Archive for jonathan villar

Playing time can make or break a baseball player’s fantasy value. An elite player may not finish above replacement level if he suffers an injury and plays only half the season, and a lackluster player could finish above replacement level simply by playing every single day. This is all intuitive, and the fantasy community generally approaches these kinds of things rationally. In other words, most players are appropriately valued, outside of the market inefficiencies that inevitably warp player values.

One-dimensional speedsters — dudes who steal a bunch of bases and do little else — are much harder to peg. Their value is tied up primarily in one category, as stolen bases (SBs) do not directly correlate with other categories the way home runs would with runs and RBI, for example. The issue becomes all the more confounding when one considers the contemporaneous scarcity of SBs relative to home runs. There’s more to value than just SBs and plate appearances (PAs), but the fact of the matter is the two statistics by themselves correlate very strongly with a player’s end-of-season (EOS) value (which, here, are informed by Razzball’s Player Rater).

In the last five years, baseball has seen 75 player-seasons of 30-plus SBs — 15 steals a year on average, a trend that didn’t fundamentally change in 2016 (although that doesn’t mean SBs aren’t scarce). A simple linear regression of SBs and PAs, the latter of which serves as a proxy for other counting stats such as runs and RBI, against EOS value produces a remarkable 0.71 adjusted R²:

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It’s not like we need to talk about Jonathan Villar. We have all seen what he’s doing. But when a guy seemingly comes out of nowhere to become a top-10 fantasy player, it’s usually a big deal. What gives? Who cares. We’re here now. Let’s talk about Jonathan Villar.

Villar is on pace to hit 13 home runs, steal 60 bases, and bat .292. That’s 2014 Jose Altuve, but more power and less batting average. We’ll check the validity of all those paces in a second. The middle one is really not open for much contention, though. It took 16 games for Villar to steal his first two bases this year, but he hasn’t gone more than five games since without successfully swiping a bag. With 21 steals in the 45 games since April 23, he’s basically taking an extra base every other day. Billy Hamilton who?

Neither the speed nor power should have caught any of us by surprise. All of it is well-documented, dating back to 2014. Blake Murphy gave Villar his due back then, noting a 10-homer, 30-steal, .250 hitter is “immensely valuable” given the paucity of talent at shortstop. That has obviously changed this year, what with Corey Seager and Francisco Lindor and Carlos Correa and all that jazz. (Despite their presences, Villar still holds his own.)

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For a team that is in full on rebuilding mode, it’s a little strange that the Astros infield is likely to be populated by the same players that were there last year. It’s a good thing to some degree because it means they’ve found a few guys who can stick at their position. The only bad news is that the guys they hope will stick at the remaining positions aren’t quite ready for the show yet.

The strength of the current infield is most definitely up the middle. Jose Altuve and Jason Castro had the most fantasy value on the team last year according to both our valuations and ESPN’s player rater. Despite the infield being stagnant, the outfield is going to look a bit different with Dexter Fowler now on the squad and George Springer on the way. That’s going to help the fantasy value of Altuve and Castro. Steamer projects Altuve to score 21 more runs than he did last year and projects Castro for 13 more RBI. Steamer is actually the most conservative of the projection models on Castro’s RBI total. Oliver has him at 78 RBI, and the fan projections have him at 74.

Aside from the shared benefit that will be the improved lineup around them, Altuve and Castro could actually be headed in different directions this year. Read the rest of this entry »