Archive for Ichiro Suzuki

Friend of RotoGraphs Jimbo posed this question in the comments of an earlier article:

How do you weigh a pick like Ichiro that early when there’s still power left to draft…and it’s a scarce resource?

I thought that would make an excellent question for the debut of our newest feature, the RotoGraphs Panel. Here’s how our writers responded:

Marc Hulet: I personally have Ichiro ranked as the 10th overall outfielder (based on 5X5) in mixed leagues and 4th overall in AL-only format. At 36, you have to start worrying about his age and the slip in steals in ’09 (from 43 to 26). With that said, he has nine straight 200 hit seasons, hit .352 last year and has scored 100+ runs in eight of the past nine seasons. I have him nestled at No. 10 between Jayson Werth at nine and Adam Lind at 11.

Power is a scarce resource, but so is reliability; the only pieces missing from his game are power and RBIs and I would rather go hunting on the waiver wire for home runs than steals and/or batting average. I will admit that Ichiro is getting credit in 2010 based on his reputation but I’ll personally keep believing in him until A) He slips for two straight seasons or B) He hits 40 years of age, whichever comes first. I expect his average to drop to between .310-.320 but I am hoping for a return to 100 runs scored and 30+ steals. Call me optimistic.

Zach Sanders: Ichiro has been a top-50 fantasy player since his move to the Major Leagues. I remember him going in the second round in years past, due to his awesome steal and hit totals. Now that he is older and the steals aren’t as bountiful, he still has great value. Drafting Ichiro (around his ADP) over a power hitter is perfectly acceptable for two reasons.

First, he does contribute to the steals category, even if it is only 20 a year. Second, his AVG is so high that it can change the way you draft. Since he comes to the plate so often, his average is even more influential, and can make up for other guys on your team. Since he makes up for guys with low averages, you can draft power players that slip through the cracks for this very reason, and still be fine.

Dan Budreika: Ichiro’s been wowing us for years. He put together a nice year offensively last year after a lackluster 2008. But he is not getting younger and he will be 36-years-old this season. He did battle some injuries last season but what disturbs me is his un-Ichiro like 26 steals. He was also caught 9 times. I just don’t see Ichiro approaching the 40 marker in the stolen base department again and those have generally been one of his biggest fantasy strengths. He doesn’t offer much power and you can really only expect 10 homers. Power ages better than speed and Ichiro is no young buck anymore. Take the safer route with a big bopper over the aging Ichiro early in your draft.

Eno Sarris: Ichiro Suzuki is a tough nut to crack. He hit .311 on 0-2 counts last year! Nutty. On the other hand, minus the batting average, he looks like Denard Span (ADP 125.46) – a guy with barely-double-digit power that is likely to steal about 30 bases. That’s a guy that should be picked in the late rounds to boost a team flagging on speed, not in the mid-rounds as a foundational player. Managers shouldn’t normally build their rosters around him… except in certain instances. Let’s say you are hoping to get Adam Dunn (ADP 55.95) after Ichiro (ADP 40.46) – then he fits like a glove. Consider that taking those players in the fourth and fifth rounds would give you two players that, using last year’s numbers, averaged out to a .313 batting average with 25 home runs and 13 stolen bases. That fits. Ichiro gives you domination in one category that allows you to pick people like Russell Branyan (ADP 293.50) and Chris Davis (159.89) later in the draft, too. That’s added value, in flexibility, that shouldn’t be poo-pooed. It’s not easy to answer this question, and that’s why Ichiro gets drafted as high as 29 and as low as 57. But there are plenty of high-power low-batting average sluggers that become much more attractive as soon as you bring Ichiro! into the fold.

David Golebiewski: Ichiro is one of the more difficult players to project in all of fantasy baseball. We know that he’s not going to draw many walks or hit for much power (his .113 ISO last season was his highest mark since 2005). But he has consistently posted well above-average BABIP figures (.357 career) by virtue of his Olympic-level speed and ability to beat out infield hits. Over the last three years, Ichiro has the second-highest infield hit rate in the majors. His career batting average on ground balls is .306. For reference, the AL average hovers around the .240-.245 range.

