Archive for Los Angeles Dodgers

The Los Angeles Dodgers have a ton of depth in their pitching rotation and it’s certainly a reason for their consistent success. In terms of fantasy three of their young pitchers are intriguing options for 2021. Tony Gonsolin, Dustin May, and Julio Urias are all popular names among the fantasy community. All of them are young, exciting, and have the potential to break out at any moment. Recently I put up an interesting poll on Twitter asking people who would they take first in a fantasy baseball draft. Side note: I included David Price in the poll but we will disregard that as I want to bring attention to the three I mentioned earlier. With over 1400 votes the results were somewhat surprising. Dustin May gathered 44.3% of the vote with Julio Urias nabbing second at 25.4%, and Tony Gonsolin came in third at 17.3%. Assuming all of them are healthy and in the rotation for 2021, let’s compare their 2020 numbers to each other.

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So far in 2018, the hot stove has been more of a cool counter, leading to a dearth of enjoyable “change of scenery” fantasy baseball topics. Thankfully, there’s still plenty of fantasy fun to be had, because the National Fantasy Baseball Championship (NFBC) has draft data ready to roll. I’m going position by position through this slow offseason, picking out players with an average draft position (ADP) significantly higher or lower than I expected.

Today, it’s time to discuss the shortstop position — namely Chris Taylor and Marwin Gonzalez. Neither guy is a full-time shortstop in real life, but in fantasy that’s where the vast majority of owners will play them in 2018. (The player pool I used included all players with at least 10 starts at short in 2017.) One of the main commonalities between Gonzalez and Taylor is that they’re both eligible to play several positions (1B/2B/3B/SS/OF for Marwin, 2B/SS/OF for Taylor).

Both players also experienced shocking breakouts in 2017, so it’s probably a good idea to see where they stand heading into the 2018 fantasy season, correct? I sure thought so.

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On the last MASH report, I discussed Alex Wood’s S/C joint sprain, and many of the commenters claimed it was #FAKENEWS.

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I was going to use the opportunity for my weekly content here to talk about Jake Lamb and his 481-foot home run, but I didn’t want to oversaturate the third base column with more Lamb material than I’ve already indulged myself in the past several months. Even if he is extremely noteworthy these days. Instead, let’s talk about one of his National League West counterparts: Justin Turner.

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It’s been widely known since last winter that this free agent class would be a pretty brutal one, with much of the legitimately intriguing hot stove action taking place on the trade front. Outside of a couple of marquee names available, it’s more spare parts than anything to be had without having to surrender assets. This is especially true as it relates to third base, perhaps to the most extreme extent.

Only seven players that would fall under the third base category are set to hit the free agent market:

• Andres Blanco
• Aaron Hill
• Casey McGehee
• Adam Rosales
• Ruben Tejada
• Justin Turner
• Luis Valbuena

If you’re looking for a stopgap third baseman who can log a fair amount of games at the position and provide legitimate value, that number decreases even more. In fact, we’re talking about a list that probably only includes a small trio of this group: Hill, Valbuena, and, the only legitimate prize of the group, Justin Turner. And even that’s stretching it a bit, as only Turner had enough at-bats to qualify among the offensive leaders at the position in 2016.

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2016 was an odd year for catchers in fantasy baseball. Something that caught my eye was the ownership rates of the top-ranked catchers. Only two catcher-eligible players — Jonathan Lucroy and Buster Posey — ended the season above 90% ownership in Yahoo leagues. Gary Sanchez got close (87%, with those other 13% likely being dead leagues), as did Salvador Perez (also 87%), and Wilson Ramos was in the 80+% range for a while as well, before he was widely dropped following his late-season injury.

Regardless of the reasoning, the fact that only the top two catchers were owned in >90% of leagues is significant, seeing as shortstop was the position with the second-fewest >90% owned players, with seven. The weirdest aspect of this is that 2016 was a good year for catchers in fantasy; so good, perhaps, that it was too deep for some smaller one-catcher leagues.

