Archive for neil walker

I always enjoy a quality theme when composing these tiers. From Kurt Russell movies to hard rock bands to vacation destinations, I’ve had a healthy variety of themes. With WrestleMania coming up this weekend, I considered some sort of wrestling theme. However, my writing is frequently littered with wrestling references — both obvious and subtle — on a regular basis, so using it as a tier theme could amount to overkill.

For this first set of tiered rankings, I decided on the theme of Final Four teams. The main reason I settled on this theme is that I’m only splitting the players into four tiers this month. As the season gets underway, more clear delineations will likely develop within the tiers, and I’ll probably add more to reflect that.

As of right now, however, there’s just not much separating most of these guys right now. My second tier stretches all the way from No. 6 to No. 20, with much of the tier separated by extremely small gaps. For example, would it be surprising at all if Josh Harrison (No. 14) outperformed Ben Zobrist (No. 9), despite the fact that I have Zobrist five spots higher? That’s a pretty good illustration of how tightly grouped the players within these tiers are heading into the season.

If I forgot any players who you think should be on this list, please let me know in the comments section below and I’ll update it. For reference, I used Yahoo’s position eligibility requirements.

TIER ONE – NORTH CAROLINA TAR HEELS – (No. 1-5)
Jose Altuve
Dee Gordon
Robinson Cano
Ian Kinsler
Brian Dozier

Being the sole 1-seed remaining, UNC is obviously the favorite to take home the title. Of the Final Four teams, the Tar Heels are the one squad that was largely expected to be here all along, and they’re the total package. They should cruise to the championship game with little resistance. HOT TAKE: When you rank No. 2 out of 351 teams in both offensive efficiency and rebounding, you’re going to win a lot of games.

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It’s been a weird week for me, delaying this article by four days. I originally intended to have this up by Monday, but a spontaneous — and completely awesome — decision to attend the NCAA Tournament provided the first delay. I got to see Oklahoma/VCU and the historically unprecedented Texas A&M win over Northern Iowa, so I didn’t feel too bad about being a day late.

Unfortunately, I got myself concussed in a fender-bender the next day (not my fault!), and spent the last few days listlessly staring out my window, the owner of a half-working brain. Hopefully, I’ve recovered enough for the following to make sense, but the fact that my 31st birthday looms this coming Monday means I’m in the midst of my annual birthday-related existential crisis, brain injury or not.

Regardless of the circumstances, it’s Bold Predictions time! I did pretty darn well two years ago, but last year my success rate was roughly equivalent to that of the Brooklyn Brawler. (Fun fact: The Brawler briefly performed in WWF as “The MVP” Abe Knuckleball Schwartz, a bad-guy persona used to rile up fans during the MLB strike of ’94.) Let’s turn the clock back to 2014 and get my boldness rate back to the sweet spot.

Here are my ten Bold Predictions for 2016, roughly arranged in ascending order from safest to craziest:

10. James Shields is not a top-65 starting pitcher, despite throwing 200+ innings for the tenth straight year.

How do we value a 34-year-old coming off a season like Shields just had? He logged over 200 innings and made his annual 33 starts, but posted his worst-ever walk rate — and it’s not even close — at 3.60 BB/9. His HR/FB ballooned to another career worst, at 17.6%. Shields also experienced career bests in two areas, strikeouts (yay!) and strand rate (hmm…).

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It’s been a rough year for Ian Kinsler and Neil Walker, in very similar ways. Neither is having trouble getting on base, as both have batting averages in the .270s and on-base percentages around .340. The problem is that both Kinsler and Walker have suffered through season-long power outages, severely diminishing each man’s fantasy value.

On the year, Kinsler is the No. 10 fantasy 2B, with Walker slotting in at 13th. However, both have heated up in the month of July, with Kinsler posting an .843 OPS, and Walker sitting at .885 (neither had even broken the .750 mark in any of the season’s first three months). Walker has launched three of his seven 2015 homers since the calendar turned over from June.

Kinsler only has one long ball this month, but he’s also hit two near-homers that struck the top half of the wall, and has a total of six extra-base hits. With both players finally showing signs of power production, let’s take a look at who you’d rather have on your fantasy team rest-of-season.

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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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Woof! That’s all there is to say about my preseason bold predictions as a whole. The idea was to take players at each position that I had ranked just outside starter territory in 12-team leagues who I thought could beat my ranking. Let’s break them down one by one.

Catcher – Josmil Pinto will be a top ten fantasy catcher.

The biggest problem with my Pinto projection was that I projected him for 450 PA. Pinto didn’t come close to that, finishing with just 194 PA because the Twins gave Kurt Suzuki 502 PA. The one thing my projection did get right was Pinto’s power as he hit 12 home runs in limited work. Had he maintained that pace and received the 450 PA I projected, he would have hit 16 home runs, which would have easily surpassed the 12 I projected. Pinto’s power would make him interesting if he could get regular playing time, but Suzuki is signed through 2016 in Minnesota. Read the rest of this entry »

My bold predictions article from last year was summarily found to be not bold. The very first commenter said it wasn’t bold and 63 people gave that comment a thumbs up. Another commenter sarcastically chided me saying “You mean Rickie Weeks won’t have (a) career worst season again?” As it turns out, Weeks did have his career worst full season according to wRC+. Not sure if that makes me or the commenter dumb. Probably both.

What I did in last year’s bold predictions was take guys from each position that weren’t being drafted as starters who I thought would be starters.  Only three of my ten predictions came true, which is the same batting average Eno thinks is normal for these bold predictions articles. Of course that could just mean that I’m so bad at this that I couldn’t get more than 3/10 right with such obvious calls.

But I’m getting back on the horse this year with a slightly different saddle. The mistake I made last year was discussing players I had ranked as starters in my preseason ranks. This year I’ll be discussing guys that I have ranked just outside starter territory that I think could end up beating my projection and ranking. This means that all players discussed will have an ADP that is, on average, lower than that of the players I discussed last year (all ADP from ESPN). I guess technically that makes the predictions more bold.

If you still don’t think the predictions are bold enough, sorry. My real goal here is to simply identify some guys around the diamond that I think are undervalued in drafts. The ‘bold’ in the title is there on mandate from the higher-ups. If it was up to me, this post would be titled something like ‘Undervalued Players at Each Position.’ If you happen to think some or all of the predictions are actually bold, that’s all the better. Read the rest of this entry »

With the news that Jose Reyes is being activated from the disabled list here on Wednesday, there’s a fairly good chance that whoever owns him in your league might have a shortstop  to send back to the player pool. Of course, if your Reyes owner is like me and landed Jean Segura early on, then chances are, you won’t be seeing the extra help on your waiver wire. If that’s the case, then perhaps there’s someone else out there whom you haven’t investigated just yet, so here are a couple of suggestions. Read the rest of this entry »

So we’ve done a pretty thorough bludgeoning of the recent reader mock draft, looking at almost every round except for the fliers, and covering several of the positions along the way as well. Second base has me particularly concerned headed into 2012, so let’s break down how the readers handled the challenge of staffing their squads at that position.

The following chart is pretty self explanatory – where the player was selected in the reader mock, what their average draft position is over at Mock Draft Central, and the difference between the two to the right:

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Usually Thursday’s are reserved for Kicking Rocks, but with such limited complaints and too few games remaining to do much about it anyway, it’s time again to play some Keeper League ‘Would You Rather…?’  Moving around the diamond this week brings us to second base and a pair of young, potentially studly long term options.

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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.