In 2009, Ichiro managed a .384 BABIP, and hit an obscene .353 on grounders. Even for a guy who has time and again posted lofty BABIP figures, it’s likely that those numbers will regress in 2010. A simple Marcel projection forecasts a .319/.365/.418 line and a .352 BABIP. If Ichiro’s BABIP trends back toward his career average, then he’s a .320 batter, as opposed to last year’s .350+ machine.

The big question regarding his fantasy value is, will a 36 year-old Ichiro be great base stealer, or merely a good one? He missed the beginning of the 2009 season with a bleeding ulcer, but his 26 steals were a career-low, and his SB percentage (74.3) was his lowest since 2002. Ichiro’s Speed Score (5.2) was a career low, and well below his 6.6 overall mark in the majors. If I had to conjure a guess, I would lean toward the conservative side and project somewhere in the range of 25-35 steals next year.

MockDraftCentral currently has Ichiro at number 39 overall, which strikes me as reasonable. Just how one values Ichiro’s steals compared to another player’s power depends largely on the league format, but I’m a big advocate of going for the best available talent in the early rounds. Owners can get themselves in trouble by feeling that they must take a player who does X in round Y. I still think Ichiro is worthy of a relatively early-round pick.

Brian Joura: I have not owned Ichiro since 2005. I like taking him in mock drafts but not in real leagues. And the reason is that he is very unpredictable. Everyone says you take him and you have a stud in AVG. Some years that is very true and other years he is simply not that dominating. Yes, he has four years where he’s posted marks over .350, including last year. But he also has five years where he was at .322 or lower.

If he reaches that .350 mark, than the early pick on him works out great. But if he finishes at .310 like he did in 2008 then you are sort of left holding the bag. It would be like drafting Adam Dunn and only getting 30 HR. It’s a good total but not what you were expecting. Eno mentioned that he has gone as low as 57 and I would certainly take him there but I will not pull the trigger on him at pick 29.

Over the offseason we’ll take a look at each position on the diamond and see how the past season affected the positional rankings and where there might be some potential bounceback value picks going into next year’s drafts. (See shortstops, catchers, second basemen, first basemen, third basemen, and left fielders.)

These rankings are for 5×5 rotisserie fantasy baseball. Eligibility was determined by where the player had the most at-bats last year.

The tier-of-his-own player in right field is Justin Upton, and I doubt there will be too much grumbling about this ranking for a guy who hit .300 with 26 home runs and 20 stolen bases in his firs full year. Sure, we may talk a little about his high BABIP (.364), but for now let’s just look at the fan projections and sigh.

That should end the easy portion of our rankings today. Perhaps this is just a little self-pity in anticipation of the comments thread, but the next two tiers could be a single tier, or could be three tiers, and could probably be re-arranged ad infinitum. We’ll give Ichiro! Suzuki credit for his BABIP and (sexy) infield-hitting prowess which are perfect for the right fantasy team.

Now come the players that are impossible to rank. Where do you put a guy like Nelson Cruz, who will give you great power and speed, but will hurt your batting average? Could he be any more different from Shin-Soo Choo, who is is solid across the board but won’t win you a single category? Bobby Abreu is in the Choo-mold, but we’ll move him back a little for the waning power and, to be frank, his old age and body type. It hasn’t hurt him yet, but someday, well it just has to. Right?

I don’t think blame can be attributed for seeing a separation after Abreu. While Nick Markakis is a metronome, his steady ticking doesn’t provide much beyond a .300 average and 20 home runs. The steals in 2007 have proved to be an aberration, and while he may get a power spike some year, there’s no way to predict it. Andre Ethier should, with a better BABIP (.292 in 2009, .316 xBABIP, .322 career BABIP), have a better batting average next year, but is the power real? When Bill James shaves seven home runs off your total, you should take notice. He may not hit 40+% fly balls next year. Some will complain about Jayson Werth’s placement, because he certainly looks like a Nelson-Cruz-lite, and they might be right. But Werth has had issues with staying on the field, and with his batting average and strikeout issues, the tier seems right.

Jay Bruce may just zoom up the charts next year and make his ranking seem silly, but at least the fans are backing my sense that we should temper our enthusiasm on the young slugger just a tad. He does seem like a great upside play, better than the young but inconsistent Hunter Pence behind him, who has seemingly showed us his best already. Brad Hawpe has some strikeout issues, some defense issues, and never really showed the power we thought he might. Forgive me for not believing in the simultaneous spike in both flyball rate (39.6% in 2009, 35.7% career) and HR/FB (17.1% in 2009, 12.9% career) and agreeing with the projections that say Michael Cuddyer’s power may subside next year.

