Indi­ans’ Rota­tion — Hop­ing for Pro­duc­tion from the Top: Losses are a ter­ri­ble stat, but when your team’s top two starters com­bine for 32 losses in one sea­son, that’s prob­a­bly a bad sign. Alas, 2012 was a rough year for Justin Mas­ter­son and Ubaldo Jimenez, who com­bined for almost 400 innings with an ERA above 5.00 to go along with those 32 defeats against just 20 vic­to­ries. For Mas­ter­son, the prob­lem was an inabil­ity to get out left-handed bat­ters (.613 OPS vs. RHB and .825 OPS vs. LHB), which has been a career-long issue for the 27-year old. Mas­ter­son con­tin­ued to induce a high per­cent­age of ground­balls (55%), but expe­ri­enced an uptick in both his walk and HR rates. In 2013, the Indi­ans hope Mas­ter­son can revert back to his 2011 self when he lim­ited left­ies to “just” a .745 OPS and fin­ished that sea­son with a 3.21 ERA. For fan­tasy own­ers, Mas­ter­son doesn’t have a huge upside and rep­re­sents sig­nif­i­cant risk until he improves this deficiency.

Pablo San­doval, 3B, SF - Spring train­ing doesn’t offi­cially start until San­doval shows up out of shape. The third base­man reported to camp over­weight and the team, as usual, isn’t happy about it. San­doval, of course, won the World Series MVP in Octo­ber and was named the MVP of the Venezue­lan League cham­pi­onship series in the win­ter. San­doval has suf­fered a bro­ken hamate bone in each hand over the last two sea­sons, but unlike 2011, he didn’t come back and hit 18 homers after the injury; he hit seven and fin­ished with 12 and a .789 OPS. San­doval improved his walk rate from 6.9 per­cent in 2011 to 8.6 per­cent last sea­son, which is a sign that the free-swinger is advanc­ing as a hit­ter. How­ever, the third base­man is too much of a ground-ball/line-drive hit­ter to ever reach 30 homers, espe­cially play­ing half his games at AT&T Park, and he’ll only hit the 25-homer plateau again if his HR/FB rate jumps back over 14 per­cent from 9.5 last season.

Roy Hal­la­day, P, PHI - Hal­la­day had thrown at least 220 innings in six straight sea­sons but a lat strain lim­ited him to 156 1/3 in 2012, and he just wasn’t him­self when he was able to take the mound. Hal­la­day posted a 3.67 K/BB, his worst in five sea­sons, and 1.04 HR/9, his worst since 2000. Oppos­ing bat­ters hit a line drive off Hal­la­day 23 per­cent of the time, a career worst for the right-hander. Hal­la­day also recorded the high­est fly-ball per­cent­age and low­est ground-ball rate of his career, and it wasn’t close. The 35-year-old did improve his K/9 after return­ing from the injury, but he also gave up 12 homers and walked 22 bat­ters in 84 innings.

Johan San­tana, P NYN - After shut­ting out the Dodgers through eight innings on June 30, Santana’s record stood at 6–4 and his ERA at 2.76. The left-hander pro­ceeded to go 0–5 with a 15.63 ERA over his final five starts before being shut down. Leav­ing San­tana in for a career-high 134 pitches dur­ing his no-hitter on June 1 cer­tainly con­tributed to his down­fall, but so did hav­ing the lefty toss 48 innings and 722 pitches in seven starts from May 26 to June 30. It was just too heavy of a work­load after San­tana missed all of 2011 while rehab­bing from shoul­der surgery. San­tana ben­e­fited from great luck on bat­ted balls over his first 16 starts, but he also showed that he can still be a strikeout-per-inning guy in short stretches.
Ryan Howard, 1B, PHI - Howard had 56 RBIs in 71 games, which trans­lates to 128 per 162 games. That num­ber would have led the National League by 13 and ranked third in the majors. Howard told the Philadel­phia Inquirer that he was essen­tially play­ing on one leg last sea­son since he had not rede­vel­oped the mus­cles in his left leg after rup­tur­ing his Achilles’ ten­don in the 2011 post­sea­son. That makes his 14 homers in 260 at-bats even more impres­sive. How­ever, Howard struck out 99 times and had a strike­out rate of 33.9 per­cent. He was par­tic­u­larly awful against left­ies, bat­ting .173 with 45 strike­outs in 98 at-bats. Fan­tasy own­ers who draft Howard are going to have to bench him when Philadel­phia faces a left-handed starter.

