Archive for Mitch Moreland

In the last few days, much of the waiver wire frenzy has been focused on pitchers in general and on Michael Soroka, Nick Kingham and Fernando Romero specifically. If you were able to pick up one or more of these prospects who have just made their major league debuts, that’s a good feeling. If you acquired them without busting your FAAB budget, even better.

Yet while these young pitchers have been stealing the spotlight, a number of more established hitters have been toiling away beyond the gaze of most fantasy owners. Each of the five hitters featured below are owned in fewer than a third of the leagues on CBSSports.com and Fantrax, where deeper leagues are not in short supply. Some of them could provide an upgrade for your deep-league roster right now, while others may be more valuable in the coming weeks and, therefore, are worth a stash.
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The left side of the Texas infield will look the same as it has the last three seasons, but the right side will be completely different with Ian Kinsler being shipped to Detroit for Prince Fielder. Jurickson Profar will slide into Kinsler’s spot. The real baseball implications of the deal are complicated on Texas’ end, but it was definitely a good thing for fantasy owners in that we have three guys who are fantasy options instead of two.

But is Profar a good option? In 324 plate appearances last year, Profar had just a .291 wOBA and 75 wRC+. From a roto perspective he hit just .234 with six home runs and two steals. Profar’s best skills in the minors were his plate discipline and ability to make contact. Of the two, his contact translated better as his contact rate was basically what it was in the minors. And he didn’t just make contact, he made good contact with a 23.4% line drive rate.

His plate discipline, however, didn’t translate immediately. Of course, he’ll never be able to replicate the single digit O-Swing percentages he posted in AA and AAA the last two years. But we can expect his strikeout and walk rates to improve because Jeff Zimmerman has showed us that K% peaks around age 25 and BB% peaks around 27 while ISO and BABIP tend to peak immediately. That’s a long-winded way of saying that an adjustment period was to be expected. Profar’s going to get better quickly, probably a lot better. Read the rest of this entry »

Last week I wrote about hitters who might be undervalued because of poor recent performance that was being caused by something other than a decrease in skill. Today I’d like to take a quick look at the pitchers whose xFIPs were the farthest below their ERAs over the last thirty days. The idea again is that recent performance seems to be weighted too heavily in pricing, and these guys might have a little extra value in the immediate future. Read the rest of this entry »

The first hurdle every hitter has to clear to make it into a daily contest lineup of mine is whether they are facing a pitcher of the opposite handedness (with a few exceptions for guys with reverse splits). With pitchers and platoon splits, I mainly look at how the team they will be facing performs against pitchers of the same handedness of the pitcher I am considering. But I’ve never given enough thought to left-right splits of individual pitchers.

I took a look at all qualified pitchers from the start of 2012 to see who had the biggest splits versus lefties and righties. Below is a list of the pitchers who had an xFIP of 4.00 or less versus hitters of the same handedness and an xFIP much higher versus hitters of the opposite handedness. Guys like Aaron Harang aren’t listed because even though Harang is much better vs. RHH than LHH, he still only has a 4.11 xFIP versus RHH. Read the rest of this entry »

A new month is always a good time to look at splits. Actually, the ‘Last 30’ split available on the site allows you to look at the last “month” at anytime you would like, but there is something arbitrarily pleasing about looking at totals from a calendar month.

One of the more interesting things about May splits is how different the reactions are to stats in the second month of the season compared to the first. For example, there was plenty of concern for Eric Homser, Asdrubal Cabrera and Allen Craig after an April in which they had wOBAs of .288, .288 and .287, respectively. However, there isn’t a ton of panic concerning Justin Upton, Carlos Santana and Starling Marte who all had wOBAs under .300 in May. Read the rest of this entry »

Recently I’ve taken a look at early season changes in contact rate and fly ball rate because of Russell Carleton’s research showing we’ve reached the point in the season where the sample for those statistics has become ‘reliable.’ There has been some debate in the comments about what reliable means and how much the small season sample can help us in predicting what a player will do the rest of the season.

I look at it like this. For the statistics that have crossed that reliability threshold,  we can look at the players who have seen the biggest changes in either direction and feel safe that their skill has improved or decreased to some degree. That doesn’t mean regression isn’t coming. It just means that at the end of the year it wouldn’t be a surprise to see a player with an improvement or decline from their career mark in a particular category. Although the improvement or decline at the end of the year is not likely to be as extreme as it is at this point in the season.

Today I want to look at the hitters who have seen the biggest changes in ISO because a fair number of players have now crossed the 160 AB threshhold shown in Carleton’s research. Below are the guys who have seen the biggest increase in ISO. After that, we’ll examine whether some other statistics back up the power surge. And a little bit later we’ll see if we can’t figure out how much regression to expect. Read the rest of this entry »

Earlier this month, I looked into the case of a talented-but-often-frustrating American League lefty first baseman who had finally begun to produce consistently. That was James Loney, whom I tossed aside — perhaps unfairly, but I won’t pretend I’m not a Dodger fan who had to watch him struggle for years — as a one-tool player for fantasy purposes.

