Archive for Seth Smith

In ottoneu, most owners will implement some form of platoon among their outfield spots. While platooning in fantasy baseball is hardly sage advice, ottoneu is a little bit different in that the format specifically lends itself to platooning more than other fantasy platforms. First, you have 40 roster spots. Second, you have 5 OF spots and a 810 game cap at the position. Third, it’s a point format. Because of the 810 cap, you almost need to start a full slate of OF in nearly every game you can, as scheduled off days can make it very difficult to meet the 162 game cap at each of the 5 outfield spots. On top of that, the roster, because of it’s size, allows you to stash prospects or players you plan to use only in specific situations. However, you want to make sure you don’t depend on them too heavily, as scheduling can easily leave you below the cap.

Granted, if you’ve played ottoneu for any amount of time, you already know this. You know that platooning can be an extremely effective strategy. You probably know that strong side platoons are really what you want to acquire (more plate appearances) and you probably have a good idea of a couple names who fit this bill. You are looking for hitters who are likely to get 400+ plate appearance in their platoon role, so as not to be left missing starts with regularity. Today, I want to look at 3 (it’s a new year and I’m feeling generous) players who fit the bill of effective RHP mashers, but at varying costs.

Read the rest of this entry »

After 7 disappointing years under Jack Zduriencik (which followed 5 soul-crushing seasons under Bill Bavasi), new Mariners’ GM, Jerry Dipoto, raced up I-5 with a mandate to bring consistency and a fresh approach to the Emerald City. Faced with a number of holes to fill, the former Angels exec has already made a series of moves signaling a shift in the Mariners’ philosophy towards defense and on-base ability, a welcomed change from that of the last regime’s affinity for low on-base, immobile power hitters who strike out a lot. Huzzah.

Read the rest of this entry »

It’s time to take another stroll through Zach Sanders’ Outfield End of Season Rankings and today’s jaunt takes us all the way down to number 47 on the list — A’s outfielder Coco Crisp. A veteran outfielder, the now 33-year old, switch-hitting Crisp enjoyed one of the more productive seasons of his 11-year career in 2012 when he posted a .259 average with 11 home runs, 68 runs, 46 RBI and 39 stolen bases. He stayed healthy enough to amass 508 plate appearances over 120 games, was considered a leader in the clubhouse, and had a flair for the dramatic as he produced numerous game-winning moments for the A’s. Though not counted as a stat in fantasy just yet, Crisp enjoyed a total of six shaving cream pies in Oakland this year to commemorate his heroics. Read the rest of this entry »

Looking for outfield help with some pop to spruce up your fantasy roster?  Got a guy on your team mired in a slump and could stand to ride the pine for a week or two?  Deeper league owners should already be wise to these players (if you’re not, you’re probably sitting in last and could stand to pay some attention), but if you’re in a relatively shallow league, you might want to consider grabbing one of them.  Whether it’s to replace an injured Matt Holliday for a few games or a slumping Alex Rios for a couple of weeks, both of these guys can contribute, atleast for the short run. Read the rest of this entry »

Today we’ll continue our look at Pick Six values by looking at middle infield and outfield.  You can see our discussion of catcher and corner infield values here.  As a reminder, the production numbers you see below (FP/PA = Fangraphs Points per Plate Appearance) are weighted averages of THT’s Oliver and BPro’s PECOTA.  I didn’t include ZiPS, but feel free to click the players and look up those numbers as well.