Matt Garza, P, CHN - It only took one live bat­ting prac­tice ses­sion for Garza to get injured. Cubs man­ager Dale Sveum said Garza has a “mild lat strain.” At least it wasn’t his elbow. The right-hander missed the last two months of the 2012 sea­son with a stress reac­tion in his pitch­ing elbow. The 29-year-old was an extreme fly ball pitcher with the Rays but he has reversed course and become a ground-ball inducer in his two sea­sons with the Cubs. A ter­ri­bly unlucky 16.3 per­cent HR/FB led to him giv­ing up 15 homers in 103 2/3 innings. Garza’s xFIP shows that with a league aver­age HR/FB rate, his ERA would have been 3.59 instead of 3.91. Obvi­ously, Garza is an injury risk who even when healthy hasn’t thrown more than 204 2/3 innings in a sea­son, and he isn’t going to win more than 10 or 11 games on the Cubs. But 200 strike­outs are cer­tainly attain­able since Garza has posted an 8.33 or bet­ter K/9 in three of the last four seasons.

Alex Gor­don, OF, KC - Fan­tasy own­ers are going to have to decide which Gor­don is for real — the one who hit 23 homers with 17 steals in 2011 or the one who only had 14 homers and 10 steals in 2012. Gordon’s fly-ball rate and HR/FB both declined dra­mat­i­cally after hold­ing steady for three straight sea­sons, so the Roy­als left fielder should at least see a bump up to the 18-homer range, but 12 steals seems like his ceil­ing. Gor­don hit .307 with an .845 OPS out of the lead­off spot in 2012 and mov­ing there for an extended period at the end of May helped revive his sea­son. He hit .320 with an .878 OPS in his final 116 games fol­low­ing a move to the lead­off spot on May 27. Roy­als man­ager Ned Yost said the plan is for Gor­don to stay in the lead­off spot all sea­son, which means he should make a run at 110 runs, but the RBI oppor­tu­ni­ties will be lacking.

Homer Bai­ley, P, CIN - Bai­ley, a for­mer first-round draft pick, finally came through with a career year that con­sisted of the right-hander win­ning 13 games with a 3.68 ERA and a no-hitter in his penul­ti­mate start of the year. Not sur­pris­ingly, the no-no came on the road, where Bai­ley was a stud all sea­son. He went 9–2 with a 2.32 ERA and 1.00 WHIP away from home, com­pared to 4–8, 5.16, 1.50 at the Great Amer­i­can Ball­park. Bai­ley gave up 21 homers in 99 1/3 innings at home, com­pared to five in 108 2/3 on the road. Bai­ley has sim­i­lar career splits — 3.78 ERA on the road, 5.13 at home.

Mike Napoli, C, BOS - Look­ing at Napoli’s num­bers, it’s quite clear that the out­lier is 2011, when the catcher hit .320 with 30 homers and a 1.046 OPS. Napoli’s fall back to earth was steep — he hit .227 — and painful — he only played 108 games due to mul­ti­ple injuries. Napoli’s strike­out rate sky­rock­eted to 30 per­cent, a career worst but not far off from what he did with the Angels. Napoli’s BABIP also dropped from .344 to .273. Oth­er­wise, all of his bat­ted ball rates were nearly iden­ti­cal to 2011. Even with all the strike­outs, there’s still some things to like with Napoli this sea­son. He still hit 24 homers last year and got on base at a .343 clip to boost his OPS to .812. Even with a hip issue that held up con­tract talks with Boston, Napoli is a bet­ter bet to play 130 games for just the sec­ond time in his career than he was with Texas since he will serve as Boston’s every­day first base­man … while still car­ry­ing catcher eligibility.

Gian­carlo Stan­ton, OF, MIA - There are mul­ti­ple 40-homer sea­sons in Stanton’s future, maybe as soon as this sea­son, but he might not get many chances to swing away con­sid­er­ing Miami’s tal­ent level around him after its lat­est fire sale. Stan­ton will have to drive in Juan Pierre and Placido Polanco while being pro­tected by Logan Mor­ri­son. At first glance, Stanton’s 28-point improve­ment in bat­ting aver­age was aided by a .344 BABIP, but Stan­ton also increased his line drive rate from 16.3 to 22.1 per­cent. If he keeps pound­ing out line dri­ves, and I think that he will, it will help off­set a strike­out rate close to 30 per­cent and keep his BABIP well above .320.

Dan Straily, P, OAK - Only six pitch­ers posted more strike­outs in pro­fes­sional base­ball than Straily’s 222 at three dif­fer­ent lev­els in 2012. How­ever, after walk­ing 19 with 82 strike­outs in 66 2/3 innings at Triple-A, Straily walked 16 and was bombed for 11 round-trippers in 39 1/3 innings with Oak­land. A .225 BABIP and .907 left on base per­cent­age with the Ath­let­ics helped Straily keep his ERA to 3.89, but his FIP was 6.48. He’ll com­pete with A.J. Grif­fin for the fifth spot in Oakland’s rota­tion, but he has a lot to prove at the big league level after mas­ter­ing the minors.