Today, we’ll look into a similar player, but one whom I like quite a bit more: Texas’ Mitch Moreland. Despite being one of the most-added players in fantasy over the last week — six homers and three more extra-base hits in nine games will do that for you — Moreland remains available in at least 40% of leagues at all of the three main sites. Read the rest of this entry »

The likelihood of the Texas Rangers signing Prince Fielder grew even slimmer on Friday when the team opted to take a cheaper route and sign Brad Hawpe to a minor league league deal.  Hawpe, who is recovering from Tommy John surgery, also received an invite to spring training and, if he makes the cut, is expected to provide insurance for incumbent first baseman Mitch Moreland, who is currently recovering from off season wrist surgery.  Now the question remains…will Hawpe have any fantasy value in 2012?

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It’s a tough offseason to be a veteran free agent first baseman. Though it may normally be a difficult position to be in anyway, there are now too many lumbering older dudes looking for too few chairs and the music will eventually stop. Who will win this round of musical chairs? Will any of the bunch succeed and therefore become a fantasy value pick in 2011?

By the current count, the Cubs, Jays, Nationals, White Sox and Rays don’t have a traditional first baseman on their roster, and they probably represent the best opportunities for an every-day first base job for Adam Dunn, Lance Berkman, Derrek Lee, Paul Konerko, Carlos Pena, Adam LaRoche, and Lyle Overbay. Someone will probably be on the outside looking in.

Perhaps that is over-rating the dire state of the market. There might be a chance that the Red Sox, Rangers or Orioles buy a first baseman on the market. They have options at the position, but they could also move players around. Still, the Orioles and Rangers are more likely to solve the situation with their cheaper internal options – Luke Scott and Nolan Reimold could be good enough to man DH and first base for a rebuilding club, and Mitch Moreland and Vladimir Guerrero (provided he re-signs) could do the job for a Rangers team that might be looking to spend money on pitching.

If you drafted today, you’d have to downgrade the whole bunch – save Dunn – because of the uncertainty. But you’d also have to downgrade the older men in the crew because of their age. Only 18 firstbasemen over 35 have put up better than an .800 OPS since 1975, and only Mark McGwire, Andres Gallaraga, Jeff Bagwell and Carlos Delgado hit more than 30 home runs over that age. Most likely, only one of Lee, Berkman and Overbay will join the .800+ OPS crew – and none fit in the second group when it comes to power.

Really, the decision comes down to Lee and Berkman if you’re looking for a bounce-back value at the position at the end of your deep-league draft. Lee had back problems, and Berkman has a degenerative knee problem – neither state of health induces much hope for a clean bill of health in 2011. Berkman has said that the Cardinals, Cubs, Rockies, A’s, Pirates and Blue Jays are interested – but the NL teams on the list would most likely want him as a backup (save the Cubs), and the AL teams are rumored to be interested in him as a DH. Players often suffer worse numbers as they transition to DH, and Berkman’s .255/.358/.349 line in New York at DH doesn’t offer much hope. The market for Lee so far has been deadly quiet, which may have something to do with his offseason thumb surgery – or his age.

In any case, it’s a tough season to be a free agent first baseman, and it’s a tough time to be drafting – this is why we schedule drafts as late as we can before the season starts. Once the actual deals come through, we’ll evaluate their situations more fully, but this serves as a general warning. There’s not much upside here as history doesn’t like 35-year-old first basemen. Temper any excitement you might get when looking at their historical statistics.

During the Keeper Conundrum series, I got some nice suggestions in the comments. Today through Wednesday, I’ll be looking into the better suggestions I received.

Chris Iannetta
I was going to include Iannetta in my original catcher’s article, but I have no idea what is going on in Colorado, so I can’t comment much on his situation. My projection will assume he’s the everyday catcher, so I’ll let you worry about his PT.
Crude 2011 Projection: .265/.380, 22 HR
Verdict: Keep. If you have him for a dollar or two, he’s worth having around.

Mitch Moreland
Moreland has flashed power at a couple of minor league levels, and did very well during his limited stint in the bigs. Moreland’s biggest problem was his strikeout rate, and I expect that to dip a couple of percent next year.
Crude 2011 Projection: .270/.370, 25 HR
Verdict: Keep. He’s going to be really cheap next year, and probably even 2012.

Neil Walker
Walker has been a nice surprise for the Pirates, as the former disappointment has given them reason for hope. He continued to show that he can hit for a little power, and a .340 BABIP helped to fuel a high batting average. He’s not a good defender, but the Pirates are going to keep the switch-hitter in the lineup every day.
Crude 2011 Projection: .285/.335, 15 HR, 5 SB
Verdict: Keep. He’ll be starting in standard leagues next year, and he shouldn’t have cost you more than a Buc or two (see what I did there?).

Pablo Sandoval
Sandoval’s decline was mostly BABIP related, as the rest of his numbers stayed fairly consistent. However, his power production took a big hit, dropping back down to the level I expected in 2009. He’s very young, but he needs to do some serious work this offseason, and I’m willing to bet the Giants will be pushing him hard to improve his physical condition.
Crude 2011 Projection: .280/.330, 17 HR
Verdict: Cut. He’s a good candidate to pick back up in drafts at a lower cost, but not worth keeping.

Michael Young
Call him what you will, but don’t you dare call him inconsistent. Despite his age, Young was able to produce at a decently high level. He hit you more than twenty dingers, and kept his batting average at a helpful level. He’s wasn’t great in OBP or OPS leagues, but that’s another story for another day.
Crude 2011 Projection: .280/.335, 19 HR
Verdict: Cut. Let someone else pay for a player on the decline.

Thanks for all the suggestions this week, and check back tomorrow for part two of your requests.