Middle Infield

Elite Three (they cost a fortune, but they’re worth it):

Troy Tulowitzki, 1.57 FP/PA, $56.75
Hanley Ramirez, 1.53 FP/PA, $51.50
Robinson Cano, 1.40 FP/PA, $46.75

Read the rest of this entry »

It’s a holiday weekend, and in the honor of National Lampoon and holiday/family misadventures everywhere, let’s lead this off with a song and a couple of players that might help fantasy owners on the run:

Trevor Hoffman, Milwaukee Brewers (37% owned)
Trolling for saves is no exact science. We’ve tried using strikeout rates, walk rates, leverage index, ‘thinking stupid,’ and even fingers in the wind to predict closers in the past. Put this post in the latter category. John Axford has done nothing wrong – well, not quite nothing, he does own a 4.50 walk rate that might make sustaining his current performance level difficult, especially if it starts to approach his higher walk rates of the past – but sometimes doing nothing wrong is not good enough. Even though he hasn’t blown a save yet, and is probably the future at the position for Milwaukee, there’s the little matter of the former closer behind him. Not only has Hoffman turned in eight straight innings with only one run surrendered, but he’s also only four saves short of 600. Milwaukee might turn to the Hoff to boost late-season attendance in his run at glory. Stranger things have happened, and Axford owners at the very least should pick up the legendary change-piecer.

Dexter Fowler, Colorado Rockies (5% owned)
Sometimes you just have to keep plucking that chicken. About a month ago, we recommended Fowler in this space, and he promptly sucked for a while and was sent down. Well, at least he raked… in AAA. In 124 plate appearances, he put up a .340/.435/.566 that showed his team that he had little to figure out in the minor leagues. He’s still a member of one of the more crowded houses in the league, as Seth Smith, Ryan Spilborghs, Carlos Gonzalez and Brad Hawpe are all are above-average hitters. Fowler is strong against lefties, though, and in a worst-case scenario, he’ll be a caddy for Smith against lefties. However, Todd Helton has lost all his power (.066 ISO) and is a terrible offensive first baseman right now. The team might best be served (even defensively) by putting Hawpe at first many days, which would open up more at-bats for Fowler. In any case, Fowler has been up and has been playing. He’s played in every game since he’s come back up, and was six for his last eight. Guess finally trying out AAA for the first time did him some good. With his five-tool upside, he’s worth a flier in deeper leagues for sure.

Here are three players with low ownership rates who could pay immediate dividends in fantasy leagues:

Russell Branyan – Seattle Mariners (owned in 7% of Yahoo! leagues)

Branyan returns to the place where he enjoyed the most success in his MLB career, having hit 31 HR for the Mariners last year. Seattle was receiving such poor production from its first basemen that they had played Josh Wilson, a shortstop, there for a few games before re-acquiring Branyan. His HR/FB rate is down from a year ago, but still a solid 17.5 percent. Any club looking for power should look in Branyan’s direction.

Seth Smith – Colorado Rockies (owned in 5% of Yahoo! leagues)

He may only be a platoon player, but Smith crushes RHP. He has a .289/.353/.572 line against righties in 170 PA. Smith has 10 HR in 181 ABs. His 13.9 HR/FB rate is right in line with what he’s done the past two seasons but he is hitting more fly balls. Smith’s FB% is at 45.9%, up from 41.6 a year ago and 34.1 percent in his rookie season. It is amazing he is available in most leagues. Do not be scared by his platoon-status. Even if you play in a league with weekly transactions, he should be a valuable player even if he only plays 4-5 times a week.

Jose Tabata – Pittsburgh Pirates (owned in 3% of Yahoo! leagues)

We have heard about the former Yankees prospect for a long time, but he is still just 21-years old. Tabata has been installed as the Pirates’ leadoff hitter and he should have an opportunity to pick up a bunch of SB. He has been successful on all four of his steal attempts in his first 16 games. While owners should believe in his speed, do not expect much power from Tabata this season. So, the make or break for him in 2010 will be his AVG. So far, he has a .258 AVG on a .291 BABIP. While it would be nice to see more production in the AVG category, he has an acceptable walk rate (8.3%) so he is still setting himself up for steal chances. There is no (R) ZiPS to compare but if Tabata can stay healthy he has a good shot to clear 20 SB the rest of the way.

This post comes to you all the way from Tokyo town. I just flew here today (yesterday? tomorrow?) and boy are my arms tired. (badum-ching!) As you can tell, it’s been a looong day. Let me quickly get to a couple waiver wire ideas before I pass out.

