Archive for NIck Hundley

Truth be told, I’ve been dreading this piece for months. Before joining Rotographs this season, I always enjoyed this series as much for revisiting the predictions at the end of the year as reading them in the first place. But of the 30 or so pieces I’ve written this year, Bold Predictions is easily my worst. Not only did I miss but I missed spectacularly. I missed in part because I went too bold but most painfully because I was sloppy. Want to know what I mean by sloppy? I predicted Greg Bird would out-perform Mark Teixeira. Seven weeks after he was lost for the season. I also got too specific, ambitiously adding milestones when broad declarations would have more than sufficed. I’m not going to enjoy what follows but without further ado, let’s Bring the Pain.

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Barry Bonds leads the Marlins in home runs. OK, so this won’t happen but you so know he could.

1. Aaron Hicks finishes as a top 24 outfielder

I made my fondness of Hicks pretty apparent in a previous piece on the Yankees’ playing time battles. In limited plate appearances last season, Hicks kept some pretty impressive company combining speed, power, and plate discipline. In fact, over 600 plate appearances, his numbers pro-rated to a 17/20 season. Moving from Target Field to Yankee Stadium, a 20/20 season seems plausible.

For Hicks, it comes down to two things: playing time and improvement versus righties. Given that Jacoby Ellsbury and Carlos Beltran are the walking embodiments of a week old French loaf, the boldness in this prediction comes from betting on gains against righties. If he can do it, watch out.

Continuing with the Yankees…

2. The three most valuable position players on the Yankees at year’s end will all start the year as backups or minor leaguers

Of course for this prediction to come true, it hinges on the first. Perhaps it’s unwise to compound predictions. Perhaps I should diversify. Perhaps I’m just really excited for a Yankees youth movement. And no, I’m not a Yankees fan, apparently just an enthusiastic observer.

So obviously, I’m talking about the aforementioned Hicks. The other two missing pieces to the Morris Avenue Miracle are Greg Bird and Gary Sanchez. We saw what Bird was capable of last season when his number was called and ZiPS’ confidence in him bodes well.

Sanchez is the real stretch here but given his advanced approach at the plate and that he held his own as a 22 year old catcher in AAA, it’s not out of the realm possibility that given an opportunity, he provides above average production at a premium position. Now Top 3 on the Yankees? Look, this ain’t 2009 but this team still scored the second most runs in the AL last season. A lot has to go right for this to happen.

So, let’s say the Yankees lose Mark Teixeira for a prolonged period because, I don’t know, he hurts his wrist or he falls into a coma after watching one of his post-game interviews. Brian McCann strains a back muscle yelling at someone flipping a bat. Meanwhile, Hicks has already carved out a spot in the lineup spelling Ellsbury or Beltran and the offense teems with the Yankees’ future realized a couple years early. It could happen.

I suppose if you’re being litigious, you could argue that a breakout year by Dustin Ackley could place him in the top 3, making this prediction come true. And to that I say fine. Except that would never happen because everyone knows that the dividing line between a bold prediction and a crazy one is Dustin Ackley.

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So here you are, a month from Opening Day, reading a Deep League Waiver Wire column. If you’re actually perusing the wire, it’s either because you’re one of the few fantasy owners who’s already drafted or, like me, you’re frantically patching holes in a sinking fantasy Spring Training team that’s been decimated by injuries.

I’m writing this weekly column to help those of you looking at rather threadbare free agent pools find suitable replacements, Plan Bs, and maybe if we strike gold together, some…gold. This week, we focus on a couple overlooked catchers who are either going late in drafts or not at all. So, let’s go digging.

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Even though I owned Nick Hundley in a league this year, I was still surprised to see that he finished 2015 as fantasy’s No. 7 catcher. Despite receiving far fewer plate appearances than any of the other top-ten backstops, Hundley’s robust .301/.339/.467 slash line was enough to place him comfortably within those ranks. In his age-31 year, Hundley had the second double-digit homer season of his career, and his .301 AVG was well above his career average of .249.

