Archive for Indians

Episode 90

The latest episode of The Sleeper and the Bust is now live! Jason Collette joins Eno Sarris to preview the San Francisco Giants and the Cleveland Indians.

As usual, don’t hesitate to tweet us any fantasy questions you have that we may answer on our next episode.

You can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes or via the feed.

Thanks to Ian Miller aka Teen Archer, for the new intro music

Approximately 77 min of joyous analysis.

FSTA draft results mentioned several times in the show

Swooning over high upside teenagers can quickly become an obsession for rebuilding fantasy owners. While vigorously checking box scores is far more interesting than watching one’s team struggle, there are two important characteristics to remember about fantasy baseball prospects that one must remember before getting too excited.

Of course, all prospects — even those atop your favorite rankings — have a high failure rate. Adding fantasy baseball into that equation doesn’t help. In most leagues, the massive failure rate is compounded by vastly decreased playing time opportunities which leads to an increase in quality of replacement-level and league-average players.

Today, I’m going to discuss the fantasy outlook of Indian’s shortstop Francisco Lindor. Lindor will have no issue sticking at shortstop. He is a complete defender, mixing great technical skills, a good first step and strong natural instincts. His ETA is 2015 when Asdrubal Cabrera becomes a free agent. Of course, if Cleveland extends Cabrera or decides to trade him in 2014 that could change things drastically.

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Victor Martinez was the top catcher on most draft boards prior to the 2008 season. He had an ADP of 29 following his 2007 season where he hit .301-25-114-78-0. Of course Martinez ended up a big disappointment, as he came down with first a hamstring problem and then an injured elbow.

Martinez ultimately needed surgery to remove bone chips from his elbow. When he returned from the disabled list, he hit for disappointing power numbers the final two months of the season.

The mock draft crowd has knocked Martinez down quite a bit this year. He carries an ADP of 80, 51 spots lower than a season ago, and making him on average the fifth catcher off the board.

There have been no reports of problems with the elbow this Spring. Martinez has been a regular in Cleveland’s lineup. He has six extra-base hits, including three home runs, in 38 at-bats, which has led to a .579 slugging mark.

Now, 38 at-bats is not usually anything you want to make any judgments about and Spring Training stats are notoriously misleading. But in the particular case of Martinez, seeing him hit for power is definitely a good sign.

If Martinez can come anywhere close to his 2007 fantasy line, he will be a steal at his current ADP because of the value of those stats from a catcher. With the uncertainty surrounding Joe Mauer, fantasy owners would be wise to bump Martinez over the Twins backstop and put him on a par with Geovany Soto, who carries an ADP of 66.

The shortstop position in fantasy baseball as we head towards the 2009 season has three players in the top tier and around 10 players fighting for position in the second tier. One of the interesting players is Indians shortstop Jhonny Peralta. In three of the past four years, Peralta has delivered good numbers in home runs, runs and RBIs. Last year he led all shortstops in RBIs and finished third in both runs and HRs. Unfortunately, he contributes nothing in steals and his average has not been a plus since 2005.

Last year, Peralta’s numbers benefited by him putting more balls in play. Both his BB% and SO% decreased as he set career highs in five plate discipline metrics. He had 17 more plate appearances than 2007 but 51 more balls where he made contact. Peralta’s BABIP was his lowest since becoming a full-time player in 2005 but he posted his second-best fantasy season, going .276-23-89-104-3.

A switch in the batting order also helped Peralta’s 2008 numbers. Last year he spent much of the year in the cleanup spot after hitting fifth, sixth or seventh most of the year in 2007. As the Indians did not add a slugger in the off-season, Peralta still figures to hit in the heart of the order, which should keep his RBI numbers high.

Peralta should be a pretty good bet to match last year’s numbers. What is harder to say is where fantasy owners should target him. One ADP report has him at #83, which is at the end of the seventh round. Another report has him at #117, which is in the middle of the 10th round. This is a pretty big discrepancy, but perfectly reasonable given how bunched up the second tier of shortstops actually are.

One of the keys to being a successful fantasy player is understanding the ebb and flow of your draft. Even if you rank Peralta as the fourth-best shortstop in fantasy, is there any reason to draft him in the seventh round if J.J. Hardy, Troy Tulowitzki, Michael Young, Stephen Drew and Derek Jeter are all still available?

Peralta should put up good fantasy numbers once again in 2009. But he is just one of many middle-class options at shortstop. You should feel good if you wind up with Peralta as your starting shortstop. Just remember not to reach or overpay for the privilege.