Shaun Marcum
Our shallow league special won’t be on the wire long, but if you missed out, don’t worry. There’s plenty of reasons to be suspicious of Mr. Marcum. First, even before he missed all of 2009 with elbow surgery, he hasn’t been the picture of health. His major league high is 159 major league innings in a season, and 168 total innings in a season. He doesn’t have a nice K/9 (7.13 career) or ground ball rate (40.3% career), and though his career ERA looks okay (3.95), his career FIP is much less interesting (4.81). That’s probably because he’s somehow managed to put together 400+ innings with a .273 BABIP. In his first start he had a sparkling .068 BABIP even. If it wasn’t such an obvious idea, actually, it seems that the best move here would be to sell high. Here’s a bet his ERA ends up in the low 4s where it belongs with his peripherals.

Dexter Fowler
It takes a little deeper bench in order to take advantage of the fact that Fowler is being summarily dropped in many leagues, but the reward is there for the patient manager. While Seth Smith is definitely a nice pickup in most leagues since he’s getting the lion’s share of at-bats by taking on righties, Fowler is not yet chopped liver. Obviously, the team is looking at Fowler’s nice .322/.374/.470 major league line against lefties (and his correspondingly putrid .228/.343/.353 line against righties) and making what they believe to be the best short-term move for the team. The problem is that this split has only come in 461 total major league at-bats (which is not a significant level for splits like these), and his minor league splits were non-existent (.843 OPS vs lefties, .859 OPS vs righties). Expect Fowler’s upside to will out and force some sort of move by management (Brad Hawpe, I’m looking at you), and in the meantime, just put him on your bench and slot him in against lefties. You’ll enjoy both short- and long-term return.

Scott Downs
The deep league special is a speculative play based on an incredibly tiny sample size seen in one light. Yes, Jason Frasor blew one save. And yes, it’s one inning. And yes, he probably won’t be removed from the closer’s role in Toronto today. On the other hand, Downs has been amazingly consistent for three years now (FIPs around 3.33 all three years), and managers love consistency. Compare Frasor’s range on his FIPs (2.99 to 4.55) and you’ll see that it’s not at all assured who’s going to have the better year in that pen this year. Throw in the fact that Frasor has been linked to the Twins in trade rumors, and Downs looks like a good bet if you’re a-speculatin’.

Though our tools may not always be at their sharpest, we can still use them in concert to find truth in the fog. Yes, the 2010 projections are not up yet at BaseballMonster, but we have a sweet set here and can use their standard-deviation weighted-category-based rankings to help compare players with different skill sets. Yes, the ADP values on MockDraftCentral are flawed and skewed by their proprietary pre-ranks, but until we have more sources, they’ll have to do (Yahoo ADPs go live February 18).

The flaws of our tools were revealed when we looked at the first couple of center field tiers on Thursday, but the middle tier awaits and we will not be deterred from our goal of finding the strongest values at each position (and yes, we’ll do a post to gather all of these values into one place eventually).

Melvin Bossman Jr Upton is being taken the earliest (59.88), but after reading Dan Budreika’s breakdown of the difficulty of projecting his season (especially his power, in my opinion), I have to think that’s a little early for him. Adam Jones (89.04) comes next, but with most projections having him around 18 and 10 with an okay batting average, that seems a little high for a guy that won’t be a major plus in any category. Andrew McCutchen (91.08) may yet grow into his power, but as Paul Bourdett pointed out here, our perception of the current level of his power might have been skewed by a burst late last year. The fact remains that his minor league ISO was in the .130s, not the .180s like last year. Without plus power, he looks like a Shane Victorino (74.25) who I also believe is going too high (unless he finally steals 40+).

I hate to be so obvious about my man-crushes, but Carlos Gonzalez (124.70) has all the tools to fly past all the center fielders in his tier. We’ve talked extensively about him on the site, but I’ll just add a couple more points. CarGo is in a crowded outfield, yes, but the team hasn’t shown the willingness to make Seth Smith an every-day player, so it really looks like Smith and Dexter Fowler are the ones battling for playing time. CarGo played almost every day down the stretch down last year and I expect that to continue. Second, it makes me drool when a toolsy former top prospect makes good on his tools by improving his walk rate, strikeout rate, reach rates and contact rates across the board, while also returning his ISO to his minor league days of promise. The stars are aligned for CarGo to Go CarGo.