The last tier is not very exciting in my mind. Nick Swisher’s batting average ranges from awful to terrible, Jermaine Dye is getting older and posted a six-year low in line drive percentage (16.9%), Garrett Jones was a 28-year-old rookie who had done nothing before 2007 in the minor leagues, and Magglio Ordonez, well we all saw what happened there. In fact, I would rather wait until the end of the draft to pick someone off of the “just off” list, so the Deep League Value piece this Sunday will feature some gems.

There’s been a lot of work done on BABIP by the esteemed writers on this site as well as The Hardball Times, so it’s not suprising that Derek Carty’s July 10th release of a simple expected BABIP calculator flew under the radar a bit. It shouldn’t have. The calculator allows us fantasy types to say with a little more certainty what sort of BABIP a particular player should expect.

The ‘simple’ in the calculator meant that instead of using the more complicated and nuanced four-component speed score, users have to use the more brute method of inputting stolen bases. This may be a considerable flaw, allbeit an easily corrected one. Taking a look at this threesome will provide us some questions about BABIP in general. It certainly looks like sometimes rotten luck lasts a whole year.

Jose Lopez – Midway through June, Lopez was languishing was a sub-.250 batting average and little power. Most were questioning if his breakout 2008 was just a fluke. His BABIP, though, was unnaturally low, and the balls began to bounce his way. He ended June with a .329/.325/.592 slash line that seemed to be a harbinger of further success. Unfortunately, his July slash line (.269/.299/.441) has been a lot less inspiring. The simple xBABIP calculator pegs his expected BABIP at .301, which seems fine at first glance. He has an average line drive percentage (18.1%) and profiles mostly as he did last year during his great year. But then look at his yearly BABIP totals, and something looks fishy. Since 2005, those BABIPs have read: .276, .312, .269, .311, .266. It seems that he has good and bad years as much as he has good and bad months. Perhaps a good year is just one where the number of good months outweigh the bad months. And maybe 2009 is ‘just a bad year.’

Vernon Wells – Wells rode a .311/.329/.514 July back into respectability and is now on pace for a career high in stolen bases. Despite his low 14.9% line drive percentage, the xBABIP calculator likes him for a .302 BABIP. In the face of his .294 career BABIP and his career-best four-component speed score, this xBABIP seems more correct than his current .278 number. Maybe the title of the article gave you a heads up, but Wells is the proud poppa of his own pendulum-like BABIP. Here are his yearly totals, since his first full year in 2002: .288, .322, .286, .275, .313, .265, .299, .278. I’m not really suggesting that that Lopez and Wells are ‘due’ for bad years, but it does seem to follow that these are two players whose value is often tied up into BABIPs, and who often put together full years with sub-par BABIPs. Caution, at the very least, is in order when thinking of buying low in these cases.

Ichiro Suzuki – Suzuki is merely here because of tendency to ‘break’ BABIP predictors. His yearly BABIP totals oscillate a little, too, but there’s hardly a year that can be characterized as ‘poor:’ .371, .347, .333, .401, .319, .350, .390, .337, .387. When .319 is a poor BABIP for you, you don’t belong in this trio. The simple calculator can’t quite handle Ichiro’s legendary BABIP control (if such a thing exists), predicting a .328 number for Ichiro which would be the second-worst of his career. With his history, it doesn’t seem smart to predict a dive in his BABIP to get to that .328 number.

The lesson seems to be that there is still work to be done on xBABIP, and I doubt anyone would argue that they’ve figured it out completely. The work to date has been impressive, but there certainly seems to be more we can understand. Why is it that some players have BABIPs that normalize within a year, and other players seem to have BABIPs that only normalize over an entire career? It may only be a question of sample size, but there seems to be something more here. At first glance, I’d have to think that contact rate could be included in any expected BABIP model, but I’ve only just begun my journey into the numbers.

Hopefully you were able to pick up Lance Berkman and trade Adrian Gonzalez last week. But even if you stood pat there are still plenty of acquisition targets and trade bait guys out there for you. So, here are five guys to pick up and five guys to move.

