Archive for Martin Prado

Back in March, I made some bold predictions, as all RotoGraphs staff do. Some bold predictions I make simply for the sake of being bold. Or for the sake of making a prediction. One of the two. But I don’t have a vested interest in my predictions, mostly because (1) they typically suck and (2) I don’t own many, if any, shares of the subjects of my predictions (because, well, the predictions suck). It’s kind of like not putting your money where your mouth is.

In this case, I absolutely have a vested interest in Jose Ramirez. Chris Mitchell and I both hold a special place in our hearts for him. I’ve come to realize, in my years of watching and loving baseball, that I most appreciate the hitters who are (debatably) underappreciated contact hitters. Victor Martinez. Pre-breakout Daniel Murphy. Nick Markakis. Martin Prado. Reggie Willits???

Speaking of Prado, Ramirez looks like peak Prado right now, and in more ways than one:

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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 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.

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I can’t say definitively that third base has been more volatile than any other position this season, but it certainly feels like third base has generated more of a roller coaster ride than normal. We’ve seen All-Stars reduced to fringe fantasy players and we’ve seen no-names and retreads act like budding stars. To the objective fantasy baseball observer, this should provide you with opportunity. And sometimes, that requires you to kill your darlings.

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Martin Prado had a lot of things going for him headed into the 2014 fantasy season. His projections weren’t difficult to accept given a solid, if unspectacular, body of work since 2009. He had position eligibility at second base, third base, and the outfield. And given the dearth of risk, the cost to acquire him was relatively low. And then Martin Prado went out there and tossed up a stinker in March/April, hitting just .263/.317/.342 with no home runs, and demonstrated an uncharacteristic 17% strikeout rate and miserable 20% infield fly ball rate. He even started appearing on the occasional waiver wire.

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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.

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What I love about this series, this look at each team’s depth chart, is that we unearth a number of position battles that might not be on the radar of the casual fantasy player. In this case, the Arizona Diamondbacks, the infield appears to be well set heading into spring training. First, second and third base are locked down; as is behind the plate. But a deeper look brings us to a report on the team’s website that informs us that the starting shortstop job is actually up for grabs. The casual fantasy player will look at the depth chart and assume that Didi Gregorius owns the gig. After all, he’s the big name and didn’t Arizona trade a highly-touted Trevor Bauer to get him? That they did, but according to GM Kevin Towers, spring time for the Diamondbacks will feature an open competition between Gregorius and Chris Owings and the winner gets a place on the field come Opening Day. Read the rest of this entry »

Martin Prado had eligibility all over the field in 2013, but it’s likely that most owners used him at shortstop where he had the most value. In his first year as a Diamondback, Prado’s Steamer projections pegged him at .294/.351/.445 with 13 home runs, 84 runs, 66 RBI, and eight steals. As an outfielder that’s rather underwhelming, but as a shortstop, that represents a classic ‘checking off all the respective boxes’ in standard rotisserie leagues.

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On Thursday, the Diamondbacks finally managed to find a new home for Justin Upton, shipping him along with third baseman Chris Johnson to Atlanta for Martin Prado and four prospects. That’s a loss for AL-only fantasy players who were hoping the talented young outfielder might end up in Seattle or Texas, though he remains a must-own in all formats. (Well, most formats; if your league counts “grit”, he might be merely fodder for the waiver wire.)

While most of the attention is on Upton joining brother B.J. and incumbent Jason Heyward in what’s suddenly a star-studded Braves outfield, his former mates in Arizona suddenly find themselves with a very different squad than the one that ended last year including Upton, Johnson, & Chris Young – and a lot of questions just got answered in the desert. Read the rest of this entry »

We’re about a third of the way through the season, and while the proverbial gloves aren’t going to come off, I think I’ll stop coddling some and for others, I’ll be giving credit where credit is due. I wouldn’t say this is a “if the draft were held today” kind of list, but perhaps some amalgam of ranking based on current performance and anticipated performance for the rest of the season. I’ll do my best to tease out a rationale for the higher tiers.

The top tier of third basemen has historically been quite small, in large part due to the dearth of real superstars at the position. But since Jose Bautista has been acting like he might actually be mortal, it’s left room for some others to join him at the top.

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