Archive for Red Sox

There is a lot of disagreement among fantasy players about when to start taking relief pitchers. The one thing that most agree upon is that the first one to take is Jonathan Papelbon. The Red Sox closer has a three-year track record of success, pitches for a team that should clear 90 wins and is a young 28, with only 230 major league innings on his arm. Papelbon has an ADP of 54, which means that fantasy players start targeting relievers in the middle of the fifth round.

Papelbon’s K/9 fell from an otherworldly 12.96 in 2007 to 10.00 last year. But he compensated by cutting his walks in half. His BB/9 checked in last year at a minuscule 1.04, which was the third-lowest mark for relievers. After back-to-back seasons with a BABIP in the .230s, Papelbon had a .313 mark last year. Combined with a LOB% of 69.5 percent, he saw increases last year in both his WHIP and his ERA.

With a more typical distribution with his LOB% (the only player with 15 or more saves to have a lower rate was Brandon Lyon) Papelbon could easily exceed last year’s overall numbers. And if no pitcher challenges for the all-time saves record, Papelbon could meet pre-season expectations by being the top fantasy closer at the end of the year.

But fantasy players have to ask themselves how much they are willing to pay for Papelbon’s track record. Is it worth taking him in the fifth round, while passing on players like Joe Mauer and Dan Haren? Especially when 30-save pitchers like Kerry Wood and B.J. Ryan are available eight rounds later? Both of those players have had injury problems in the recent past, which makes the Papelbon decision not so cut-and-dried.

Fans and athletes alike enjoy playing the “no one believed” card. Most of the time it’s garbage but in the case of Dustin Pedroia perhaps there’s something there. Fans and analysts have been looking for reasons to doubt him for years and Pedroia just keeps exceeding all expectations.

In 2005, Pedroia tore up Double-A (.324/.409/.508) but struggled when he was promoted to Triple-A. Rather than recognize that he played the end of the season with a wrist injury, people doubted. In 2006, Pedroia played well in Triple-A (.305/.384/.426) but hit under .200 in 81 at-bats for Boston. So the doubts lingered.

So, in 2007 Pedroia puts up a .317/.380/.442 line in the majors and wins the Rookie of the Year. Then for an encore, he goes out and puts up a .326/.376/.493 line and wins the AL MVP. Surely now, everyone must be convinced that this is a player who makes adjustments and adapts to the level of his competition, right?

Our own Matthew Carruth wrote about Pedroia, “Even with the regression that should come on his bat next year…”

Now, Matthew is a lot smarter than me. And if someone as accomplished as he thinks that Pedroia will regress noticeably in 2009, that is a pretty good indication of where smart money is on this subject.

To buttress Matthew’s position, according to the RotoTimes Player Rater, Pedroia was the 12th-best fantasy hitter last year, putting up a dollar value of $31.68 in 2008. In other words, there’s not much room for continued improvement.

But none of Pedroia’s peripherals seem to be outrageous. Yes, he made a 42-point jump in his isolated slugging but his .167 mark ranked 85th in the majors. Yes, he more than doubled his HR output but neither his FB% (36 percent) nor his HR/FB (7.8 percent) are anywhere close to putting him on the first page of the FanGraph’s Leaderboards. Yes, Pedroia had a .336 BABIP last year but he had a .334 mark in the category the year before.

We make snap judgments about people all of the time. It’s one of the ways we make sense of the world. Pedroia is listed here as 5-foot-9 and he appears even smaller in person. He plays hard. We see small, white and scrappy and our snap judgment is that Pedroia should be like David Eckstein, he of the lifetime .361 slugging percentage.

Because few complained or predicted regression when 6-foot-1 Chase Utley upped his ISO 47 points from .202 to .249, did they? Utley’s a big guy and no one is surprised when a big guy displays power. Plus Utley did this going from age 25 to 26, when improvement is a reasonable thing to expect.

Pedroia had his ISO leap from age 23 to 24.

