Archive for ian desmond

Some weekend IL moves could disturb the tranquility in the Rockies’ and Pirates’ outfields, while the Cubs have already made a notable shift there. Here’s the weekly NL lineup breakdown.

Arizona

Christian Walker has started seven games in a row, so even with Kevin Cron back up from the minors, there is no apparent first base controversy. Cron could fill the DH slot for this weekend’s series in Toronto, and it would not be surprising if he got sent down afterwards.
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Desmond ranked sixth in our End of Season outfield rankings at $22.10, behind Nelson Cruz and ahead of Mark Trumbo.

No matter how one slices it, Ian Desmond’s bounce-back season was nothing short of tremendous. From a real-life standpoint, it wasn’t Desmond’s most valuable season — though it was among his three or four best — but from a fantasy perspective it’d be hard not to put this among his best.

First of all was the sheer magnitude of the improvement. It’s not often that a 29/30-year-old simply forgets how to play baseball, but it was an ill-timed poor season to be sure for Desmond, who not only turned down a lucrative offer from the Nationals prior to the season, but hit free agency with the ferocity of an indecisive running back hitting the line of scrimmage. Coming off hitting just .233/.290/.384, Desmond’s market was bound to be limited. Doubly so, considering the Nationals still slapped him with a qualifying offer. And while in retrospect it might have made sense for Desmond to accept — a la Jeremy Hellickson, Matt Wieters and Neil Walker — things couldn’t have panned out much better for him.

But the amazing part isn’t only that Desmond raised his wOBA 40-plus points, his batting average by more than 50 points and posted his career-best OBP. He also did it while switching positions, a truly intriguing proposition that would make even the faintest shortstop’s stomach queasy. There’s a quite a bit of value at short as someone who has hit .264/.312/.424 over their career — Desmond’s line coming into 2016 — while in the outfield, that’s….well let’s just say that Matt Joyce just signed a two-year deal for $11 million and he’s a career .242/.341/.429 hitter.

But in the end, Desmond gambled on himself — and won. So did fantasy owners. Can they do so again next season? Let’s investigate. Read the rest of this entry »

In fantasy baseball we talk a lot about five-category players or performances but we don’t usually define what that actually means. In its most liberal application, the term is a shorthand for a productive player whose worst performance in any one category is still palatable. Sometimes we’ll talk about someone with sneaky five-category potential when describing breadth of upside.

I suspect that most use the term when describing players who provide a positive value in all five standard roto categories. But in most cases, we use the descriptor when “power-speed threat” might be more appropriate. Or that given the dichotomous relationship between the two skills, we lower our standards in one category because a player stands out in the other. If we use the most literal definition, that a five-category player provides at least positive contributions across all five categories, we’re really talking about just seven players, six of whom were drafted in first five rounds.

According to both ESPN’s Player Rater and the Zach Sanders z-score method, Brandon Crawford has been the top fantasy shortstop so far this year. But in today’s post, Crawford is playing the role of Aaron Rodgers in the 2005 NFL Draft. Let’s see how far he falls. Read the rest of this entry »

You’ll hear a lot about strikeout rates stabilizing sometime in April, anywhere from about 60 plate appearances to 110 depending on who you trust and who you reference. It makes sense we talk about this, of course, what with the small sample size police on patrol across Fangraphs. From a fantasy perspective, we try to be patient, but there’s nothing worse than holding a turd any longer than you really have to. Because, well, gross.

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According to MockDraftCentral.com, the Nationals infield has a couple of top 100 players, a top 150 player, and two others who are on the edge of fantasy viability. But as far as value goes, I think the three that drafters like the most are probably the ones I like the least. And one of those two the drafters have on the edge of viability is not within the realm of viability if you ask me.

Catcher

Ramos’ ADP is 244th, placing him just on the edge of fantasy relevance. With the projection I’ve listed above (projections are my own), I have him as the #11 catcher this year. Last year, 11 catchers finished with an ESPN player rater number in the top 250. The drafters are spot on having Ramos going at the tail end of shallow mixed league drafts.

Ramos is interesting because there is a possibility that he could be a top five catcher or completely irrelevant. They key is simply playing time. In the last two seasons combined he has come up just shy of 400 PA. My PA projection is fairly optimistic, and the Fan projections are slightly more optimistic coming in at 467 PA. The higher that PA total gets above 450, the higher he’ll finish among catchers. Read the rest of this entry »

When an organization decides to give a player an opportunity to play every day and take over a starting position, fantasy owners need to stand up and take notice.  Especially if the player qualifies at a position that is either thing to begin with or has been decimated by injuries through these first two months of the season.  Here are two prime examples that are likely sitting on your waiver wire just waiting to be claimed.