Acquire

Adam LaRoche – In 2008 he had a .764 OPS in the first half of the year and a .975 OPS after the break. In 2007 the numbers were .763 and .854. In his MLB career, LaRoche has a .787 OPS pre-AS break and a .907 OPS after the break. He has had a very solid first half of the season and if he maintains his career averages after the break, LaRoche could challenge for his best season yet, when he batted .285-32-90.

Luke Hochevar – His strikeout rate is poor (3.57) and his BABIP sits at .231 for the season. But Hochevar has hurled a Quality Start in four of his last five outings, pitching into the seventh inning in all four of those games, including one route-going performance. Hochevar has decent control and does not allow many fly balls. And he should improve upon his 60 percent strand rate going forward.

Willie Harris – Since taking over the CF job 10 days ago, Harris has 3 HR and 3 SB to go along with a .308 AVG. Harris has never been a star, but he did hit 13 HR a season ago. If you need a stopgap option in the OF, he is a waiver wire pickup to consider, with the ability to help in multiple categories. Also, he has played 10 games this year at 2B, which may make him eligible there in some formats.

Chad Gaudin – Back as a SP after spending most of last season in relief, Gaudin is piling up the strikeouts and maintaining a serviceable WHIP (1.39) despite a dismal 4.58 BB/9 mark. His FIP is over a full run beneath his ERA while his strand rate has room for improvement from its current 65.2 percent mark. Early in the month, Gaudin was forced into bullpen duty in an 18-inning game. He got rocked in his next start but has followed up with three Quality Starts. In that span, Gaudin has a 28/5 SO/BB ratio in 21 innings.

Garrett Atkins – Through his first 53 games, Atkins had a .189 AVG and was in the discussion for the worst player in fantasy baseball. Since then, he’s hit .519 in his last 10 games, although none of his other fantasy numbers have been noteworthy. But one category production is better than none and Atkins has a .240 BABIP despite a career .314 mark in the category. RoS ZiPS shows him with a .288-12-52-44-1 line the remainder of the season.

Trade

Ichiro Suzuki – There may be no more polarizing figure in fantasy baseball than Ichiro. Proponents point to his ultra-high AVG and SB and strong R numbers. So far, the proponents have been right. Ichiro’s .372 AVG has him as the 14th-best fantasy player, according to CBS Sports. He has a .391 BABIP. Ichiro had a .390 mark in 2007 and hit .401 in the category in 2004. Still, his career mark is .358 so some regression should not be a surprise. Also, Ichiro already has as many HR as he hit in the past two seasons and his HR/FB rate is double what it was a season ago.

Derek Lowe – His last three outings have really dragged down his overall numbers. Some may consider Lowe a buy-low option as a solid #2/3 fantasy pitcher simply going through a rough patch. But he is also a 36-year old with declining K/9 and BB/9 numbers. Lowe is getting fewer swings outside the zone and the famed sinkerballer has a career-worst GB%. The numbers could be even worse if Lowe did not have a career-best 4.4 percent HR/FB rate, roughly one-third of his career mark in the category. His velocity is down and Pitch Type Values shows his slider, which was such an effective pitch for Lowe last year, has been a below-average pitch this season.

Mark Reynolds – Fantasy players mostly avoided Reynolds on Draft Day this season, making him a late-round pick or waiver-wire fare. The conventional wisdom was that his power was not worth the low average. Whoops. Reynolds has raised his AVG 29 points, shown even more power than a season ago and added SB to his game. But it is time to sell high. Reynolds is unlikely to maintain his 28-SB or 45-HR pace. He has already surpassed his professional career high in steals and the 28 percent HR/FB rate is 10 points above last year’s mark.

Joel Pineiro – He has gained a lot of publicity lately for being the latest Tony LaRussa/Dave Duncan reclamation project. But Pineiro features a career-low 3.81 K/9 ratio and he is unlikely to maintain a 0.27 HR/9 rate.

Scott Rolen – His .332 AVG has been almost as big of a surprise as Rolen playing in 66 games so far, even with his bad back. He has a 17-game hitting streak with 10 multi-hit games. But he is a one-category performer, with just 5 HR and 29 RBI to go along with his gaudy AVG. And not surprisingly, Rolen has a .360 BABIP, which would be his personal best and is 46 points above his career mark.