Archive for Kolten Wong

In rounding out my series on the most important factors influencing components of BABIP, I will be looking into what most affects a hitter’s batting average on ground balls. So far, the results of these analyses have been consistent. Launch angle has been the main driver of BABIP for pitchers, and it has been for hitters as well, at least when they are launching flyballs. The story is a different one, though, when hitters put the ball on the ground. Ground ball launch angle was not a significant factor in determining a hitter’s ground ball batting average, and neither was ground ball exit velocity.

Whether or not a hitter pulls grounders has much to say about whether that player will hit for average on grounders. There is a negative relationship between these variables that is significant at p < .0001 and with a Pearson’s r of .27. Even more important is how fast the hitter is. The Pearson’s r for the positive correlation between average sprint speed and ground ball batting average was .45.
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Already, the excitement over the recent callups of Trent Grisham, Josh Rojas and Ty France has started to fade. These are just some of the fantasy implications resulting from changes in National League lineups and batting orders this week.

Arizona

The Diamondbacks continue to employ a platoon of Jarrod Dyson and Adam Jones, but with the demotion of Tim Locastro to Triple-A Reno on Aug. 15, David Peralta is back to playing everyday in left field. He has made seven straight starts and is in the lineup once again for Friday night’s game in Milwaukee.
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Second base looks like a deep position heading into 2017. This is likely news to no one reading this column. However, something that goes overlooked a bit is how shallow the position is in NL-only leagues.

Taking a look at the average draft position for 2B, this becomes quite clear. After Nats teammates Trea Turner and Daniel Murphy, second-base options for NL-only formats grow thin in a hurry. Dee Gordon, DJ LeMahieu, Jose Peraza, Ben Zobrist, Jedd Gyorko, Logan Forsythe, Neil Walker and Josh Harrison round out the top ten. There’s a pretty big drop-off after Gordon and LeMahieu, both of whom I personally value significantly less than Turner and Murphy to begin with.

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I previously took a look at hot starts at the keystone, so today let’s do the opposite. Last time, I examined three players who were outside the top 15 in our experts’ preseason rankings. Today, I’ll discuss three guys from inside the top 15, who find themselves scuffling at the plate. Obviously, it’s still early and we’re dealing with small samples across the board, but there’s legitimate reasons to worry in certain cases.

Anthony Rendon (preseason No. 9, current No. 40) – SELL

As I wrote last fall, Rendon’s future value is tough to evaluate, due to his extensive injury history. He’s torn ligaments in his right ankle, which he later broke. He also fractured his left ankle, as well as spraining his left MCL and left oblique. Throw in the strained right shoulder that limited him to DH duties for nearly his entire junior season at Rice, and that is one heck of an injury history for a guy who’s still only 25 years old.

At the time, I wrote the following regarding Rendon’s injuries and potential future production:

The optimist in me looks at the list of ailments above and is thankful that his 2015 injuries were not recurrences of prior issues. The pessimist in me sees a 25-year-old whose legs may not be able to support a lengthy career in professional athletics.

Even without a doomsday scenario like that, it’s easy to see Rendon’s skills deteriorating in the next few years. If he suffers another injury or two, he could be in a steep decline by the time he should be reaching his prime. It’s already clear that certain aspects of his game aren’t what they used to be.

This year, the Nats moved Rendon back from second base to third, possibly having realized that it might not be smart to have a player who has broken both of his ankles playing a position where baserunners come diving at your legs. This is a good thing. What isn’t a good thing is his complete lack of offensive production to this point in 2016.

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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.)

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I ran the 2015 Steamer projections through Zach Sanders’ Fantasy Value Above Replacement system and compared the results to early ADP data. Below I’ve got a player at each position that the Steamer projections think are unlikely to live up to their draft day price.

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The Cardinals infield returns three regulars from last year but only has two players manning the same position and has one completely new face. But regardless of whether they’re old or new, I probably like all five players less than the general public based on early ADP data.

One of the two guys manning the same position is a Cardinal stalwart, Yadier Molina. I looked into Molina earlier this off season and his value derived primarily from his batting average last year as he provided more fantasy value with his batting average than any other catcher thanks to the second highest average at the position and a relatively high number of plate appearances. But he didn’t do the things that made him great in 2012. His HR/FB rate returned to about his career rate, so he hit 12 home runs as opposed to 22. His speed went away as quickly as it appeared, so he stole 3 bases as opposed to 12.

Without the 2012 power/speed combo that is basically unheard of at his position, Molina absolutely must have his average remain high for his fantasy value to remain high. That’s a little scary because Molina’s BABIP was .338 last year. To be fair, his xBABIP was .331 thanks in large part to a 24.3% line drive rate. But it’s just a little nerve-wracking to be drafting a guy that is so BABIP dependent when BABIP is such a fickle stat. For example, Molina had a 24.8% line drive rate and .344 xBABIP in 2012, but his actual BABIP was only .316. Read the rest of this entry »

According to numerous reports, the Cardinals will be recalling 22-year-old infield prospect Kolten Wong, the team’s first-round pick out of the University of Hawaii in 2011. Wong was only Marc Hulet’s #5 Cardinals prospect entering the year, but that “only” comes with just about the largest caveat you can find, because saying that someone isn’t better than Oscar Taveras, Michael Wacha, Carlos Martinez, or Shelby Miller is pretty far from a slight.

Wong doesn’t project as a superstar in the big leagues, but the potential for an above-average ballplayer — and intriguing fantasy asset — is there. Moving quickly from Single-A to Triple-A in just barely over two years since being drafted, Wong carries a professional line of .301/.365/.446 into his promotion, and that career mark is almost exactly what he’s producing at in 2013 as well.

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We are entering year two of the post-Albert era in St. Louis and after an 88-win season that resulted in a wild card berth and a trip to the NLCS that fell just one win short of a World Series appearance, the Cardinals are returning with a largely unchanged infield configuration. For better or for worse, the St. Louis brass opted to leave things as is and let other teams play the free agent market this season. The “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” philosophy is in play here and for fantasy purposes, it’s not bad, but the upside is just as limited now as it was just a year ago. Read the rest of this entry »