The speed-only tier creates a trio of players that are seemingly projected (by CHONE) to be virtually the same players next year:

Player A: .268, 4 home runs, 37 steals
Player B: .281, 3 home runs, 29 steals
Player C: .270, 4 home runs, 31 steals

What if I added that Player B actually stole 42 bases last year with a 71% success rate? Well, then you’d probably want him, wouldn’t you? Congratulations, you just bought Nyjer Morgan at bargain-basement prices (130.21 ADP). He would almsot certainly make a better value than Michael Bourn (72.45 ADP), and should sport a better batting average (and more guaranteed playing time) than Rajai Davis (171.44 ADP) in that crowded house that is the Oakland outfield.

We may have to go to a part three here to discuss the fantasy fault line (thanks to reader Johnny Tuttle for that wording, which may become a feature here shortly) between Shane Victorino and Denard Span.

We checked in on left field this week, and now it’s time to take a look at some of the guys that didn’t make the mixed-league cut but will provide value in deeper leagues. Left field continues to provide value down here on this section of the list.

It was hard to fit Travis Snider in the top fifteen fantasy left fielders for 2010, but he has upside to reach far into the top ten. We already talked about how he needs to cut down the strikeouts (32.2% career), but he may not have that much improvement left in that category, considering his minor league numbers (28.7% career). The power looks real though – his ISO is already good (.175) and has the chance to get better, as he had better ISOs in the minors. An okay batting average and some home runs are on the way – Toronto currently has Jose Bautista and his lifetime .238 batting average penciled in for an outfield spot.

Carlos Guillen got some love in the comments thread, but is in the midst of a three-year decline in most of his categories and has averaged only 400 at-bats over the last two years. Now he’s the full-time left fielder according to his manager, so at least his role is defined. There was some good news last year when he came back – his ISO rebounded from a terrible 2008. If his BABIP hadn’t been terrible (.267), then he might have looked okay. Given 500 plate appearances, he could put together another year with a .800+ OPS and 20 or so home runs. Don’t pay full price, though, because of his brittleness.

Seth Smith is the younger, better talent than Guillen, but he has no defined role until Brad Hawpe leaves town. Right now, I’d rather pick Chase Headley or Chris Coghlan over Smith despite their relative lack of power next to the Rockies’ left field youngster. Headley and Coghlan have a starting role on their teams, no matter what their faults are.

Headley and Coghlan both have different faults, but are promising. Headley’s name isn’t as prominent right now, so he’ll probably return a better value by providing more power at a cheaper price. The knock on him used to be the strikeouts (27% career), but he made good strides last year in that department (24.5%). The former third baseman is a little puzzling – he has a high career BABIP (.340) that was formerly propped up by his line drive rates (24.5% in 2008) and slipped to .326 this year with a poor line drive rate (16.5%). His xBABIP last year was .317 last year and .326 for his career, so he has been slightly lucky, but not extremely so. The fact remains that his career away split (.301/.368/.437 in 492 ABs) shows his upside, which is worth chasing.

Coghlan is coming off a great debut, and is worth a mid-round pick should Dan Uggla move on and vacate second base in Florida. He’s certainly a good hitter – his walk rate (9.5%) and strikeout rate (15.3%) were both great and also in line with his minor league work. The speed is there (72 stolen bases and 18 caught stealings in the minor leagues) so despite his poor rate last year (62% success rate), he should be good for the 20 stolen bases James predicts, if not more as he learns the nuances of major league pitchers. Just don’t go expecting more power, his minor league .153 ISO probably presents his upside (.139 last year). If his Rookie of the Year hardware doesn’t zoom him up in drafts (past where a .300-hitting 10/25 player should go), he’s obviously a good player wherever he plays.