Other Pro­jec­tion News and Notes: Twins Uber Prospect 2B Jurick­son Pro­far has decided against play­ing in the WBC. Instead he will stay with the ball­club this spring as he attempts to win a start­ing role. Lance Berk­man’s sur­gi­cally repaired knee is at a self reported 80 per­cent. Berk­man moves to a very good lineup and ball­park, but his aging skill set make him an early mid round risk. Emilio Boni­fa­cio and Maicer Izturis are in an open com­pe­ti­tion for 2nd base. Izturis is the bet­ter infielder, but Bonifacio’s at bat skills trump Isturis. Boni­fa­cio is the guy to tar­get late in drafts. By all accounts, Boston’s SS Stephen Drew is healthy and healed from the frac­tured right ankle that cost him most of 2012. OF Carl Craw­ford took his first live bat­ting prac­tice ses­sion of spring train­ing Sun­day, and the results were encour­ag­ing. Craw­ford is heav­ily under val­ued com­ing off of TJS. The Mets said they would con­sider Jose Valverde, but it seems they are once again hop­ing for a dis­count. Fred­die Free­man has declared that he’s fully recov­ered from left index fin­ger injury that he played through the last 4 months of the sea­son. Free­man still fin­ished the sea­son with a 91/23/93 line despite the woes.
 

Mike Trout OF ANA– Trout was a bona fide freak on the field last year. With a .326 BA, .399 OBP and a WAR of 10.0, which led the league, Trout also topped the majors in SBs, and Runs. The most fas­ci­nat­ing thing about all of this is that Trout amassed these num­bers in just 139 games played. Get ready for the rub…he’s report­edly gained 20 pounds this sea­son, bring­ing him up to 240lbs…on a 6’1″ frame…many of us are scratch­ing our heads…why? Why tam­per with some­thing that’s worked so well last sea­son. Can his body/joints with­stand the torque if he plays with the same “reck­less aban­don­ment” that he dis­played last sea­son? One of the many dilem­mas fac­ing us this fan­tasy draft season.

Michael Bourn OF CLE — The sweep­stakes for speed­ster Michael Bourn is over now that he has landed in Cleve­land. Heav­ily depen­dant on his legs, there is no deny­ing his high level of pro­duc­tion. In 2012 he was sec­ond in the MLB with 42 SB and with a WAR of 6.4, Bourn ranked 13th in the majors in that cat­e­gory. One knock on Bourn is that he does strike out at an alarm­ing rate for a top of the order guy (22.0 K%), but he does make up for it with a 350ish OBP. The good news about his move to Cleve­land is that he’ll be run­ning and often. Con­sider that Cleve­land as a team attempted 154 Stolen bases last sea­son, which was tied for 10th most in the league, yet they were only suc­cess­ful 71% of the time (20th in the league). Fan­tis­tics is pro­ject­ing an increase to 53 stolen bases for Bourn, and that might be con­ser­v­a­tive.
 

Jor­dan Zim­mer­mann P WAS- The Nation­als right-hander is enter­ing his sec­ond year of arbi­tra­tion eli­gi­bil­ity in 2013, so it would be wise for Wash­ing­ton to lock him up, as he has vastly improved his num­bers over the course of his first three sea­sons in the bigs. With an ERA of 2.94 in almost 200 IP (195.2), Zim­mer­man was the Nats equiv­a­lent to “Ol’ Reli­able.” His HR/FB ratio was under 10 per­cent (9.4), which was a step back from 2011 (5.9), but he did get his GB per­cent back to 43, which is a good sign con­sid­er­ing he isn’t an over­pow­er­ing pitch­ing (about 7 K/9IP).  His ERA last sea­son of 2.94 looks awfully appeal­ing, how­ever a closer look shows that it was under­stated by almost 50 points. He’s being drafted as a top 25, but that might be his max upside given the lack of Ks.

Max Scherzer P DET — There’s no deny­ing that the Tigers put together a heck of a sea­son in 2012, even though it fell short once again with a dis­ap­point­ing per­for­mance in the World Series. With big names like Ver­lan­der and Cabr­era light­ing up the stat sheets for Detroit, it was easy to over­look the year that Scherzer put together. Scherzer’s ERA improved each month as the reg­u­lar sea­son went on (April — 7.77, May — 4.04, June — 3.86, July — 3.62, August — 2.25, Sep­tem­ber — 2.17, Octo­ber — 0.00). You could make the argu­ment that 28-year-old Mis­souri grad has close to the best stuff in the MLB when he’s on, and some of his num­bers sup­port that fact (11.08 K/9, WAR of 4.6). If he can leapfrog the early sea­son jit­ters this sea­son, as well as low­er­ing his walk totals (2.88 BB/9), we could be look­ing at a poten­tial Cy Young can­di­date. Cur­rently a 7th round 10th selec­tion ADP.

