Chris Getz 1
OF Justin Upton 30
OF Carlos Lee 19
OF Matt LaPorta 4
OF Seth Smith 1
OF Scott Podsednik 1
UT Gaby Sanchez 2
BN Xavier Nady 1
BN Matt Joyce 1
Total Offense: $173

Position Player $
P CC Sabathia 26
P Josh Johnson 22
P Brett Anderson 16
P Roy Oswalt 6
P Ryan Franklin 5
P Ryan Madson 4
P Kerry Wood 3
P Ryan Rowland-Smith 2
P Jonathon Niese 1
BN Ian Kennedy 1

Pitching total: $87

This was a 15-team put on by MDS (MillionDollarSleeper), who I’m sure you’ve seen around the comment boards at this site and others. He brought in an impressive collection of talent including David Goleblahblah, Paul Greco from FantasyPros911, Tim Heany from KFFL, Rudy Gamble and Grey Albright from Razzball, Paul Bourdett from AOL Fantasy Fanhouse, Antonio D’Arcangelis from RotoExperts, Scott Swanay from Fantasy Sherpas, Chris Carbonell from the Starbonell BlogTalkRadio show, Charlie Saponara from FB365, and yours truly.

Given that it was a 15-team league and my second attempt ever, I don’t think I fared so badly. I’d say Adrian Gonzalez for $31 was a little much, but the top-tier first basemen went for closer to $40 and Albert Pujols went for $48, so I think I did okay there. Maybe $10 is too much for Paul Konerko, but Adam LaRoche went minutes later for $15 and I felt (much) better. Things happened a little differently with Alcides Escobar – ten minutes after wondering if I’d spent too much on him, Everth Cabrera went for $4 and I wondered if Escobar’s superior batting average (based on fewer Ks and minor league history) was worth $8. Maybe it will prove to be. Carlos Lee for $19 looks about as bad as he does in a uniform, but the crib sheet I was using from LastPlayerPicked.com had Lee worth $21 next year and I was happy to get the power production with a good batting average for relatively cheap. And as for Scott Podsednik and Gaby Sanchez, who both showed up on my NFBC teams, too: They were cheap. And I think they’ll play almost regularly all year. So that’s something.

On the pitching side, CC Sabathia went for less than Johan Santana ($28), Dan Haren ($31), Felix Hernandez ($33), Zack Greinke ($32) and Tim Lincecum ($41), so I was happy to get my ace for cheaper than most. I also preferred CC, despite his big innings totals, over Ubaldo Jimenez ($26) and Ricky Nolasco ($25) as much as I like the younger pitchers. Lord knows CC has put up big innings totals before.

Once I spent my top-closer money on Brett Anderson, I knew I’d be looking for value in the saves category. Advice from Baseball Prospectus’ Marc Normandin was ringing in my ear (punt saves!), but I decided I’d rather try to field a full team this time. Once he’s healthy, I happen to think that the Indians will want to run Kerry Wood out there at closer to pump up his value for a trade, meaning that between him and Ryan Madson, I think I might have a second closer in there somewhere.

It’s kind of a wonky team and seems devoid of elite, top-shelf talent, but it just might work. What do you guys think?