The Roto Deep League MVP

We’re passing out awards this week at RG (we’re also delivering demerits, but not in this piece) and I’m looking at the Deep League MVP today. I share Eno’s position of what this award should be as he discussed in the Deep League Cy Young. What that means in a nutshell is that A.J. Pollock isn’t winning this one.

He had an undeniably fantastic season, rising up from a 104 hitter ADP to end up as the fourth-best hitter in baseball, but even factoring in pitchers only jumps his ADP 54 spots meaning he wasn’t exactly cheap despite being a tremendous return on the investment. Kendrys Morales was less expensive as the 226th hitter off the board, but he was drafted enough to log a real ADP on four of the six sites FantasyPros uses so he’s out, too, despite the incredible season.

I was a little lighter on my playing time requirements for consideration as we saw some guys do amazing things in fewer than 100 games this year, so I was looking for at least 400 PA. You can probably think of some of the top candidates immediately, especially if you won a league as the beneficiary of these free agent finds. The booming rookie class paid major dividends via the wire in large part because the arrival of several was well ahead of schedule, let alone the fact that they performed immediately.

THE CANDIDATES

THE LOSERS

Pillar wound up having a great season sealed with an excellent Sept/Oct during which he hit .333/.368/.505 with 3 HR, 12 RBI, 12 R, and 8 SB in 114 PA, but as I covered in a piece about stolen bases recently, a lot of his production was done on the waiver wire. I think this applies even in deep leagues. Outfield is almost never as deep as many fantasy players believe, but it is certainly deeper than both middle infield positions and also adds to Pillar being on the outside looking in.

This also eliminates Maybin, who was essentially a tick worse than Pillar across the board, but more of his production likely wound up on a team because he was once a heralded prospect and has an MLB track record. He had terrible rates in April (.175/.283/.400), but picked it up in May (.290/.371/.409) and became a popular pickup.

We’re left with four middle infielders. Forsythe isn’t quite the same as Pillar given that he came in with more of a track record, but he was one of those guys who fantasy players were looking to move on from at the slightest hint of departure from his new level of production.

Given that most of these guys are waiver finds, teams rarely get all of their stats, but the low profile guys like Pillar, Forsythe, and Matt Duffy don’t even catch on once they get going because fantasy players – even in deep leagues – are skeptical. These guys are being shuffled in and out of the lineup, on and off the waiver wire (depending on the depth, of course) and so for that, they’re out.

Duffy was fantastic and I came close to giving him this award as a full season of production is so huge, but even deep leaguers likely didn’t start paying attention until June (maybe late-May if you played in Yahoo! leagues where he had SS eligibility) as he had just a .728 OPS through May with only 3B eligibility.

That leaves the two rookies…

THE RUNNER-UP

If we were looking at the full picture, defense included, we’d be crowning Lindor. But we are looking at the offensive contributions most regularly used for fantasy baseball which leaves him a little short. The power surge from Lindor was especially surprising and made a legitimate candidate for this award. After a career-high 11 in 567 PA at Double- and Triple-A last year, Lindor popped just two in 262 PA at Triple-A this year before clubbing 12 with Cleveland.

THE WINNER

Just because it’s obvious doesn’t mean it’s wrong.

Correa needed just 99 games to finish at the fourth-best SS at FantasyPros and second-best at ESPN. He paced all shortstops with 22 HR, finished sixth with 68 RBI, and finished seventh with 14 SB. His 52 R were only good for 22nd and his .279 AVG wasn’t great, but he was so damn good everywhere else that he can afford a couple of weaker categories.

While Correa didn’t have an MLB track record, he was immediately picked up and inserted into lineups across all deep leagues because there was a chance for greatness. Fantasy teams were relying on Correa to change their fortunes and he excelled immediately so the only missed stats were those between his June 8th debut and your league’s next waiver period. That was a Monday, so even if you had to wait until that next Sunday for a FAAB period, you still got .282-20-64-49-13 from him in 406 PA.

Carlos Correa is the Deep League MVP for 2015.