Chris Sale P CHA - Another guy who took the league by storm last sea­son was White Sox lefty Chris Sale, who’s tran­si­tion from the bullpen into the start­ing rota­tion was noth­ing short of poetry in motion. The 23-year-old Florida native fin­ished 2012 with 17 wins, an ERA of 3.05 and a WAR of 4.9, which tied Cliff Lee for eighth among all pitch­ers. Sale’s strike­out num­bers were solid, aver­ag­ing an even one strike­out per inning, while leav­ing 80 per­cent of run­ners stranded on the base paths, good for third in the MLB in that cat­e­gory. Even more promis­ing for the young arm is his FIP, which sat at 3.27 last sea­son, which is noth­ing short of remark­able con­sid­er­ing his age and MLB expe­ri­ence. As Anthony points out in his soft­ware player notes, his 17 Wins from last sea­son were over­stated thanks to an out­pour­ing of sup­port when he was on the mound. He really only deserved 13 Wins in 2012, yet we still rank him in the top 20.

Andrew McCutchen OF PIT- McCutchen is a guy who is hard not to love. His com­bi­na­tion of defense, power and speed cause headaches for oppos­ing man­agers. In just his fourth MLB sea­son, McCutchen, sim­i­lar to phe­nom Mike Trout, did every­thing. The 26-year-old cen­ter­fielder hit .327 with 31 big flies and 96 RBI while sport­ing a pretty .400 OBP. His WAR of 7.4 was good for sev­enth in the MLB, ahead of guys like Matt Hol­l­i­day, Joe Mauer, Prince Fielder and even AL MVP and Triple Crown Win­ner Miguel Cabr­era. A FPI of .77 and 10 Value Above Mean makes McCutchen a sure­fire top 15 in almost all league formats.

Ichiro Suzuki OF NYA — One of the more intrigu­ing fan­tasy names going into this sea­son has to be Ichiro. After being traded to the Yan­kees, Ichiro’s game improved immensely as his BA and OBP both increased by .50 per­cent­age points, as well as his SLG per­cent­age being over .100 points higher in NY than in SEA, which comes as no sur­prise con­sid­er­ing NY being a lefty hit­ters haven and Seat­tle being more of a pitch­ers park. Even though Ichiro is approach­ing 40 years of age, his legs are still remark­ably spry. His most promi­nent con­tri­bu­tion will be his 30+ SBs, but his 15th round ADP may be a lit­tle rich.

Bobby Par­nell RP NYN - Par­nell put together his best sea­son to date in 2012, post­ing an ERA of 2.49 and aver­ag­ing 8 K/9 com­ing out of the bullpen for the New York Mets. He hasn’t been able to cap­ture the every­day closer role for NY, mostly because he has strug­gled to get bat­ters out in the ninth. Clos­ing is almost always a men­tal hump to get over for reliev­ers, some peo­ple have the capac­ity, oth­ers don’t, and so far Par­nell hasn’t had the head for the job. The most promis­ing aspect of Parnell’s game is that he has a high GB rate (61.5 per­cent) and rarely gives up the long ball (0.52 HR/9IP). The increase in grounders could be a result of him switch­ing from a slider as his sec­ond pitch, to a curve. All in all, if his eighth inning per­for­mances can trans­late into the ninth inning, expect his fan­tasy value to sky­rocket in 2013 as he will prob­a­bly land the closer role at some point, as the Frank Fran­cisco sit­u­a­tion doesn’t look very promising.

Travis D’Arnaud C NYN — After being traded to the Mets this off-season for Cy Young win­ner R.A. Dickey, you would expect a lit­tle more buzz to sur­round the MLB’s third ranked prospect. D’Arnaud had a fan­tas­tic 2012 with Toronto’s Triple-A affil­i­ate, bat­ting .333 with 16 HR and 52 RBI in just 67 games played. He is expected to make the major league club to start 2013, although I seem to favor the idea of let­ting him play a month in Triple-A before com­ing into the big leagues, sim­i­lar to the Angels approach with Mike Trout last sea­son. D’Arnaud’s explo­sive bat gives Mets fans a rea­son to watch this sea­son, although his strike­out per­cent­age (19.5) and walk per­cent­age (6.3) are alarm­ingly high and low respec­tively. As Anthony points out in his soft­ware notes, his swing has a ton of mov­ing parts…which typ­i­cally trans­lates to an adjust­ment period. We’ve got him ranked as a top 20, sim­ply because there isn’t much depth at the position.

Cur­tis Grander­son OF NYA - After a 2011 that pro­pelled Cur­tis Grander­son into fan­tasy star­dom, the “Grandy Man’s” WAR decreased from an extremely effi­cient 7.0 in 2011, to just a 2.6 in 2012. His BA decreased from .262 to .232 and he stole 15 less bases, mostly due to the fact that he was strik­ing out at almost an Adam Dunn-like rate (28.5 per­cent). When you aren’t even giv­ing your­self a chance to get on base, it hurts your fan­tasy value sub­stan­tially. Grander­son has been mes­mer­iz­ing his entire career though. In 2007, he posted a WAR of 7.8 only to see his pro­duc­tion decrease for the next three sea­sons, until hav­ing his mem­o­rable 2011 cam­paign. His BA will prob­a­bly see a 10–15 point kick back up based on an unlucky BABIP, and one can only hope that the stolen bases return. He’s cur­rently being drafted as a early 4th round ADP, which is appropriate.

