Archive for Matt Kemp

There’s something beautiful about an empty canvas because of its potential. The painter can turn it into literally anything — anything from a masterpiece to utter crap. The painter can make mistakes. She can paint a miserably bad portrait, yet still have time to amend it, perhaps creating an entirely different work — a different and better portrait, the ugly original buried deep beneath several layers of paint. The final product is a marvel, though the journey there was not smooth nor seamless.

Or right from the start she can paint the perfect landscape. And that’s great, except she continues to paint until it is no longer the masterpiece it once was but a mess of dimensionless color, unrecognizable and void of merit.

Such are the stories of the seasons of MLB hitters. A player can suffer a miserable April — the ugly portrait — yet slowly build up to a respectable end-of-season stat line. Conversely, a player can have a monstrous April — the perfect landscape — yet watch it slowly fall apart over the course of the next five months.

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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.

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Headed into the season in my main league, I was pretty excited about the prospect of my outfield. In left field, there was Mike Trout, probably the most valuable player in fantasy. In right field, Domonic Brown, about to break out. They’d be flanking my center fielder, someone who not all that long ago was one of the most valuable fantasy player himself.

Sadly, it didn’t work out that way for Matt Kemp, who ended up being one of fantasy’s biggest busts. (Fortunately for me, I could easily move Trout to center and spot in left with, at various points, Evan Gattis, Norichika Aoki, and Alfonso Soriano.)

I feel a little bad listing Kemp with someone who was simply atrocious like B.J. Upton, because there was obviously a lot more to it than that. Really, there were three different Kemps this year: Read the rest of this entry »

It’s fairly likely this isn’t your first spin with fantasy baseball, so you are no doubt familiar with the fact that things go wrong. Despite all your preparation, your undivided attention to the prognosticators and the projection sheets, sometimes the bell rings and one or two of your top picks turn into moldy wet blankets. One of your sleeper picks never wakes. A can’t-miss rookie never arrives.

It happens. It’s part of the game.

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Just two years ago, Dee Gordon was enjoying the fanfare of being listed amongst Baseball America’s Top 50 Prospects. The son of major league reliever Tom Gordon, the young shortstop was receiving rave reviews for his defensive play and, most importantly, his speed. He had cruised through the Dodgers system relatively quickly, got called up mid-season in 2011 and earned the starting nod to open the 2012 season. Not everything had gone according to plan as injuries derailed a lot of the past two seasons, but Gordon had some memorable moments that indicated he could be an impact player at the big league level. Well, with Hanley Ramirez hitting the disabled list for already the second time in this young season, Gordon is finally getting his chance to show what he can do. Read the rest of this entry »

As of Friday morning, Matt Kemp is hitting .182/.217/.255 with zero home runs and zero stolen bases. His .207 wOBA ranks third-worst amongst qualified outfielders in all of baseball — ahead of only Aaron Hicks and David Murphy — and he currently owns a 28 wRC+ and a -0.6 WAR.

In short, he’s been dreadful, and many fantasy owners who drafted him in the first round have been limping through the month of April, waiting for Kemp to rebound and become the .362 wOBA hitter he’s been throughout his career.

Lots of speculation exists that this slump is either related to his offseason shoulder surgery or the result of a mechanical compensation from his injury last season. While Kemp has repeatedly told reporters he’s physically fine this week, the numbers indicate something has negatively changed at the plate.

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There’s $53.5 million dollars wrapped up in the Los Angeles Dodger outfield and between Carl Crawford, Matt Kemp, and Andre Ethier, the starting trio is about as solid as a soup sandwich.

All it really takes is for things to go right and those three occupy the respective outfield slots for the duration. But we know what we know. Specifically, that Carl Crawford is fragile and his performance since signing his $142 million dollar contract has been decidedly underwhelming. We know that Matt Kemp is coming off October labrum surgery not to mention repair of a “minor debridement” of the rotator cuff, which sounds like couples counseling in his shoulder. And we know that Andre Ethier mashes in April, becomes enigmatic, and all the while he can’t hit left handed pitchers. It’s not particularly confidence inspiring when you read that two of the three outfielders are currently focused on getting ready for Opening Day but not necessarily Spring Training. This, it seems, makes their outfield depth chart particularly important heading into the season.

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Watch out, keeper league owners.  It’s that time of year again.  The hot starts have cooled down, the cold starts have heated up, your waiver wire has been picked clean, and you’re seeing a separation in your standings between the haves and the have nots.  The haves are trying to make deals to solidify their roster for a championship run while the have nots are already looking towards next year.  It doesn’t matter that there’s still almost four months left in the season and plenty of time to mount a comeback, there are those that accept defeat a little too easily and all they care about is which stud protect they can pick up just by unloading their roster to someone in the hunt for a title.  It’s time for the dump deal. Read the rest of this entry »

Each year, there’s always one pick in the draft that always seems to cause the biggest stir amongst the fantasy community and leads to the greatest number of emails seeking added opinions.  It used to be closer to the tail end of the first round when an owner was deciding between whichever offensive treat was left or the number one overall starting pitcher.  This year, I’ve received a number of emails from people with the 4th pick.  People with the 8th and 9th picks are rolling their eyes right now, but truly, the 4th pick can cause quite the conundrum.

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Complaint time, folks!  I got my crying hat on today…

We’ve all heard it a million times before — every year, every site, every pre-draft advice column — fantasy championships are won in the later rounds of your draft.  When you’re getting third round production from your 22nd round pick, your team is destined for success.  What they don’t say is that, while that may be true for the most part, you also need for your first and second round picks to produce accordingly.  If not, then you’re in a little bit of trouble.  The work it takes to recover from a first or even second round bust is plentiful and can be an agonizing task. Read the rest of this entry »