Before a diagnosis was divulged, I watched Jose Altuve slide into second-base and come up a little gimpy in the playoffs warning bells were going in my head. He missed 3 weeks from late July to mid-August, and as I sorted through the possibilities of what could be wrong, I grew more and more pessimistic. Read the rest of this entry »
Yahoo launched their fantasy baseball site for 2017 over three weeks ago, which means that by now, there should be some solid trends to analyze in their average draft position and auction value data. There’s some surprises to be found in the early returns, so let’s dive right into the top 12 by average auction price. (When looking at the 2016 values, keep in mind that Turner and Gordon each played roughly half a season, and Carpenter dealt with an oblique injury.)
Whenever I write my monthly second-base rankings, I find myself awestruck by how much better Jose Altuve is than any other option at the position. This usually leads me down an Altuve-based statistical rabbit hole, and today I’d simply like to invite you to join me, as I explore the reasons why the 26-year-old is the most productive 2016 fantasy bat to date. (Yes, he’s seriously producing better than the likes of Josh Donaldson, Mike Trout, and David Ortiz in traditional 5×5 formats.)
First off, let’s compare the man to himself. Just 92 games into the season, his 15 home runs already equal last year’s career high. With 70 runs and 54 RBI, he’s on pace to shatter his career marks in both categories, which were also set last year (86 R, 66 RBI). He’s hitting .346, even better than the .341 he hit in 2014, when he won the American League batting title.
He’s already drawn more walks (42) than in any of his previous four full seasons. On-base percentage, slugging percentage, isolated power — all are miles beyond anything he’s done before. His 4.7 wins above replacement already tops last year’s 4.3 WAR.
Check out last month’s rankings here.
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No more bland, rote tiers from this guy! Thanks to the urging of commenter “Urban Shocker,” my eyes are now open to the fun that can be had with ridiculously labeled tiers. You see, I used to just write these monthly second-base columns with boring old numbered tiers. That is, until Urban Shocker convinced me in the comments section of my April rankings to name my tiers from then on.
To be perfectly honest, the task of doing these monthly rankings can get rather stale — for both me and you — as the season wears on. Eventually, it gets to the point where the rankings barely change, because 30-day samples don’t substantially change the way I/we think about a certain player.
Furthermore, there’s only so many ways I can say “Jose Altuve had a good month again,” or “Dee Gordon steals lots of bases,” or “Holy crap, Dan Uggla is so incredibly terrible!” (Actually, never mind on that last one. I will never get sick of making jokes about Uggla, who got paid $13 million last year to post a weighted offense 72% below league-average.)
I am a chronic off-season Mets rosterbater. Many of my potential Mets trade Tweets are far from rational. Some have included proposals for Troy Tulowitzki, which then leads to trading Daniel Murphy in order to open second base for a long-term competition between Wilmer Flores and Dilson Herrera.
What will the fantasy baseball market look like for Jose Altuve in 2015? The Houston Astros’ second baseman, as a top-five commodity overall who wasn’t, on average, drafted as a top-five player at his position and barely within the top 100, according to Fantasy Pros’ ADP data, certainly helped some fantasy baseball players win this year. What did Zach Sanders know that all his haters in the comments didn’t?! It’s safe to say that Altuve has changed perception and will cost more next season.
There’ll also be folks who’ll avoid and/or recommend to avoid him because of the scary regression monster. Any player who hits .341 thanks to a .360 BABIP and steals 56 bases in 65 attempts after he finished his previous two seasons nowhere near those marks is due to fall hard, the reasoning might basically go. It’s a pretty simple and safe approach, since regression to mean performance is the smart bet.
But how much will his future performance actually regress? Altuve did some potentially significant things differently in 2014. It seems pretty plausible that he’s begun to establish an entirely new mean performance level. And if that’s true, then there might still be room to profit on a purchase of Altuve next year.
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 »
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You might think that being “lucky” enough to write about the potentially dreadful Houston infield might be a source of consternation for me. Not quite! At least I get Jose Altuve, who is potentially the only obvious standard-league draftable player on the entire Astros roster outside of maybe Bud Norris and whomever ends up collecting what few saves there might be. Read the rest of this entry »
They say that, in life, timing is everything. Yes, success is often something you achieve when you put in the proper amount of work, but for many, it can simply be a matter of being in the right place at the right time. Sometimes, it can be an amazing occurrence in life, at least when it happens to you, and other times you just sit there and watch in complete disbelief, wondering how some people can catch such a break. It can be as big as randomly meeting someone who, in the end, offers you your dream job, or as small as simply flipping on the TV and catching a ballgame in the fourth inning that ends up being Matt Cain’s perfect game.
So we’ve done a pretty thorough bludgeoning of the recent reader mock draft, looking at almost every round except for the fliers, and covering several of the positions along the way as well. Second base has me particularly concerned headed into 2012, so let’s break down how the readers handled the challenge of staffing their squads at that position.
The following chart is pretty self explanatory – where the player was selected in the reader mock, what their average draft position is over at Mock Draft Central, and the difference between the two to the right:
| Player | Reader Mock | MDC ADP | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Robinson Cano | 6 | 11 | -5 |
| Dustin Pedroia | 17 | 17 | 0 |
| Ian Kinsler | 28 | 23 | 5 |
| Brandon Phillips | 44 | 60 | -16 |
| Dan Uggla | 59 | 53 | 6 |
| Rickie Weeks | 70 | 78 | -8 |
| Ben Zobrist | 71 | 80 | -9 |
| Chase Utley | 80 | 76 | 4 |
| Howie Kendrick | 92 | 107 | -15 |
| Jason Kipnis | 103 | 162 | -59 |
| Dustin Ackley | 122 | 134 | -12 |
| Danny Espinosa | 126 | 149 | -23 |
| Jemile Weeks | 140 | 152 | -12 |
| Neil Walker | 145 | 139 | 6 |
| Aaron Hill | 226 | 310 | -84 |
| Kelly Johnson | 227 | 329 | -102 |
| Ryan Roberts | 244 | 197 | 47 |
| Jose Altuve | 274 | 228 | 46 |
| Mike Aviles | 279 | 339 | -60 |
| Ryan Raburn | 294 | 346 | -52 |
| Gordon Beckham | 304 | 318 | -14 |
| Daniel Murphy | 313 | 289 | 24 |
| Brian Roberts | 320 | 350 | -30 |
| Alexi Casilla | 329 | 223 | 106 |