Other Pro­jec­tion News and Notes: Chase Utley is feel­ing great, adding that he hasn’t had any flare-ups this off-season, while mak­ing progress in the weight room that he hasn’t been able to in 3 or 4 years. Joakim Soria con­tin­ues to make progress in his TJS recov­ery, he could be back in the bullpen by May. Brain Roberts appears to be start­ing this pre­sea­son in rel­a­tively good health, the 35 year doesn’t have much com­pe­ti­tion behind him. Dan Uggla reported to camp 20 pounds lighter than he did in 2012, a good sign…although we expect the power num­bers to return his declin­ing 70% con­tact rate con­tin­ues to hurt his BA. Matt Kemp is tak­ing BP and expects to be ready for open­ing day. Ryan Braun’s name is linked on yet another PEDs document.…yet another shadow of uncer­tainty for prospec­tive Braun own­ers as we approach fan­tasy draft day. Logan Mor­ri­son has been cleared to begin jog­ging on his sur­gi­cally repaired knee, he’s on track to be ready for open­ing day. For those look­ing for­ward to draft­ing Mike Bax­ter on their fan­tasy teams, Terry Collins said yes­ter­day that Mar­lon Byrd could win that role.

Col­orado Rockies:

RF Play­ing Time: Michael Cud­dyer vs. Tyler Colvin

Prior to the 2012 sea­son, the Rock­ies signed for­mer Twin Michael Cud­dyer to a 3-year, $31.5 mil­lion deal that appeared to lock their mid­dle of the order in place for the 2012–2014 sea­sons. Cuddyer’s his­tory of play­ing mul­ti­ple posi­tions was appeal­ing for a Rock­ies team that had holes around the dia­mond, but in Cuddyer’s first sea­son he pri­mar­ily stuck to the OF as just 205 2/3 innings of the 700 innings he played (25%) came at a posi­tion other than RF. All of those innings came at 1B. Cud­dyer was only able to get 101 games in before suc­cumb­ing to a recur­ring oblique injury that ended his sea­son. The injury was one of many for the Rock­ies key play­ers and allowed younger play­ers like Tyler Colvin to emerge. Colvin showed lit­tle growth from his days with the Cubs where low BB Rates and high K Rates often over­shad­owed some impres­sive power poten­tial. In Col­orado though the gap power played up as Colvin slugged .531 and put together an appeal­ing 5x5 line of .290–62-18–72-7 in 136 games.
Colvin was espe­cially deadly against RHP, where he hit .297/.334/.556 and as a result he’s earned the oppor­tu­nity to poten­tially pla­toon with Cud­dyer who owns a career .288/.377/.499 career line vs. LHP. Colvin (.270/.302/.450) vs. LHP cer­tainly won’t threaten Cud­dyer there, but Cuddyer’s career .263/.324/.436 (.760 OPS) vs. RHP does open up the door for com­pe­ti­tion. This would be a con­cern for Cud­dyer own­ers as Colvin would be on the stronger side of the play­ing time pla­toon. This is where Cuddyer’s posi­tional flex­i­bil­ity should come in handy for fan­tasy own­ers. With Todd Hel­ton enter­ing his 17th sea­son in Col­orado and strug­gling to stay healthy the last few years (118 games, 124 games, 69 games last 3 years), Cuddyer’s play­ing time should be sup­ported by the abil­ity to work into the lineup at 1B as well as the enhanced inter­league play schedule.

Cuddyer’s draft stock appears to be impacted by the play­ing time threat. He’s cur­rently going out­side of the top 150 picks accord­ing to the most recent NFBC aver­age draft posi­tion data, which is way too late for a player that we cur­rently have in the Top 100 of our VAM rat­ing for tra­di­tional 5x5 leagues. As camp con­tin­ues we’ll pay close atten­tion to the quotes out of camp sur­round­ing Tyler Colvin, Michael Cud­dyer, and Todd Hel­ton, but the Rock­ies mean­ing­ful invest­ment in Cud­dyer cou­pled with his posi­tional flex­i­bil­ity would sug­gest that his play­ing time is safe. As a result, Cud­dyer looks like a tremen­dous draft-day value in our eyes.

Com­pe­ti­tion for Rafael Betancourt?

