Archive for Jesus Flores

With the July 31st non-waiver trade deadline approaching, you should be looking into possible MLB trade scenarios that could have a direct impact on your fantasy roster.  Maybe you own the player on the move, maybe you own a guy who is about to start losing playing time, or maybe you own a guy who will say bye-bye to a teammate and land some extra PT. Whatever the case may be, your league’s trade deadline is rapidly approaching as well, so staying alert and showing some foresight could help you land some much-need production from a relatively soft position. Read the rest of this entry »

Even though the positional rankings aren;t being updated monthly, the tiers are, so let’s take a look at some of the movement amongst the catchers.  We saw a few things happen with the May tiers but I held back any extreme movement because of sample sizes and questions surrounding performance sustainability.  This month, guys are moving… Read the rest of this entry »

Talk about your run of bad luck…

Wilson Ramos signs with the Twins, forever to be blocked from a starting gig with Joe Mauer already in-house.  He gets traded to the Nationals who then decide that they’d rather have a marquee name like Ivan Rodriguez behind the plate.  So Ramos bides his time, earns more and more PT as the season progresses, and heads into the offseason, knowing that he will be the full-time catcher in 2012. Read the rest of this entry »

Did you have a stupendous Mother’s Day? Probably not, since you’re likely a dude who didn’t buy the right kind of flowers.

• Heading into Sunday’s game against the Seattle Mariners, Andy Pettitte was owned in 19% of Yahoo! leagues, 14% of ESPN leagues, and a whopping 47% of CBS leagues. After facing the Mariners and throwing a perfect game (I’m writing this before the game starts, so I’m just playing the odds), he’s going to be much more widely owned. If you want a pitcher who’s relatively fun to root for and could grab you some wins, Pettitte is a pretty good option. He’s not going to rack up gaudy strikeout totals, but he should be solid nonetheless.

Read the rest of this entry »

While recently running some projections for the catcher position, I paused at the name Ivan Rodriguez. First, I couldn’t believe he was still in the league. He’s turning 39 next week, he’s survived allegation and decline, and yet he’s employed as a major-league catcher next year and he’s averaged 433 plate appearances over his last three years. His offense hasn’t been great (around a 72 wRC+ the last two years), but it’s a tough position, and his .266 batting average last year was 13th among catchers with more than 300 plate appearances. He’s been owned and will be owned again.

But it wasn’t just Rodriguez that gave me pause. After just returning from the Arizona Fall League, where young Derek Norris played well (.278/.403/.667 in 65 plate appearances), I wondered how soon the Nationals would make a change and look to the future. In that future, it’s Norris that piques the interest. He’s put up a 267/304 BB/K ratio in 1392 plate appearances, or a 19.2% walk rate and a 28% strikeout rate. The first is nice, the second is very worrisome. In the AFL he struck out 33% of the time, so that part of his game has continued.

In this case, the good news is that Norris hasn’t played in Double-A yet and has a full year to work on his strikeout rate. He has patience and power – a .201 ISO so far, and a nice showing at the AFL with four homers, two triples and five at-bats in those 54 PAs – so two thirds of the triumvirate are there. His range of possibilities still includes Geovany Soto (16% walk rate, 25.8% strikeout rate, .217 ISO last year), but it also includes Chris Snyder (13.8% walk rate, 29.5% strikeout rate, .169 ISO last year). The risk of the latter is large, but the promise of the former means that Norris needs to stay on radars as he progresses through Double-A in 2011.

In the short term, Rodriguez may have more to worry about from Jesus Flores. Flores has been battling shoulder woes which took all of 2010 from him – but he’s been catching in the Venezuelan Winter League until a calf injury recently sidelined him. Taken in the Rule V draft from the Mets, Flores has been injured so often that he’s only managed 627 plate appearances since the beginning of the 2007 season. In those plate appearances, he hasn’t shown much patience (6.4%), power (.146 ISO) or ability to make contact (26.5%), but short stints have produced small samples in which he’s walked at double-digit rates and shown above-average power. Flores gets an incomplete but interesting, which seems about par for the course.

Last but not least is the newcomer, Wilson Ramos. Famously blocked in Minnesota, Ramos came over in the Matt Capps trade and found some previously lacking mojo. In 2008 and 2009, Ramos was a young catcher in High-A and Double-A showing the ability to avoid the strikeout (18.6% over the two years, 11.2% in Double-A) and pair that with average power (.146 and .137 ISOs respectively). Then 2010 came, and he lost the power (.104 ISO), hit some poor batted-ball luck (.277 BABIP), and put forth a .241/.280/.345 line that may have contributed to his trade. The change of scenery did the trick, as he put up a .177 ISO with the Nationals, and the batted ball luck returned to normal (.344 BABIP), considering that BABIPs are normally high in the minor leagues.

Through it all, Ramos has shown the ability to avoid the strikeout (17.7% career, and lower at the higher levels). That might serve him to put up an okay batting average despite the lack of walks. Paired with average-ish power, he might look like… Ivan Rodriguez. Without some – cough – help, Ramos’ power peak won’t ever look like Rodriguez’ best years, but look at the Tigers’ version of Rodriguez for an idea of what a nice Ramos year could look like. And, in fact, that makes him the safest bet for the future at the position for the Nationals.

