Archive for Jonathan Lucroy

The Milwaukee Brewers return an offense that scored the third-most runs in Major League Baseball. Their team .329 wOBA ranked second in the National League behind the Colorado Rockies, their 202 home runs topped in the NL, and their 158 stolen bases were the best in baseball last season.

Combine that prolific offense with minimal personnel turnover, and it’s not difficult to see why the Brewers have very few positional battles in camp this spring. That extends to the infield, which has entrenched starters around the diamond. A preseason injury to Corey Hart throws a wrench into the depth chart to begin the year, but he’s only expected to miss approximately a month. After his return, the Brewers will feature the same infield they trotted out throughout the final two months last season.

Missing Opening Day is nothing new for Corey Hart, who will miss the start of the season for the third time in the past four years. His absence creates a void at first base for the Brewers for the first month, and perhaps longer. The organization wants to focus on internal options this spring, and the leading candidates for playing time at first base with Hart on the DL appear to be veteran Alex Gonzalez and 26-year-old Taylor Green.

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With the non-waiver trade deadline coming up tonight, the flurry of deals we’ve seen, the rash of injuries lately, not to mention your fantasy league’s trade deadline, it’s not easy to keep tabs on each and every player.  Sometimes things just fall through the cracks.  And since the catching position, all to often, goes unwatched and unnoticed unless you’re having blatant issues at the position, perhaps a general update piece will be helpful. Read the rest of this entry »

For the most part, the catcher position has been a pretty big disappointment this season.  Some have performed as expected, but by and large, there are more downs than ups.  Hopefully, things will pick up in the second half when we get a serious influx of players coming back from injuries who might be better options than the Nick Hundley, Miguel Olivo, or Jason Castro that you have sitting in your catcher slot right now.  They’re not all precious gems coming back, but some are definitely better than others and likely better than what’s out on your waiver wire as well. 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 »

One of the biggest criticisms of saber-enthusiasts is their tendency to ignore the human element of the game.  Their breakdown and analysis of the game is all about the numbers, statistical trends, replacement values, etc.  These aren’t robots here on the field playing the game, yet often during a study of it, they are, in a way, treated as such.  And for me, I have to agree with the critics.  You simply can’t ignore the human element.  It must be accounted for in some way.  Why?  Because humans are inherently stupid and common sense is the least common thing in this world. Read the rest of this entry »

In contrast to what we did last season, this year we’re doing monthly updates for our positional rankings as laid out by Eno Sarris and his minions.  In addition to that, we’re doing our monthly positional tier updates as well which should aid you in your waiver pick-ups and trade negotiations when you’re comparing values.  The rankings can be found over here and below is how I see them by tier… Read the rest of this entry »

With just about 10 games into the season and no one amassing more than 40 plate appearances, the Small Sample Size Police are in full force right now.  Hot starts, cold starts, nothing matters to these brazen fantasy owners who dismiss such meaningless statistics at this time of year.  But that doesn’t mean the rest of us can’t have a little fun and appreciate the good fortune bestowed upon us by the fantasy gods as our catchers come flying out of the gate, white-hot, and throw us some always helpful power stats.  I mean, would you rather be sitting there lamenting Russell Martin’s ice cold start and wonder if his batting average will actually be worse than 2011’s .237 mark or give in to your child-like giddiness over the fact that Alex Avila has picked right up where he left off last season?  Yeah, that’s what I thought… Read the rest of this entry »

If you’re using ADP to help guide you through your draft, it’s always good to see it in action.  The lists you see on Mock Draft Central are great because of the aggregate data, but you know how a lot of mocks go — sometimes you get guys that stay for the first 10 rounds and then leave, putting it on auto-pick the rest of the way.  That just skews the data towards the site’s rankings and becomes less helpful.  So while the sample size is tiny, let’s look at the RotoGraphs Reader Mock Draft and see how a group of informed and dedicated fantasy baseball citizens did with their catchers in comparison to the ADP data we see.

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As we make our way through these rankings, let me just add in one thing.  While relative value is something we have left for you to ultimately decide, there are certain players whom I consider keeper worthy and those that aren’t in spite of things like the Fantasy Value Above Replacement spreadsheet that we have been using.  Sure, Yadier Molina may have outproduced Wilson Ramos according to our 2011 retro value, but am I keeping a catcher who is moving into his ninth season and will turn 30 years old at the All Star break because suddenly, out of the blue, he doubled his home run production last year?  Probably not.  It’s very difficult for me to think that a player who put up near identical numbers for his first seven seasons, suddenly can double his ISO mark in his eighth year and maintain that as his future level of production.  I see it more as a statistical anomaly than anything else.  Therefore, like each and every year prior, I would not even consider keeping Molina and subsequently must leave him off these rankings.

So today, I’ll throw out a few names of players to continue what we’ve done and tomorrow will finish it off with a few honorable mentions.  There will be some players left off this list, but again, we’re calling them keeper rankings and not every player is worth keeping.

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When Jonathan Lucroy singled in the 7th inning of Sunday’s NLCS to plate an insurance run for the Brewers, I couldn’t help but think about what a nice surprise he was this year and the prospects of going back after him in next year’s draft.  With a .265-12-59 batting line, no one would dare protect him in a keeper league despite an obvious low cost.  However, in deeper fantasy leagues or leagues that require you to start two catchers, he could end up one of those staples; a guy you quietly draft every year and get solid, not phenomenal but solid, production from without concern.

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