The Rock­ies biggest off­sea­son acqui­si­tion was Wilton Lopez, a RP for the Astros who recorded 10 saves after fin­ish­ing the sea­son as the closer. Lopez is a 29 year old reliever who has posted excep­tional sup­port­ing skills through­out his career. Lopez has always been able to keep the ball on the ground (career 55.9% GB Rate) while lim­it­ing his BB’s (4.3% BB%) and strik­ing out a league aver­age 18.4% of bat­ters faced. Lopez’s strong sec­ondary skills have trans­lated to a tidy 3.14 ERA and 3.17 xFIP in his career. His strong audi­tion in the Astros closer role last sea­son cou­pled with a skill-set suited for the rar­i­fied air in Col­orado pro­vides some sus­pi­cion about the Rock­ies inten­tions with Rafael Betan­court. Betan­court has been suc­cess­ful in the closer’s role in Col­orado but he does have some sec­ondary skills that cause prob­lems in the thin air. Betancourt’s career 49.9% FB Rate can cause prob­lems in Col­orado (1.30 HR/9 in 2010, 1.01 HR/9 in 2011), but Betan­court did show some improve­ment last year increas­ing his GB Rate to 36% while induc­ing more con­tact early in the count. The Rock­ies have sug­gested they’d like to use Wilton Lopez to spell the 38-year-old Betan­court occa­sion­ally but have not talked about open­ing the posi­tion to a com­pe­ti­tion. While Lopez pro­vides a threat to the closer’s role Betan­court hasn’t had in recent years, it’s impor­tant to note pri­mary setup man Matt Belisle has posted sim­i­lar periph­er­als the last few years to Wilton Lopez and earned few oppor­tu­ni­ties to sur­pass Betancourt.

Florida Mar­lins:

Logan Mor­ri­son break­out finally here?

Logan Morrison’s first 1100 plate appear­ances at the big league level have shown strong sec­ondary skills, but left a lot to be desired for fan­tasy own­ers. Mor­ri­son has posted an 11% BB Rate and .192 ISO along with a tidy 6.5% swing­ing strike rate. All 3 met­rics are well above aver­age, but Mor­ri­son has posted an under­whelm­ing .250/.339/.442 line. Morrison’s .281 BABIP which has been ham­pered by unusu­ally high infield fly-ball rates (12.6%) is a big part of the rea­son Morrison’s bat­ting aver­age has been a detrac­tor for fan­tasy own­ers. In addi­tion a career 45.7% GB Rate has lim­ited some of the power break­out poten­tial we saw in 2011 (23 HR’s, .221 ISO). In addi­tion, health hasn’t par­tic­u­larly been on Morrison’s side. Morrison’s 2012 was ham­pered by a lin­ger­ing knee injury that required off­sea­son surgery. Mor­ri­son still hasn’t been cleared to run and there are con­cerns about his avail­abil­ity for open­ing day. Could we see a repeat of 2012? Clearly, Mor­ri­son will need to have the knee healthy in order to get his promis­ing young career back on track. If he’s able to get healthy he has 25 HR, 90 RBI poten­tial in the mid­dle of the Mar­lins order. This is a story we’ll con­tinue to fol­low through spring train­ing, but Morrison’s cur­rent aver­age draft posi­tion (285) sug­gests there’s almost no risk in draft­ing and stash­ing with the hopes the health returns. The last time we saw a healthy Mor­ri­son he was hit­ting .247/.330/.468 as a 23–24 year old. Mor­ri­son turns 26 this August and with strong plate dis­ci­pline and con­tact skills, a poten­tial slug­ging 1B hit­ting his prime years is an attrac­tive buy-low target.

Justin Rug­giano — late bloomer or flash-in-the-pan?

Out­side of a cou­ple cups of cof­fee with the Rays, Rug­giano finally got an extended look last year with the Mar­lins. He responded by hit­ting .313/.374/.535 in 320 PA’s, post­ing a wRC+ that ranked 14th in all of base­ball for play­ers with at least 300 plate appear­ances. The .900+ OPS was bet­ter than Ruggiano’s impres­sive career rates at the minor league level (.844 OPS in AAA, .896 OPS in AA) and cer­tainly sug­gest some regres­sion on the way. A look at his indi­ca­tors (9.1% BB%, 26.3% K%, 20.6% LD Rate, 16.7% HR/FB Rate) sug­gest Rug­giano was a big swinger who hit the ball with author­ity when­ever he did con­nect. His 414 ft aver­age dis­tance on HR’s con­firms as does Ruggiano’s 309 foot aver­age on fly balls in total.

Rug­giano did fade as the sea­son went on as evi­denced by his OPS by month (June — 1.215 OPS, July — .999 OPS, August — .833 OPS, Sep­tem­ber — .676 OPS), but still main­tained above aver­age pro­duc­tion in three of the four months he earned play­ing time. Given Rug­giano entered 2012 with a career .621 OPS on 207 PA’s, the 2nd half fade is a con­cern. Play­ers that come out of nowhere at age 29 and have mul­ti­ple sea­sons of pro­duc­tiv­ity are few and far between, but Rug­giano will cer­tainly have every chance to prove his worth again on a rebuild­ing Mar­lins team. While we know Ruggiano’s .401 BABIP and con­se­quently .300+ bat­ting aver­age will come down, his power-speed com­bi­na­tion (13 HR, 14 SB in 91 games, 4 sea­sons of 15+ HR, 20+ SB in the minors) war­rants tak­ing a shot on a cur­rent ADP out­side the Top 270. Rug­giano has a higher like­li­hood of flam­ing out with more pro­longed expo­sure at the big league level than he does of repli­cat­ing his 2012 pace, but with almost no down­side to his cur­rent price tag, he remains a late round sleeper we rec­om­mend tak­ing the chance on. If Rug­giano is the excep­tion to the late bloomer rule, his upside (as dis­played last year) is that of a Top 30 OF, for his cur­rent draft price it’s an accept­able risk to take.