Hundley got 389 PA this year, and that was actually just 19 shy of his career high (408 in 2013). There are two reasons he’s only surpassed the 400-PA mark once. For one, he has some significant injuries in his past, losing parts of three previous seasons to various maladies (wrist [2009], elbow/oblique [2011], knee [2012]). This year, a cervical neck strain ended his season in early September, but should be a non-issue for 2016. The bright side of his injury history is that none of his ailments have been related to one another.

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It didn’t seem like a big deal, at the time, when Matt Wieters missed a late-April contest because of forearm soreness. He returned to the lineup for a few games, then sat out twice more with what the club began to call elbow soreness. Less than a week into May came the report that he was scheduled to visit Dr. James Andrews, who would examine the results of an MRI on the Baltimore Orioles backstop’s elbow. Dr. Andrews determined that Wieters wasn’t a candidate for elbow-ligament replacement surgery shortly thereafter.

Meanwhile, Wieters returned the lineup and played in four of five games, all of them as the DH. He was unable to serve the team behind the plate because the ailment affects his ability to throw, but early indications were that it doesn’t hamper him at the dish. He also took ground balls at first base on at least one occasion as the O’s weighed their options. It was worthwhile to Baltimore to lose some flexibility on the roster as long as Wieters could hit, but entering play on May 11, he was hitless in his last 10 at-bats. They’d obviously determined that keeping him active was no longer in their or his best interests, so he headed to the disabled list.

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If you’ve been playing fantasy baseball for a while, there’s little doubt that you too haven’t fallen for a player and continue to go back to him year after year regardless of how many times he’s let you down. Whether you got the opportunity to watch him play and he impressed you or you owned him during a hot streak and was just able to follow him a little more closely than usual, there’s something about him that makes you believe that he is undoubtedly better than what his overall numbers are saying. You even find yourself making excuses for his poor performance, truly believing that had things just gone a little differently, then the guy could be a potential All-Star if you have a Lou Brown-ish sense of optimism. Nick Hundley is that guy for me and with Yasmani Grandal lost for the season and Hundley back in a starting role, I’m left with the question of whether or not to go back to that well just one more time. Read the rest of this entry »

While you don’t normally put lofty expectations on your catchers to produce big-time fantasy numbers, the slow starts of players such as the Monteros, both Jesus and Miguel, as well as Salvador Perez, have been extremely frustrating for owners thus far. Knowing what they are capable of producing, no one wants to drop them from their roster, but there’s a definite need to pull them from the starting lineup and plug in a more productive option, even if just for a short time. If you have the bench space available to make such a move, then here are a couple of backstops who should be able to help you out. Don’t expect either to be your long term solution, but for right now, they’re worth a look. Read the rest of this entry »

Now that drafts are complete and the season has begun, it’s time to just take a quick scan of some of the catchers who are likely sitting out on your waiver wire right now. It’s not like you’re going to make a move and pick someone up, but given the health risks that come with the position, it’s just a good idea to stay prepared and keep a few names in mind as a “just in case.” It’s probably slim pickings out there right now anyway, but there are still a few names who may have some modest value attached, capable of growing further under the right circumstances. Read the rest of this entry »

With the season winding down, I thought now is as good a time as any to ‘fess up and have a little it of accountability.  I usually do a full article at the end of the season that includes all of my picks and pans for the season, which will come at the conclusion of the season, but this year we all did a piece in a series called 10 Bold Predictions.  It was “go big or go home” for many of us and we wanted to be as bold and as brazen as possible while still maintaining certain bounds of sensibility.  In looking back at mine, perhaps I was a bit overzealous… Read the rest of this entry »

With the non-waiver trade deadline coming up tonight, the flurry of deals we’ve seen, the rash of injuries lately, not to mention your fantasy league’s trade deadline, it’s not easy to keep tabs on each and every player.  Sometimes things just fall through the cracks.  And since the catching position, all to often, goes unwatched and unnoticed unless you’re having blatant issues at the position, perhaps a general update piece will be helpful. Read the rest of this entry »