Josh Bell, ARI  |3B|  Ownership:  ESPN – 0.5%  Yahoo – 1.0%

Right on the heels of my last Kicking Rocks piece which clamored for Bell’s call-up, the Diamondbacks finally said enough to the Cody Ransom/Ryan Roberts platoon they had working the hot corner this season.  With little or no legitimate production at the position, it made perfect sense for the team to give Bell a shot, if not for anything but to at least just kick the tires and see what they had.  It’s not like things could get worse, right?

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Continuing with our look at the RotoGraphs Reader Mock Draft, here’s a glance at Rounds 17-20.  Since risk is much less of a concern this far down in the draft, I’ll just highlight my favorite pick in the round followed up with some thoughts on some of the other selections. Read the rest of this entry »

Earlier today, Erik rolled out our Shortstop rankings and tiers.  For kicks we should reveal the individual lists we used for our combined rankings as the variability is remarkable, and it demonstrates just how fluid this position is. To be sure, shortstop is my biggest conundrum headed into 2011 as it seems there isn’t a tremendous amount that differentiates the majority of these guys after you get out of the second tier.  So here’s to trying to mine some risers from the list that might provide a little something added to a middling or low draft pick at what is shaping up to be an awfully uninspiring inventory at the 6.

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I’m off to the Arizona Fall League and Ron Shandler’s First Pitch this weekend, so my posting schedule will be erratic. The good news is that I’ll have plenty of fodder for those posts when I do get around to writing them.

Back to the matter at hand. We’ve been talking about the middle infield recently, doing keeper rankings for second base and shortstop in the past two weeks. A fitting segue might be to a pair of middle infielders on one team, especially since their flaws are as apparent as their upside.

Ian Desmond saved a lot of Yunel Escobar owners this year, and since he was so cheap (practically undrafted going in), let’s not speak too harshly about him. On the other hand, the flaws are obvious, even within his .269/.308/.392 batting line. We know he doesn’t walk (5% career), so he’s a poor option in OBP leagues. Given his strikeouts (20.8% in 2010) and lack of power (.124 ISO last year), it’s unlikely that he’ll put up great batting averages or power a team to victory, either. To top it off, UZR (and subjective reports) have not enjoyed his defensive effort (-8.1 UZR/150 career). So what is there to like about him?

Well, for one, he’s a live, every-day body at a tough position. 22 shortstops qualified for the batting title, and their average batting line was .266/.322/.391 – Desmond’s line is even close to average, making him relevant in all leagues. Also, though his 2010 power was below-average, his career ISO (.145) is almost exactly average for all major leaguers. His career minor league ISO might be familiar (.129), but he also slugged better as he advanced. Lastly, his line drive percentage (15.8%) was so low that it only has one place to go. There’s no definite answer here, but it certainly looks like there’s power projection left in Desmond’s profile. Paired with his decent speed (5.5 speed score, 17/22 SBs), he can be a workhorse shortstop in most leagues. The flaws will probably keep him from being elite, though.

Across the middle infield from him is newcomer Danny Espinosa. Unfortunately, we only have 112 ML plate appearances to use in our analysis, and not many of his stats will have met Pizza Cutter’s reliability benchmarks in that few at-bats.

We can, however, learn something about Espinosa from his walk, strikeout, groundball and HR/FB rates, which all stabilize under 100 PAs. From his walk and strikeout rates (8% and 29.1% respectively), we can tell that Espinosa is a little bit different style of hitter than Desmond. The walks are about average, so perhaps the .365 OBP from the minor leagues will carry over. But that strikeout rate – arg. It’s a problem, and he exhibited the same problem in the minor leagues (25.7%). Even once the BABIP (.239) regresses next year, Espinosa will be a batting average risk.

Espinosa famously began his career with three home runs in his first five games and six in his first month, but how much power will he show over a full season? He hit a good amount of groundballs (45.8%), but his one-to-one groundball-to-flyball ratio is not going to keep him from showing power (Adrian Gonzalez and Ryan Zimmerman showed the same ratio this year). His minor league ISO (.185) seems to suggest that he can exhibit at least average power, if not the .233 ISO he put up in his debut.

Though he didn’t steal a base in his debut, Espinosa averaged about 24 stolen bases per full season in the minor leagues and has good wheels. Add in his average power and batting average risk, and you have another flawed Nationals’ middle infielder that can help late in 2011 mixed-league drafts. Espinosa had the more stable progression through the minor leagues, showed more power and on-base abiiity, but plays the easier position to fill. In OBP leagues, at least, he’s the obvious play between the two.