Chicago Cubs:

The Last Rota­tion Spots

The Cubs over­hauled their rota­tion in the off­sea­son by bring­ing in Edwin Jack­son, Scott Baker, Scott Feld­man, and Car­los Vil­lanueva via free agency. Jack­son is locked into a rota­tion spot along­side Matt Garza and Jeff Samardz­ija but the other three free agent acqui­si­tions are in line to com­pete along­side Travis Wood for the final two rota­tion spots. On Thurs­day, the Cubs indi­cated they don’t expect Scott Baker (Tommy John Surgery) to be ready for open­ing day, nar­row­ing the com­pe­ti­tion (at least to start the sea­son) down to a three-man race for two slots. All three pitch­ers have bullpen expe­ri­ence but Vil­lanueva is the one who has been the most suc­cess­ful in a promi­nent bullpen role (3.84 xFIP as a reliever) and as a result Wood and Feld­man have the early lead on a rota­tion slot head­ing into camp. We’ll con­tinue to mon­i­tor the bat­tle through­out camp, but each pitcher has flashed appeal­ing skills at dif­fer­ent points in their career. Vil­lanueva has flashed the most strike­out poten­tial as a starter, while Feld­man has shown the best com­bi­na­tion of dura­bil­ity and ground balls, and Travis Wood has had the most suc­cess (4.22 ERA, 1.25 WHIP). My per­sonal pref­er­ence from a fan­tasy poten­tial would be: 1) Scott Baker (when healthy, back-end mixed league poten­tial), 2) Travis Wood (spot-start, mixed league poten­tial), 3) Car­los Vil­lanueva (spot-start, mixed league poten­tial); and then 4) Scott Feld­man (spot-start, deep league poten­tial), but each of these guys likely only merit deep-league and NL Only league value dur­ing the draft sea­son with Feld­man and Wood seem­ing the two most likely can­di­dates to being the sea­son in the rotation.

Mar­mol or Fujikawa the closer?

It hasn’t been a great off­sea­son for Car­los Marmol’s fan­tasy value. Mar­mol has been in decline for the last 3 years as declin­ing swing­ing strike rates have forced Mar­mol to work deeper into counts and allowed his BB Rates to steadily raise. Last year he walked 18% of the bat­ters he faced and posted a 1.54 WHIP, but an oth­er­wise inept Cubs bullpen around him allowed him to keep the closer’s role. Pitch F/X data shows Mar­mol recov­ered his loss in aver­age fast­ball veloc­ity but in doing so also threw far fewer slid­ers than he ever has in his career. Marmol’s wipe­out slider is his dom­i­nant swing and miss pitch and has hit­ters have adjusted to mak­ing him locate a fast­ball and work from behind in the count, Marmol’s BB Rates and HR/9 Rates have expanded dra­mat­i­cally. His 4.39 xFIP last year sug­gests a pitcher that is bor­der­line roster-worthy in the pen, let alone a closer.

This off­sea­son the Cubs addressed the issue by sign­ing Japan­ese stand­out reliever Kyuji Fujikawa. Fujikawa has posted FIPs below 2.00 in 6 of the last 7 years in Japan while post­ing strike­out rates rou­tinely above 12 bat­ters per nine innings. While the addi­tion pro­vides a legit­i­mate next-in-line option for the Cubs, Mar­mol didn’t do him­self many favors by get­ting involved in off-the-field domes­tic abuse case this off­sea­son in his native Domini­can Repub­lic. At this point, noth­ing that will impact Marmol’s play­ing time on the field is expected to take place as a result of the alter­ca­tion, but the neg­a­tive head­line is just another strike against Marmol’s future with the club.

In the last year of a three-year deal Mar­mol does have some early sea­son secu­rity in the closer’s role, if only because the Cubs would like to max­i­mize his value via trade. This is where draft­ing Mar­mol as a long-term hold becomes a shaky propo­si­tion. If Mar­mol suc­ceeds early in the sea­son and regains the top form that pro­cured saves in a more WHIP-friendly man­ner, the Cubs will likely pur­sue cash­ing in on his value at a posi­tion that almost all con­tend­ing teams seek help around the dead­line. If Mar­mol were to be dealt, there’s some like­li­hood he could retain value as a closer, but more likely he’d be acquired in a setup role as we’ve seen with other non-contending closers in dead­line deals of the past. If Mar­mol fal­ters early in the sea­son and shows lit­tle hope of res­ur­rect­ing his value, it’s likely the Cubs turn to the newly acquired Fujikawa whom they have a com­mit­ment to beyond the 2013 sea­son. As a result, while Mar­mol will sit atop the depth chart in the closer’s role early in the sea­son, I see lit­tle chance he’s clos­ing for any­one by the 2nd half of the sea­son. At the closer’s posi­tion we often draft role ahead of skill, but in Marmol’s case with the role unlikely solid­i­fied for the sea­son, I think plenty of non-closing can­di­dates should be con­sid­ered ahead of him. He’s a player I’m unlikely to draft this sea­son, while Fujikawa is some­thing I think is extremely likely to be clos­ing by July.

