A few sidelined Seattle Marines may not return as most expect. Here’s the inside information to factor in on draft day.
Despite an elbow injury that has kept Mallex Smith out for the entire spring, not many people seem to be worried. Well, I for one, am quite concerned. Mallex Smith was approved to begin throwing on March 8th. Throwing programs for outfielders entail ramping up in throwing distance & volume. Read the rest of this entry »
It’s always more fun to do a review of one’s fantasy team when the squad wins the league or at least seriously contends for the title. That was not the case with my team in this year’s Tout Wars 15-team mixed auction league. However, my seventh-place finish offers an opportunity to take away plenty of positive and negative lessons to consider before draft day next year.
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Playing in a West Coast market isn’t always the most pleasurable of tasks. With a majority of games that take place largely after much of the country has gone to sleep, it’s often quite difficult for those types of clubs to generate the type of buzz that those on the East Coast or in the Midwest manage to lay claim to. It’s why so many have gone without noticing the Seattle Mariners’ success this season, and it’s why even fewer have gone without noticing what Kyle Seager is putting together at the hot corner this season.
But Seager has managed to keep himself firmly in the picture as a potentially elite third sacker, as he’s piecing together a mighty impressive campaign for a Mariners squad that is second in the American League West to the Texas Rangers and currently finds itself atop the AL wild card picture. He’s coming off of another solid, if unspectacular year in 2015, as well as being mired in a tough stretch back in April, but could very well be on pace for the best season of his career in a number of respects.
In 2015, Seager slashed .266/.328/.451/.779, with a walk rate that was almost identical to the previous year (7.9% to 8.0% in 2014), and a strikeout rate that managed to dip to 14.3% after an 18.0% mark in the previous year. His .185 ISO ranked ninth among qualifying third basemen, as did his 116 wRC+. While there was a slight regression for Seager almost across the board, with the exception of his K-rate, that could largely be attributed to a BABIP that dipped down to .278. Even so, the regression wasn’t significant in really any respect. Which might make it less surprising that Kyle Seager is currently in the midst of what could be a career campaign in 2016.
As we approach the end of the first month of the 2016 Major League season, there’s obviously plenty to dissect. From a third base perspective, we’ll unpack a lot of that when we get to the first set of real, actual, less-leaning-upon-conjecture rankings in the coming days. But nothing says we can’t look at some things just a touch early.
For the most part, the top guys have been the top guys. If there was a “Stock Right Where It Was Expected to Be” category, these guys would fit the bill. Manny Machado leads the category, while Nolan Arenado and Josh Donaldson aren’t too far behind. Kris Bryant is right in the mix as well, keeping all of the top tier players from those initial rankings in that upper tier, just perhaps with some reordering. Beyond that top tier, though, there’s certainly going to be some shakeup. Some guys have emerged, some guys have fallen off the map almost completely, and some guys are just there. Looking at some of these stocks will give us a better idea of what the next set of rankings could look like.
Last week we did bold predictions. As a commenter on my post pointed out, the majority of the staff’s predictions were of the positive nature. More “player x will reach or exceed y” than “player x will fail to reach y.” My predictions were ten guys who I think could give you starter-level production in 12-team mixed leagues despite not being ranked as a starter by a single expert whose rankings are compiled by FantasyPros.com.
Today I’ll do the opposite and identify at least one hitter from each position who is ranked as a starter by every FantasyPros expert that I think might not end up with starter-level production. To be clear, these predictions do not come with the claim of being bold, although I think some of them are. And I’m also not of the opinion that most of these will come true. But even if these guys don’t turn out to be busts, they are candidates to underperform and are guys I’ll likely be avoiding.
If you’d like to see my personal ranks, both overall and positional, I’ve got them in a Google doc here. Read the rest of this entry »
It’s official. 100% of my value is bothering @jeffwzimmerman to run data and then use that data for said content. I did just that this morning for updated shift data. I believe the last time he posted related content on RotoGraphs was here back in May looking at: Early Hitter Shift Data.
It was because of this post and his balls in play (groundball and pop-up rates) that led me to believe Albert Pujols was going to drop off/continue his downward trend. I guess I pushed out the fact that he was the best hitter of his generation. While the .375 BABIP (from the above link) against shifts did not last, he’s at a very respectable .284. Between this and additional discipline (best contact rate since 2008 and hacking less at stuff outside of the zone), he is able to hover around a .280 BA, which remains elite in conjunction with 30HR, 90R and 100+RBI.
I don’t really like tiers, but it probably has something to do with the neatness of placing a player in a designated strata. I’ve never used tiers in fantasy baseball drafts because I think it tends to blind you to the nuances of each player and the specific needs your team might have. But now that the season has started, you should be all drafted up and it’s time to brand your cattle.
September call ups are almost here, so some new names will enter the daily fantasy pool. This is probably more true on other daily sites besides Draftstreet, but call ups tend to be undervalued. Because pricing models are based on previous statistics, it makes sense that guys without a track record would be somewhat conservatively priced. Here are just a few call ups that could be useful in the final month.
Nick Castellanos – OF – Detroit Tigers
Castellanos didn’t destroy Triple-A or anything, but he hit for a little power (.168 ISO) and displayed good plate discipline (16.4% K%, 9.3% BB%). He’s unlikely to see regular starts, but that’s the beauty of daily fantasy. We don’t need him to play everyday to have a use for him. He may take some starts from Matt Tuiasos0po against left-handed starters. He had a .852 OPS in 109 PA versus lefties in Triple-A, so if he’s cheap enough he could be an option when starting. Read the rest of this entry »
It’s often said that almost anything can happen in a single month of a baseball season. We can list endless examples of unexpected hot streaks from replacement-level players to illustrate that point, and as fantasy owners, we often get cajoled into trusting those small sample sizes. We all want to admit we don’t attempt to “ride the hot streak,” but we all do it. For example, I owned Brian Dozier in June for a couple weeks because I was desperate up the middle.
Luckily, it worked out, as my team was simply trying to hold it together up the middle until Jose Reyes returned from the disabled list.
When looking at the “last 30 days” split on the leaderboards, though, some hot streaks don’t appear to be out of place. Mike Trout owns the highest wOBA (.477) in all of baseball over the last 30 days. No one should be surprised by that. The second-highest wOBA (.470) in the last 30 days belongs to third baseman Kyle Seager. Considering he’s been a four-win player already this year and has a .300/.363/.496 slash line, he also shouldn’t trigger any alarms.
Hold on a moment. Kyle Seager — the same guy who was the 14th-ranked fantasy third baseman last year — suddenly doesn’t appear out of place amongst the top hitters in the league? Well, that’s significant.
Pedro Alvarez and Kyle Seager entered the season ranked 19th and 13th, respectively, in the Rotographs consensus rankings back in March. Although neither were likely to be your first choice to occupy third base on most fantasy teams, injuries to Chase Headley, Hanley Ramirez, Aramis Ramirez, Brett Lawrie, David Freese, among others, likely thrust Alvarez or Seager into lineups with fingers crossed.
So far, Seager hasn’t been useful at all, and Alvarez has been an unmitigated disaster. But I think there are signs that the former might yet prove to be useful, although the vultures are starting to circle on the latter.