Anyway, a lot of things went right for Pedroia last year and it would not be a surprise to see a drop in last year’s numbers. At the very least, he could pull an Ian Kinsler and come down with an injury and miss 35 games. But what player who has only been in the majors for two seasons could we not say that about?

This could be the last year to get Pedroia at a bargain. That is because if he puts up a season like 2008 again, everyone will see it as a trend and not a fluke and act accordingly in the future. The bottom line is Pedroia is a great baseball player and someone you want on your fantasy team.

A supplemental first-round pick out of Stanford in 2005, Jed Lowrie had a disappointing season in the Hi-A Carolina League in 2006 and fell off the radar for most people. Even after a 2007 season in which he hit for average and power split between Double-A and Triple-A, he was not considered an impact player. Baseball America rated him as only the 73rd-best prospect coming into 2008.

But injuries at the major league level gave Lowrie a shot at regular playing time in Boston last year and he held his own in his first exposure to the big leagues. In late August, Lowrie had a .296/.366/.469 line after his first 52 games and 188 plate appearances. But a September swoon, perhaps as teams adjusted their scouting reports, dragged down his final numbers.

Lowrie was a shortstop in college and the minors but found himself switching between there and third base for the Red Sox in 2008, depending upon who was hurt at that time. As a shortstop, he batted .272/.360/.424 in 187 PA while as a 3B he posted a .239/.318/.359 line in 108 PA.

Now, those numbers are too small of a sample to draw any big conclusions from, but it should not surprise anyone that he hit better while playing at his natural position.

The Red Sox have Julio Lugo as their incumbent shortstop and the veteran is owed $18 million over the next two years. However, Lowrie in his brief stint showed strong signs of handling the position defensively, with a UZR/150 of 21 compared to -1.6 for Lugo.

Lowrie showed excellent patience at the plate and drew walks at an 11.9 percent rate. But his strikeout rate was unacceptable at 26.2 percent. Lowrie smacked a lot of line drives, which helped him to a .342 BABIP. He also piled up the line drives and high BABIP in the minors. It’s a nice package if Lowrie can get his strikeout rate down to 20 percent or lower.

Lowrie’s fantasy value is dependent on Boston trading Lugo elsewhere. He showed enough in 2008 for the club to consider the possibility but probably not enough to make it a priority.

Unless the Red Sox trade Lugo prior to the start of the season, Lowrie is not worth drafting in mixed leagues and is at best a late-round lottery ticket in AL-only leagues. But there is enough talent there that he merits following and he is someone who could provide solid production at a weak position if given a shot at the full-time job.

After playing most of the 2007 season with a knee injury, Jason Bay saw his average draft position fall to 112.88 in 2008, according to Sportsline.com. And then Bay turned around and put up a top-25 hitting season, similar to what he did when healthy in 2005 and 2006. One of the steals of the 2008 draft, Bay will go much sooner than the 11th or 12th round this year.

Most of Bay’s numbers last year matched his career averages. The area that stands out is his FB%, with his numbers showing a steady increase the past few seasons. In 2005, it was 40.6 percent and by 2008 he posted a 46.0 percent flyball rate. Meanwhile, his HR/FB have fluctuated between 11.4 percent in his injury-plagued 2007 season to 18.8 percent in 2006. Last year it was 15 percent, which was below his career rate of 16.4 percent.

Bay hit well after his deadline deal to Boston, as he posted an .897 OPS after the trade. He even hit more flyballs (47.8 percent after the trade) but it resulted in fewer home runs. Bay had nine homers after the deal and six of those came on the road, which suggests that perhaps he had some issues with the Green Monster. It’s more likely a sample size issue and I think fantasy players should not lower their home run projections for him in any meaningful way.

Count on a healthy Bay to provide a .290-30-100 line with 100 runs and 10 steals. And that should be easily good enough to be a top-30 hitter and one of the top 15 outfielders. And if he continues to hit more flyballs and adapts to the Green Monster, a 35-40 HR season is not out of the question.