While it’s worth noting that Rotographs is using an updated auction calculator this year, it’s plainly clear how much more productive the position was this year compared to 2015. Last year, just one player earned his fantasy owners more than $20 worth of production, and that was Buster Posey. This year, Posey was joined by Lucroy and Ramos above the $20 threshold. Furthermore, the value of this year’s No. 10 catcher — Brian McCann at $10.20 — makes it even wackier that A.J. Pierzynski was the No. 10 fantasy catcher last year, with a whopping $3.42 value.

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Patience is certainly a virtue, especially as it relates to fantasy baseball. However, with the hard luck season that Justin Turner had apparently decided to embrace in the first two months of 2016, he likely tested the patience of owners throughout the fantasy landscape. As we approach the end of the month of June, though, his luck appears to have shifted for the better.

Before this 2016 season got underway, Justin Turner would have hardly represented a catalyst for many as they evaluated the offensive talent possessed by the Los Angeles Dodgers. In fact, many had called for him to be supplanted at the hot corner, as he spent the bulk of both April and May struggling, as some poor luck appeared to have got the better of him. But just as the weather in Southern California has heated up, so has Turner, as well as the suddenly upstart Dodgers.

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We’ve started our annual Depth Chart Discussions, re-branded as Playing Time Battles for 2016. You can catch up on every team we’ve covered in the Playing Time Battles Summary post or following along using the Depth Chart Discussions tag.

For most teams, the offseason loss of a superstar pitcher like Zack Greinke would be crippling. The Dodgers are not most teams. After posting a miniscule 1.66 earned run average in 222.2 innings in LA last season, Greinke headed within the division to Arizona, with $200+ million coming his way over the next six years. Despite his departure, the Dodgers are the favorites to take down the NL West again this season, holding a six-game advantage in our projected standings.

Obviously, the Dodgers still have Clayton Kershaw. Most teams are not blessed to have even one true ace, not to mention two of them. Still, instead of standing pat, the club reloaded, adding Scott Kazmir and Kenta Maeda to bolster the rotation. After four disastrous seasons that led many to consider Kazmir’s career essentially finished, the now-32-year-old resurrected his career in a big way, delivering three consecutive solid campaigns. While he’s not the strikeout machine he was a decade ago, Kazmir provides a steady veteran presence in the rotation, averaging over 30 starts in each of the last three years.

The right-handed Maeda is an unknown quantity heading into his first season in America, which led our own Eno Sarris to search for a comp. If Eno’s analysis is sound — and I’ll go ahead and trust that it is, seeing as Eno probably knows approximately 5,386 times more about the game of baseball than I do — the 27-year-old Maeda looks to be an Aaron Nola type. There’s plenty of value to be found in a steady mid-rotation arm with upside, and that’s what he seems to be. (In an interesting twist, Maeda is the only righty expected to make the Dodgers’ Opening Day rotation.)

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Two weeks ago, we inaugurated what will likely still be a few more weeks of depth chart discussions in the form of playing time battles. RotoGraphs staff will discuss and assess noteworthy battles for playing time and/or starting gigs for position players and, separately, pitchers. Here, specifically, this author will investigate the Los Angeles Dodgers‘ position player situations.

Around the horn.

Catcher

No surprises here: Yasmani Grandal will assume the primary backstop role while A.J. Ellis sticks around for his defensive acumen. Grandal is the only name you care about here; he has pretty easy 20-homer power if he can make it through an entire season unscathed. The BABIP (batting average on balls in play) is ugly, no thanks to his lack of speed and his non-ideal tendency to pop balls up, but the league’s 7th-best on-base percentage (OBP) helps mitigate those losses, especially in OBP leagues (obviously).

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Continuing with our look at the depth charts of the NL West, it’s time to turn our focus to the Los Angeles Dodgers infield. Both first base and shortstop remain locked down by superstars while a lack of a decent free agent market, more or less, forced the Dodgers to stick with what they had. But the team opted to let veteran Mark Ellis leave via free agency and in walks a fresh face over at the keystone. There are likely to be a few question marks, but so far, all seems good in Dodger blue. Read the rest of this entry »