Archive for Miguel Cabrera

For many Scoresheet owners, keepers have been submitted in their leagues and drafts are about to commence. If you find yourself with a vacancy at a position, and you’re not excited about the players who are available to fill that spot, you may be able to find a suitable arrangement by drafting a platoon.

There are not too many players who get a large enough platoon adjustment against right-handed pitchers to make them desirable as platoon options, and even fewer who are likely to be available for drafting in a keeper league. (All of Scoresheet’s 2020 platoon adjustments are available on their site.) However, the three players below are all good candidates to be used in the larger part of a platoon, and none is likely to have been protected other than in extremely deep leagues or leagues that have an unusually large number of protection slots. All three hitters, for example, are available to be drafted in the 24-team mixed Baseball Prospectus Kings league.

I’ll make the case for each player, pair them up with prospective platoon partners and compare them against a more popular option at their position.
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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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First, the ?’s.

Second, the historical K%’s.

And of course, the Grid…

1) The ?’s

Angels at Twins: Glen Perkins has a sore neck (received a MRI after tingling, but there was no structural damage). Ron Gardy said he should be back within a few a days so I wouldn’t jump to the waiver wire for anyone. We didn’t get a chance to see who would have had the opportunity to close out the games for the Twins tonight. While it was presumably Jared Burton, he received the loss, getting beat by a Albert Pujols double after a single (Cron) and walk (Trout) and then Anthony Swarzak let in the inherited runner.  Huston Street earned save #37. That’s 3 straight appearances for Street and he could potentially use the day off tomorrow. He only has 2 k’s in through his last 5 appearances, and his win yesterday came from a blown save. He induced only 1 whiff from 6 swings tonight.

Astros at Athletics: Sean Doolittle had a successful bullpen session today and should be activated next week. Until then, it’s still Eric O’Flaherty closing out games. David Wiers called O’Flaherty a wild-card for the closing role prior to the season and the ground ball rate (58+%) and weak contact (.213 BABIP) holds true. Tonight, Luke Gregerson pitched a scoreless 9th for the win. Heck, if you’re own a hold league, why not own the entire Oakland bullpen next year?

Chad Qualls remains under the weather with a case of the shaky qualls. He let both of Scott Feldman’s inherited runners score and then gave up the winning single to blow a 3-1 lead in the bottom of the 9th. I would think and hope that Tony Sipp is next up  for the closing role. Other than a shellacking on 8/25 (4BB and 4 ER without recording an out), he’s been lights out since 8/12 (12 K’s, 0 BB’s and only 1 hit). Yesterday, he struck out 4 of 7 batters. I’d like to see him with the gig.

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I should just stop there. On the one hand everyone will rightly scream sample size horrors as I attempt to type any further and on the other hand I have the lifelong goal of using “What in the Sam Hill” in a post title accomplished. The bucket list needs updating.

But set aside the sample for a moment, and just gaze in wonder at Miguel Cabrera’s line to start the season in 2014: .236/.295/.403. Cabrera has 17 hits over almost 80 plate appearances. More than half of them are singles, only two have left the park, and he has ten runs batted in. At this point in 2013, Cabrera was hitting .370/.438/.511 with five doubles, a triple, two home runs and 23 RBI. And as ridiculous as that looks, he really only got better from there.

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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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In the leagues I run that have inexperienced and/or casual team owners, I always use the standard 5×5 roto categories because I feel that it would give me and the other experienced players an advantage. I know that the casual players in my leagues are using the rankings provided by the website on which we’re drafting or some other set of rankings from a major industry source. And almost all of those rankings are based on standard categories. If I replaced, for example, home runs with slugging percentage, I would be able to identify the players whose valuation or ranking would change with the different category. But the noobs would be using rankings made with home runs in mind.

I polled my Twitter followers to find out the most common uses of non-standard categories so that I could determine the players whose valuation/ranking changed the most when non-standard categories are used. The most common answers were OBP replacing batting average (which I covered here), slugging percentage replacing home runs, and OPS being added as a sixth category to the standard five hitter categories. Sorry if your league has a different non-traditional format.

Below are charts showing the biggest changes in SLG and OPS leagues. For an explanation of the methodology used, check out the OBP piece I just linked to. And if you’d like to see how all 242 hitters that I have projected are affected by SLG replacing HR or OPS being a sixth category, you can find the SLG list here and the OPS list here.

First up, guys who get a bump when slugging percentage replaces home runs.