Shin-Soo Choo, once a top prospect for the Mariners, received the most playing time of his major league career for the Indians last year. In his first year back after having Tommy John surgery, he set the record for most hits in a season by a Korean-born player. Choo’s 98 hits eclipsed the mark of 86 set by Hee Seop Choi in 2004.

The knock on Choo is that he is a platoon player or fourth outfielder. But in 2008, the lefty hitting Choo posted a .286/.345/.455 line versus southpaws, albeit in 84 plate appearances. But considering how well he hits righties (.317/.413/.579 last year), Choo apparently has earned a full-time starting job as Spring Training approaches.

Grady Sizemore is a fixture in center for Cleveland and he will be flanked by Choo and Ben Francisco. But the big unknown is Matt LaPorta, the key player received by the Tribe in the C.C. Sabathia deal last summer. LaPorta was enjoying a standout season before suffering a concussion in the Olympics. He will most likely start the season in the minors but it would be no surprise if LaPorta was in the majors before September, with the big question of if he will be an outfielder or a first baseman.

Choo had a .373 BABIP last season, which would have tied for third in the majors if he had enough at-bats to qualify. But as fantastic as that was, it was in line with what he had done in previous stints in the majors. His lifetime mark in the category now sits at .369 in 509 at-bats.

While Choo may or may not be able to sustain a high BABIP the big question is what can we expect from him in the power department. Last year’s .240 ISO mark was well beyond anything he had posted previously, either in the majors or the minors. But a significant portion of that was from doubles, as he smacked 28 two-baggers in 317 at-bats.

Some might be concerned about his 16.1 percent HR/FB mark last year, but in the only other season in the majors where he had sizable playing time, Choo posted a 14.3 percent HR/FB mark.

Assuming Choo holds down a full-time job for the year, he could post a .290 average along with 15-20 HRs and 8-10 steals, too. If he was a first baseman, we might call him Derrek Lee. And for a guy who goes undrafted in many early mocks, that’s great production. Make sure to have Choo on your list of players to target in the late rounds of your draft.

Asdrubal Cabrera got the chance to play every day for the Indians down the stretch in 2007 and showed enough to merit the full-time second base job for the club in 2008. And then he was terrible. Before being sent to Triple-A in early June, Cabrera posted a .184/.282/.247 line in 185 plate appearances.

But he found his stroke at Buffalo, where he hit for both average and power, and soon found himself back in the majors. Cabrera continued to hit after his recall, posting a .320/.398/.464 line in his final 233 plate appearances. In September alone, he had 15 runs, 22 RBIs and a .416 average, thanks to a .448 BABIP.

So, should fantasy owners expect Cabrera to more closely resemble the player who struggled mightily in the first half or the one who outperformed Chase Utley, Ian Kinsler and Brian Roberts in the second half?

Upon his recall, Cabrera made more contact and hit the ball with more authority. His K% was 25.3 percent before being sent down and was 19.1 percent in his second stint in the majors in 2008. His isolated slugging was .063 before the demotion and .144 after the recall. How do these numbers compare with Cabrera’s minor league stats?

Since being acquired from the Mariners via trade in mid 2006, here are Cabrera’s minor league numbers:

	AB	BA	BABIP	SLG	ISO	K%
AA	368	.310	.333	.454	.144	11.4
AAA	369	.293	.353	.396	.103	19.5

If we break down the numbers even further, we see Cabrera struggled in his first exposure to Triple-A (.263/.293/.337) as a 20-year old, but did quite well there last season (.326/.375/.475).

It should come as no surprise that Cabrera struggled in the majors as a 22-year old in the beginning of last season. The encouraging thing is that he got straightened out in the minors and came back to Cleveland and did very well.

Even though Cabrera’s minor league BABIPs are very good, it’s unrealistic to expect him to post the .365 BABIP that he did in the second half of 2008. That figure would have placed him fifth in the majors in the category. However, his other numbers are not out of line with what he has done in the minors and are reasonable numbers to maintain in the majors.

From the small samples that we have, Cabrera is more likely to post a K% under 20 percent than he is to be above 25 percent. And an isolated slugging mark in the vicinity of .140 is not out of the question. He did that in Double-A in 2007 and in Triple-A (.149) in 2008.

The Bill James projection (.277-10-62 with 84 runs and 11 steals) seems very reasonable, although I might go for a little higher average and a few less steals. Either way, that’s a very similar, although slightly superior, season to what Tampa Bay’s Akinori Iwamura put up in 2008.

Cabrera will be an afterthought on Draft Day in most mixed leagues next season. But by the end of the season he will be on an active roster in most leagues. He is definitely someone to consider in the final rounds of your draft.