Archive for Yankees

Episode 100

The latest episode of The Sleeper and the Bust is now live! Jason Collette and Eno Sarris preview the Chicago White Sox and the New York Yankees.

The next podcast will focus on pitching in general, so if you have questions, get them in!

As usual, don’t hesitate to tweet us any fantasy questions you have that we may answer on our next episode.

You can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes or via the feed.

Thanks to Ian Miller aka Teen Archer, for the new intro music Approximately 52 min of joyous analysis.

I’m not going to compete with fellow contributor David Weirs when it comes to the number of bullet points. Tenure is a beautiful thing.

•  After early struggles, Angels’ closer Jordan Walden has lost his title, at least for the time being. Walden’s role will be handed over to left-hander Scott Downs while the 24-year-old flamethrower rights the ship. Walden’s issue has been his control, and he’s fallen behind to more batters than he’s gotten ahead of. Walden’s velocity has also been off a touch, but he’s still throwing 97 mph with his fastball, so it’s really nothing to worry about. Don’t drop Walden yet, as he can be far too dominant to give up on.

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Let’s face it.  Fantasy football is for suckers.  You can have the worst draft in the world and still end up in your championship game just by being active and playing the waiver wire properly.    It is not nearly as complex nor as difficult to find success at as it is in fantasy baseball.   Still, it serves as a great distraction through the long, cold winter when all you have to keep you warm is the news from the Hot Stove League and the anticipation of your fantasy baseball draft.

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The catcher position, with respect to fantasy baseball has seen quite the inundation of new talent.  There was a time when, if you didn’t own one of the big three — Joe Mauer, Brian McCann, Victor Martinez — it didn’t really matter who you had as your backstop.  Sure, there were some that were more productive than others, but overall, there were numerous interchangeable players and whether you grabbed one in the 9th round or in the 15th round, it didn’t make much difference.  Now, with blossoming stars like Carlos Santana, Buster Posey, Alex Avila, and Matt Wieters, things are looking a little different.  The position is much deeper and production is on the rise.  One of these rising stars, though, has an interesting future ahead of him and fantasy owners will have some tough decisions to make.  What will come of Jesus Montero in 2012?

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After three straight seasons of declining saves totals, Mariano Rivera rebounded to post 39 in 2009, his highest total since he notched 43 in 2005. Rivera is a wonder, but he faces long odds to match his saves total from last year in 2009. Trevor Hoffman is the only pitcher in MLB history to post 39 or more saves at age 39 (or above), the age Rivera will be this season.

Yet the mock draft crowd has faith in Rivera, making him on average the fifth reliever picked in drafts. He has an ADP of 83, making him a late-seventh-round pick. Assuming you want a reliever at that spot, is Rivera a good choice?

There has been no drop-off in velocity with his famous cutter and Rivera has been able to maintain excellent K/9 numbers.

But there are three factors that helped Rivera to his outstanding 2008 season, when he was the second-best reliever in the game behind Francisco Rodriguez. First, Rivera had a .232 BABIP, over 100 points lower than he did in 2007. Second, he posted the lowest walk rate of his career with a 0.76 BB/9 mark. And third, Rivera had the highest strand rate of his career with an 87.6 percent LOB%.

Rivera has had an ERA under two in five of the last six years. There is no reason to expect him to fall off a cliff in 2009. But given his age and his incredible peripherals last season, there is not much reason to expect a repeat of 2008, either. The mock drafters are knocking him down but I would suggest not far enough.

Instead of Rivera in the seventh round, why not wait a round and take Joakim Soria, he of the 97 ADP? Or wait two rounds and take Jose Valverde, he of the back-to-back 40-save seasons. These two pitchers do not have the name recognition of Rivera, but are likely to put up comparable or better seasons as the venerable Yankees closer.

Over the last four seasons, Mark Teixeira has averaged a .298-35-120-100 fantasy line. Last year he nearly perfectly matched those numbers. Teixeira is one of a dozen or so players to consider for a late-first, early-second round pick and is the textbook definition of consistency that one should look for from an early pick.

When making a choice from many evenly-matched players, a fantasy owner should consider numerous factors, among them how he wants to build his team. Obviously, if you pick Teixeira you are putting yourself in a hole for SB. In his six-year career, he has just 13 steals or five less than fellow first baseman and late-first/early-second pick Lance Berkman had last year alone.

Another thing to consider is what significant changes are in store for the player. And for Teixeira the big news is his move to the Yankees, where he will be under the microscope like never before. However, Teixeira has handled big expectations in the past, as he was dealt twice in the past two years to teams that had great hopes he would be the final piece.

While it remains to be seen how Texieira will hit in the new Yankee Stadium, he has done well as a visitor in New York. He had a .305/.354/.524 line in 113 PA in Yankee Stadium and a .405/.425/.676 one in 40 PA at Shea.

All four of the projection systems see Teixeira likely to repeat his numbers from the past four seasons. Marcel has him coming up short in the counting categories, but that is mainly because it projects him with just 513 at-bats due to his injury-shortened 2007 season, when he missed 27 games with a strained quadriceps injury. Teixeira played 157 games last year.

Currently, Teixeira has an ADP of 13. He has gone as high as the fifth overall pick and as low as 20th in the last 708 qualifying drafts over at Mock Draft Central. While his lack of steals is a concern, the excellent production in the other four categories makes Teixeira a fine pick anytime after the ninth slot.

Everyone talks about how fortunate that Francisco Rodriguez was to set the all-time single-season saves mark in the last year of his contract. It certainly was ideal, but Rodriguez at 26-years old and a reliable closer for years, was going to get a nice contract, regardless. Instead, the person people should point to for coming up big prior to free agency is Jorge Posada.

In 2007, at the age of 35, Posada put up a .338-20-90-91-2 line, which earned him a four-year, $52.4 million contract. The good news is that on the Yankees, that is just another contract. The bad news is that there is no way he is going to earn that salary, either in 2009 or the final two years of the deal.

In baseball history, there have been only 18 seasons in which a player 37 or older has amassed 400 or more plate appearances in a season in which they appeared at 50 percent or more of their games as a catcher. And six of those belong to Carlton Fisk.

In only one of those seasons did the player hit over .300, and that was during World War II, when Ernie Lombardi hit .307 against competition that was not really major league caliber. Only three times did a player hit 20 or more home runs under these conditions, two of those by Fisk in seasons in which he batted .238 and .256, respectively.

Catching is hard. And Posada is climbing the ranks of most games caught in a career. He has played 1,390 games at catcher, which ranks in the top 40 in MLB history. Last year, Posada broke down. He had season-ending shoulder surgery and before he shut it down for the season, Posada was a liability behind the plate.

There is no guarantee that he can bounce back in 2009. And even if he can be a productive hitter, can he play well enough defensively to stay at catcher? And if not, does Posada still have enough bat for the Yankees to carry at DH?

All of these things combine to push Posada out of the top 10 in catchers for 2009. Yes, the possibility exists that he might be one of the top three at the position if he rebounds completely. But do you really like those odds? Because of his previous level of performance, Posada has more upside than only a handful of catchers. But he is much more likely to repeat his 2008 numbers, which means fantasy players should look elsewhere.