Miguel Cabrera and Paul Goldschmidt are even more valuable in slugging percentage leagues, and they close the gap between them and Trout in auction leagues. Joey Votto shows up on this list just as he did in my OBP post. He’s obviously excellent, but the standard categories aren’t the best measure of his excellence.

Unsurprisingly, we see a few young first basemen here who haven’t reached the ‘power potential’ some thought they might. But really they just haven’t put up big home run totals. Freddie Freeman and Eric Hosmer may never settle in as 30+ HR regulars or even 25-30 HR regulars, but if you play in a slugging percentage league, their power plays. And Brandon Belt gets the biggest boost by switching to SLG. It’s possible his ballpark has something to do with it, but he’s very much in the Freeman/Homser mold. The only non-1B/DH player on this list is Yadier Molina who was 4th in the league in doubles last year.

Now the guys who you would prefer in a home run league. Read the rest of this entry »

For a team that’s consistently had a postseason presence in recent years, the Tigers will unveil a dramatically different infield this upcoming season. The organization authored perhaps the biggest trade of the offseason, sending slugger Prince Fielder to Texas for second baseman Ian Kinsler. Futhermore, Miguel Cabrera should transition back to first base, while the door opens for top prospect Nick Castellanos to man the hot corner.

Significant changes, but the unwavering piece of the Tigers’ infield, at least in terms of fantasy production, will be Miguel Cabrera. He’s the best hitter on the planet and is probably the consensus number-two fantasy option behind Mike Trout. He may have captured the Triple Crown in 2012, but his 2013 season was unquestionably better. The 30-year-old superstar hit .348/.442/.636 with 44 home runs, and his 192 wRC+ was the highest of his career by a healthy margin.

There’s not much to offer in terms of fantasy analysis on Miguel Cabrera. He’s amazing. He will provide elite production in all major categories, aside from stolen bases. The other thing to love about Miggy is that he’s accumulated at least 600 plate appearances in 10-consecutive seasons. He’s as close to a sure thing as one can get in fantasy baseball.

Around the remainder of the infield, though, we have some things to discuss. And in general, I’m not excited about what the Tigers’ infield offers for fantasy owners in terms of production and value.

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“May Day” is actually an appropriate call for third base because, holy hell, it has been one trial after the last tribulation. Third base has been so tough to staff on some of you, the consideration of just going without has been more attractive than what’s available on the waiver wire. As far as putting this cast of misfits into tiers, I ought to just have Tier One and then “The Rest” as punishment to everyone outside of Detroit. There have been some pleasant surprises of course, so let’s get to it.

A quick note about this particular batch of tiers. In the past, I’ve always liked to temper the rapid movement up or down rankings in May, suggesting that the tiers should represent something akin to a “if the draft were held today…” line of thinking. But given the dearth of production from some players and the rampant injuries, I’d like to think these tiers are a happy median between on-field performance and what we should expect going forward. The stats after each player are the Steamer rest-of-season projections.

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When we do this thing where we categorize players into tidy little compartments it tends to bring out the monsters in many of you. Had I given more attention to some of my cultural anthropology or experimental psychology courses, perhaps I’d have an explanation as to why. But nonetheless intrepid reader, I’ll attempt to put forth my best tiered assessment of the available third basemen to you on draft day.

As you no doubt know, the tiers shift. They move like like an Omar Vizquel with Arthur Rhodes on the mound. But I know that many of you like to aim for top three tier material at as many positions as possible, so perhaps this will help you assuming you haven’t already put together your squads. If you already have and your guy is in tier five, well, condolences.

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One might think that writing about the Detroit infield would be easy. After all, how difficult could it be to say that “Prince Fielder & Miguel Cabrera are great and you should draft them”? Because, they are great. And you should draft them.

We can try to do better, though. Fielder’s debut as a Tiger was nothing short of a success, putting up a season that saw him lead all qualified major league first basemen in wOBA. (Joey Votto, of course, was far ahead, but missed too much time due to injury.) Fielder’s .398 mark was right in line with his .393 career average and there’s little to think he won’t be able to do it again, though it’s interesting to see that he got there somewhat differently than usual. His 30 homers tied for sixth among first basemen and were his lowest since hitting 28 in his rookie season of 2006. That’s partially due to the fact that he set a career low in flyball percentage (33.3%); while his HR/FB rate was within career norms, fewer flyballs is going to equal fewer homers. That’s not entirely a bad thing, because those balls largely turned into line drives, contributing to a career best .313 batting average. Fantasy players would like to see a few more of those hits end up over the fence, though either way, Fielder remains an easy top-three first baseman in all formats. Read the rest of this entry »