This is the first part of a series that will check up on injured players and recent injuries during spring training.

– Brandon Webb is working his way back from shoulder issues, and threw 43 pitches in a bullpen session on Sunday. He also threw 45 pitches in a previous bullpen session on Thursday. The D’Backs are trying to get him ready for some in-game appearances by mid-March, but that may be far too optimistic. Arizona has a shot to be good this year, and if they are smart they will baby him along and attempt to get 25-28 starts out of Webb this year. All looks well with Webb, but that’s what we thought going into last year, and continued to think that at times during the rehab process. If he looks healthy, take a shot at Webb.

– Brandon Inge is still going through the rehab process after undergoing surgery on both knees this offseason. Inge thinks he’ll be ready to start the year, but some Tigers officials aren’t as optimistic. Inge is “bored”, and that is leading him to try to come back from his injury quicker, which is not the best thing for him. During the first half of ’09, Inge was a stud, and it’s unclear if his second half was due to regression, injuries, or a combination of both. Now, with bad knees and lost catcher eligibility, he’s no longer draftable.

– After missing a vast majority of 2009, Daisuke Matsuzaka is continuing to work his way back for the 2010 season. He threw off a mound, although the catcher was standing, and also participated in some long toss. The Red Sox are willing to admit that Dice-K won’t be ready for opening day, but it looks like they hope he will be ready to go sometime in the first month of the season. The Red Sox may choose to go with a four-man rotation until Dice-K gets back on the mound, but they could also place Tim Wakefield in the starting rotation. Wakefield is always a strange fantasy pickup, but he could be a nice waiver wire guy for wins.

More injury notes:

• Jose Reyes tripled in an intersquad game yesterday. Hard to gauge a speed guy with a leg injury, but Reyes could be fantastic value in the late second round.
• Jesus Flores admitted that he won’t be ready for opening day. He has shown some promise in the past, but his shoulder problems combined with the arrival of Pudge will kill his value.
• After an early scare, Jair Jurrjens’ shoulder seems to be doing better. He is throwing from long distances and hopes to get on the mound next week. Until I see him on the mound, I’m skeptical.

Once again a fantasy freak is allowed out into the light, and, well, I feel the pressure to be… fantastic. But how better to represent what we’ve been doing on RotoGraphs than to continue a series that gets right at the heart of what FanGraphs’ beautiful numbers can do for you in fantasy? That’s right, we’re checking out players from our tiered ranking series that are likely to outperform their Average Draft Position (ADP) as determined by MockDraftCentral.com.

It’s a mouthful, but remember, in the words of the immortal Black Sheep, “You can get with this, or you can get with that, I think you’ll get with this, for this is where it’s at.” It’s all about choosing the right player at the right spot.

For example, Victor Martinez is a fine young man. He’ll probably hit twenty home runs and have a nice batting average. His runs and RBI should be elite for a catcher, given the lineup surrounding him and his home ballpark. His ADP (24.19) reflects all of these things by placing him at the end of the second round. You could get with this.

On the other hand, there’s Brian McCann, who is also a fine young catcher. The fans have him hitting a couple more home runs, though, probably because his ISO has been much steadier and more impressive (.183, .222, .205 since 2007) than Martinez has shown (.205, .086, .177 over the same time period). Of course, picking McCann may come with a little more risk in the batting average department. There is the matter of his .270 batting average in 2007 in some minds. But McCann had a sub-.300 BABIP that year for the only time in his career, despite also owning a .307 xBABIP that year. It looks like he’s at least a reasonably solid bet to give similar value to Martinez… and he’s going as much as two rounds later according to his ADP (42.37). Among the top-tiered catchers, this is where it’s at (for value).

Once the top three catchers go, the ADPs plunge into the 100s, and for good reason. Because of the way the average catcher is used, the top 12 catchers by at-bats averaged 490 at-bats compared to 586 average at-bats for the top 12 first basemen last year. That’s 16.4% fewer at-bats. So before you use any pick on a catcher, remember that he’s going to get 15% fewer chances than the average position player – and also that his poor batting average will be 15% less hurtful than a bad batting average on a player at a different position.

In the next tier, Miguel Montero and his emerging game make for a good value given his draft position (149.78). He’s shown a .173+ ISO three seasons running, and seems to have finally reigned in the strikeouts to a reasonable level (18.6% last year). He’s also twelve years younger than the more expensive Jorge Posada (116.53 ADP). Catcher-years can catch up to a catcher in his late thirties. (Catch that?)

I could certainly get with Kurt Suzuki (131.37 ADP), but Russell Martin is cheaper (137.89) and more likely to offer a handful of extra steals. In the end, I’m probably just going to bypass the lot of them and go for end-game sleepers like the always-solid never-exciting AJ Pierzynski (246.68). As commenter Bas noted on our Check the Position: Catcher piece, AJ and Suzuki have similar high-contact, low-walk-rate, medium-power approaches – why you would pay almost ten rounds more for Suzuki? Certainly not for those five steals.

Finally, a word for a deep league ADP value guy. John Baker was first made famous for his inclusion in Billy Beane’s wishlists in Money Ball, and won’t hurt you with his low ADP (318.62). Jesus Flores, on the other hand, has an ISO that’s going in the right direction and is even cheaper (332.92). Provided Flores is healthy, both are fine late-round additions in deep leagues.