Archive for Jose Peraza

For many Scoresheet owners, keepers have been submitted in their leagues and drafts are about to commence. If you find yourself with a vacancy at a position, and you’re not excited about the players who are available to fill that spot, you may be able to find a suitable arrangement by drafting a platoon.

There are not too many players who get a large enough platoon adjustment against right-handed pitchers to make them desirable as platoon options, and even fewer who are likely to be available for drafting in a keeper league. (All of Scoresheet’s 2020 platoon adjustments are available on their site.) However, the three players below are all good candidates to be used in the larger part of a platoon, and none is likely to have been protected other than in extremely deep leagues or leagues that have an unusually large number of protection slots. All three hitters, for example, are available to be drafted in the 24-team mixed Baseball Prospectus Kings league.

I’ll make the case for each player, pair them up with prospective platoon partners and compare them against a more popular option at their position.
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A total of 53 players were non-tendered prior to Monday night’s deadline, and a number of fantasy-relevant players were included in that group. Domingo Santana and C.J. Cron fit that description, and if they can successfully come back from injury, so may Steven Souza Jr., Taijuan Walker and Aaron Sanchez.

What is less clear is whether Blake Treinen, José Peraza and Kevin Gausman can still be called fantasy-relevant. They certainly were as recently as 2018, but each of them fell so far in 2019 that they failed to make the top 500 in ADP in the 2 Early Mocks. Yet, upon closer examination, all three have the potential to have comeback seasons in 2020. Even though they may not get much attention in fantasy circles this offseason, I’ll make the case as to why each is deserving of a spot on your late-round flier or watch list.

Blake Treinen

In 2019, Treinen lost all of the gains he made in his strikeout and swinging strike rates in 2018, and he even lost his long-held knack for getting grounders. This combination led to the escalation of Treinen’s ERA from 0.78 to 4.91 and to him losing the Athletics’ closer role to Liam Hendriks. The loss of whiffs is likely related to a decrease in average sinker velocity from 98.0 to 96.7 mph, as well as a drop in average sinker spin rate form 2371 to 2250 rpm. He was generally locating his pitches higher (see below), which would explain his middling ground ball rate (42.8 percent) and HR/9 ratio (1.38).
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The trade deadline produced some playing time winners and losers across the National League. While it’s premature to know how some of these situations will play out, the Reds, Cubs and Phillies in particular already have some interesting developments that are worth paying attention to.

Arizona

It appears that Torey Lovullo has at least two platoons in place, with Jake Lamb and Christian Walker splitting time at first base and Jarrod Dyson and Wilmer Flores sharing a spot in the lineup (with Ketel Marte starting at second base versus righties and in center field versus lefties). Neither of these is a strict platoon, but these are the tendencies that Lovullo has shown over the past week. A third platoon may be developing, as David Peralta has received each of the last five starts in left field against a righty, but Tim Locastro has taken two of the last three against a left-handed starter.
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Soon enough, we will be mocking liked we’ve never mocked before, practicing for our real drafts that are now a mere three months away. Like many in the industry, I embarked on my mock drafting almost immediately after the season. I was fortunate to have taken part in Justin Mason’s 2 Early Mocks, and since then I have participated in a mock draft for Lindy’s and the ongoing Pitcher List Experts slow mock (I have made 18 picks out of 23 as of this writing).

Already, it is becoming apparent that I have a few favorites who I am targeting. There are 10 players who I have picked in at least two of the three drafts, and five in particular strike me as good values if their early mock draft positions hold steady into the real drafts come March.
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Even though Jose Peraza had only a little more than a full season’s worth of major league playing time entering 2018, it seemed fair to think we had a strong grasp of what kind of hitter he was. In his major and minor league past, he had been an aggressive hitter with good contact skills but with little power. Speed was his top tool coming up as a prospect, but in his first full season in the majors in 2017, Peraza merely tied for 17th in the stolen base rankings with 23 and tied for 40th in infield hits with 16. It was easy to see why he was often ignored until after the first 200 players were picked on draft day.
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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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This far out from the start of the season, most of the average draft position data we have available is largely speculative, and understandably so. Still, I find value in analyzing the returns from this uncertain period, as it helps us develop some early trends going into our own draft/auction preparation. Second base is my usual beat here at RotoGraphs, so the other day I found myself examining the NFBC ADP for the position.

There’s other surprises in that data to save for another day, but today I’d like to discuss Jose Peraza’s position as the 12th 2B drafted. Peraza is currently going ahead of Dustin Pedroia, Ben Zobrist, Jonathan Schoop, Devon Travis, Jedd Gyorko, Starlin Castro, Logan Forsythe and Neil Walker. I’m sure we all have our own arguments about which of those eight names should slot in above Peraza, but I’m also fairly confident most of us prefer at least one or two of them to Peraza. Right?

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In fantasy, I generally consider utility players to be more valuable than ever in September, when expanded rosters allow managers to schedule in a few more rest days for their regulars. Throw in the fact that these guys have already played five months of baseball, and the combination of nagging injuries and general fatigue further encourages managers to work in additional rest days.

The last thing you want in the fantasy playoffs is empty lineup slots. Of course, there’s the obvious caveat that it’s difficult to find productive utility players on waivers at this point in the season. In other words, don’t go picking up Cliff Pennington just because he’s eligible at four positions. Let’s not get carried away here.

The three players featured in this piece are all widely available, and capable of producing when they find their way into your lineup.

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