Transaction Analysis: Carter, Napoli, & Hammel

Rangers sign Mike Napoli

Signing with the Rangers boosted Napoli’s fantasy value. If healthy, he’ll accumulate a full season of PA at first or DH.  He’s going to be in a good offensive park with good hitters around him. He just needs to keep up the gains he showed last season.

In 2016, Napoli went pull and flyball crazy on the way to posting his highest single-season home run total (34). His power may regress some, but if he comes to bat 600 times 30 home runs are reachable. He’s never going to have a decent batting average because of his lack of speed, high flyball nature, and near 30% strikeout rate.

The big losers with this signing are Jurickson Profar, Joey Gallo, Ryan Rua, and Josh Hamilton who are all competing for the DH spot. Playing time looks to be at a premium among them. Of the four, I have always liked Profar’s talent but he needs to play to be productive. I hope he gets a chance sometime.

Yankees sign Chris Carter

The signing gives Carter some fantasy value. He now has a job in a decent offensive environment. No one is expecting 41 home runs again but 35 seems reasonable given a full season of plate appearances. And that is the issue, the Yankees don’t have enough plate appearances to go around.

The signing lowers the shallow league value of several players. The Yankees right now have two veterans, Chris Carter and Matt Holliday, and two young players, Tyler Austin and Gregory Bird, fighting over the first base and DH spots. Trying to determine how the plate appearances will get distributed seems like a fool’s errand.

I can see several scenarios where each player could get full time at bats. Also, I could see instances where one of the four gets 100 or fewer plate appearances based on performance and/or health. For now, I am just going to stay away from the situation until it becomes clearer.

 

Royals sign Jason Hammel

This move just about maximizes Hammel’s value. The historical hindrance to his production has been home runs (1.35 HR/9 in 2016, 1.13 in his career). The move to home run suppressing Kaufman Stadium should suppress his home run total. He needs to keep his home run rate near league average to be successful.

The other problem with Hammel is he throws five different pitches, two and four-seamer, change, slider, and curve, but the two-seamer and curve are limiting his upside.

The two-seamer rarely gets any swings-and-misses (2.6% SwStr% in 2015 and 2016) while giving up more home runs per pitch than his flyball prone four-seamer. His heavy reliance on it last year was the main reason for his strikeout rate drop (9.1% to 7.8%). His curve doesn’t generate many ground balls (36%) and is just barely generates an average amount of swings-and-misses. His curve isn’t horrible but his slider and change are significantly better pitches.

It would be interesting to see how he would perform if he dropped the usage of these two subpar pitches and utilized his three above average pitches.