Archive for Rickie Weeks

Our Mock Draft is complete.

Team Schwartz/rounds drafted:

C: Travis d’Arnaud/17 1B: Victor Martinez/4 2B: Arismendy Alcantara/18 3B: Josh Donaldson/3 SS: Hanley Ramirez/2 MI: Jean Segura/19 CI: Prince Fielder/6 OF: Mike Trout/1; Mookie Betts/7; Ryan Zimmerman/10; A.J. Pollock/14; Steven Souza/20; Carl Crawford/24 U: Pedro Alvarez/21

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In last year’s Bold Predictions, I strongly advocated Jean Segura and Jarrod Parker, while steering people away from Starlin Castro. Those surely helped fantasy owners to various extents. However, we’ll ignore the fact that I predicted Brett Anderson to be a top-30 starter. Sorry about that.

Let’s get to the bold predictions for 2014.

(1) Chris Carter will hit at least 40 home runs and be a top-25 outfielder.

Earlier this offseason, I noted how Chris Carter’s hitting profile compared favorably to that of Chris Davis from a year ago, leading one to believe the power spike could be possible. Carter has also hit 39 homers in a single season before in the minors, so it’s not as if we’re worried about the requisite power being present. Furthermore, the 27-year-old slugger didn’t do the one thing everyone thought he would do last season: mash the baseball in Minute Maid Park.

Minute Maid Park is extremely friendly to right-handed hitters, largely due to the Crawford Boxes, and Carter did little damage there. If his numbers bounce back at home and he’s able to continue his power-hitting ways on the road, we could be looking at one of the biggest power breakout seasons of the year. Considering he’s currently going 193 overall in drafts — behind the likes of Jed Lowrie, Kendrys Morales, and Alejandro De Aza — I’m buying hard on Chris Carter as we head into the 2014 regular season.

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As Bryan Grosnick pointed out on Tuesday, the home run is king in daily contests. In Draftstreet scoring, a home run will get you a minimum of seven points (one point for each total base plus 1.5 each for the R and RBI). So I wanted to give y’all a list of the pitchers who allow the most home runs per plate appearance. The cut off for the reliability of HR/PA is 1320 batters faced (per @pizzacutter4) Here are the pitchers above that cut off that are on an active roster with the highest HR/PA (one or more standard deviations above the mean) against both left and right handed batters. Read the rest of this entry »

We’re making bold predictions this week. My ten will be guys currently not being drafted as “starters” in ten-team mixed leagues that I think should and will be. In other words, I’ll be picking a guy going outside the top ten at each infield position, two guys going outside the top 50 in the outfield, and three guys going outside the top 60 starters. All ADP numbers are from ESPN.

1) Jonathan Lucroy, currently the 14th catcher being selected, will be a top ten catcher. Lucroy was well on his way to being a top ten catcher last season had he not missed two months in the middle of the year with a broken hand. Check out how he compared to other catchers with 300+ PA last year in the five roto categories on a per plate appearance basis:

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For all the years that I’ve been playing fantasy baseball, I’ve never really understood the idea of punting saves. Not that I don’t understand the concept, but that I don’t understand the rationale behind thinking that it’s a good strategy. You load up on starters with the hope of locking up wins and strikeouts while doing your best to stay competitive in WHIP and ERA. Perfectly viable strategy, right? But what about the fact that Wins is, more or less, an arbitrary category and while your guy goes seven strong and exits with the lead, some clown of a set-up man comes in, walks the leadoff guy and then serves up a two-run shot to tie the game. A great game for your starter, for sure, but you make no advancement in a category you’ve supposedly built your team to excel in. Read the rest of this entry »

By true definition, at least by Aesop’s fables, the turtle represents the old adage, “slow and steady wins the race.” By our definition, at least how Eno laid it out, the fantasy turtle is the best buy-low/waiver pick-up that dominated in the second half of the season. While some of our awards were fairly unanimous, this one wasn’t, as nine players received votes. Again, the title of the piece tells you that Kris Medlen won, but let’s look a little further into it. Read the rest of this entry »

For all of the hand-wringing about Tim Lincecum’s sudden decline in San Francisco, there’s been another surprising implosion that seems to be flying far under the radar. Longtime Brewer Rickie Weeks, who had been essentially tied with Brandon Phillips as the National League’s best second baseman over the previous two seasons, limped into the All-Star break with a dismal .199/.314/.343 line. There’s more to life than batting average, of course, but of the 155 qualified hitters this year, he currently stands dead last, the only man in baseball with an average south of .200. His Brewers start the second half five games under .500 and eight games behind the Pirates after making it into October last year, and while the absence of Prince Fielder and the struggles of John Axford seem like obvious culprits, Weeks’ sudden transformation into “Brendan Ryan on a bad day” can’t be dismissed as a huge reason why.

It doesn’t take a ton of research to see Weeks’ biggest issue in 2012, and that’s that he’s simply having difficulty making contact. For a guy who struck out 20.8% of the time last year and had never topped 24.4%, seeing his whiff rate jump up to 28.6% this year is jarring. It’s the seventh highest rate in baseball, and at least some of the guys ahead of him – like Adam Dunn & Pedro Alvarez – are compensating for that with huge power when they do connect. Weeks isn’t putting bat on ball, and when he is, he’s either not making solid contact or not getting any love from the BABIP gods with a .267 mark that’s far below his career norms. It’s a bad combination, and the fact that the outcome is poor shouldn’t be surprising, though he is attempting to compensate with patience, leading to a career-high walk rate.

Yet despite Weeks’ sorry position on the bottom of the leaderboards, I like to think there’s some hope here, and not just because I have a hard time believing that a player with his track record can completely disappear in his age 29 season. Over the last month – arbitrary endpoints, I’ll admit – he’s looked more like the Weeks of old, hitting .280/.363/.460 in 113 plate appearances, along with two home runs in his final three games before the break. 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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Yesterday I covered the bottom half of the list here, numbers 10 through 6.  Some solid speculation on some people’s part in the comments section as to who made the top five, so without further ado…

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Continuing on last week’s theme, we turn our attention today to the National League fantasy All-Stars.  As a reminder, I’m basing this on the past calendar year’s performance under the FanGraphs Points scoring system.   The $ values shown are the player’s average cost on ottoneu FanGraphs Points leagues.

Catcher:  Brian McCann (894 pts, .377 wOBA, $30)
Alternates: Buster Posey (753 pts, .368 wOBA, $31) and Carlos Ruiz  (595 pts, .350 wOBA, $5)

Brian McCann is such a stud.  He’s been the best fantasy catcher in the National League for years, and yet somehow I think he still is a bit underrated.  Speaking of underrated, Carlos Ruiz has been a monster over the past year, even if he doesn’t play as often as some of the big guns.  I have him in a 20-team league and can’t find anyone who wants him!

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