Michael Pineda (SP — NYY): The twitter-sphere was abuzz on Thurs­day as reports of Michael Pineda hav­ing lost 20 lbs and “poten­tially” being on-pace to make a June return gave fan­tasy own­ers renewed inter­est. I read the arti­cle on Pineda as I do any of the dozens of spring train­ing sto­ries you’ll hear over the next few weeks about play­ers being in the best shape of their lives and wasn’t par­tic­u­larly inspired by quotes from Pineda that he “hopes” to return by June and from Cash­man that he “could” con­tribute by June. For me, those sound like the opti­mistic side of the time­line for Pineda, not to men­tion we have lit­tle under­stand­ing of how the shoul­der injury impacts Pineda’s effec­tive­ness. Shoul­ders are always more scary than elbows because we have less effec­tive treat­ment his­to­ries and recov­ery pat­terns. While we can chalk the news up to “pos­i­tive” for Pineda I’m not sure it should impact the way you treat him on draft day. In leagues with DL slots, he’s a solid stash can­di­date. Sim­i­larly in deep leagues (AL Only, 15 team mixed) Pineda has some value stash­ing, but those in tra­di­tional mixed leagues with­out DL spots should avoid.

Ser­gio Romo (RP — SF): The player I’ve received the most off­sea­son keeper ques­tions about? Ser­gio Romo. Romo is an elite reliever (career 2.41 FIP) who finally found him­self in the closer’s role last sea­son and saw a huge jump in his fan­tasy value. The Giants have always known Romo is an elite reliev­ing option but they’ve tried to pro­tect a balky elbow that has landed Romo on the DL a num­ber of times in his career. As a result Romo has only topped 40 innings in 3 of his 5 major league sea­sons and 50 innings just twice. While Romo enters camp as the undis­puted closer, man­ager Bruce Bochy has already hinted the Giants will be cau­tious with Romo’s work­load. While I have zero doubts Romo will be effec­tive, I do won­der if his fan­tasy value is inflated a bit early on by expec­ta­tions of a 60+ inning work­load that most closers get. Early ADP data would say no, as Romo is being drafted out­side the Top 10 RPs, but the num­ber of keeper ques­tions I’ve got­ten on Romo have me curi­ous. I’d com­fort­ably draft Romo as a Top 10 RP, but I’m hold­ing my innings expec­ta­tion down around 50 with a saves expec­ta­tion in the high 30’s.

Wil­son Ramos (C — WAS): Wil­son Ramos report­edly caught his first bullpen ses­sion of the spring on Thurs­day and indi­cated after­wards that his sur­gi­cally repaired knee is at 90%. After a strong first full sea­son in 2011, I thought Ramos was pre­pared to take another step for­ward in 2012. Instead his sea­son was cut very short as he man­aged just under 100 PA’s before suf­fer­ing a season-ending knee injury. The Nation­als have indi­cated they plan to take it slow with Ramos and start him off as the backup catcher to Kurt Suzuki, but I’m still bull­ish on Ramos’ tal­ent and believe he’s being under-looked as a fan­tasy asset in Wash­ing­ton. Ramos has played just 160 games at the major league level and so far he’s posted a 5-category Roto line of .269–64-19–67-0, which would’ve been good for a back-end top 10 fin­ish if placed amongst catch­ers last sea­son. A 160-game expec­ta­tion is cer­tainly unfair to place on Ramos as a catcher in the NL, but the sam­ple helps illus­trate some of the upside. Ramos’ 2011 break­out sea­son showed above aver­age power (.177 ISO) with a strong 8.7% BB Rate and league aver­age chase rates (33%) and con­tact rates (79.8%). The skills remain there for another strong fan­tasy sea­son, espe­cially in a deeper lineup than Ramos was a part of in 2011. He’s a catcher with Top 15 poten­tial, cur­rently being drafted out­side the Top 20 at the posi­tion and some­one that own­ers in deep leagues should be will­ing to gam­ble on. As he gets healthy he’ll eas­ily sur­pass Kurt Suzuki as the starter thanks to a bet­ter bat and sim­i­lar receiv­ing skills.

Brett Ander­son (SP — OAK): Brett Ander­son has long been one of my favorite young pitch­ers in all of base­ball. In start­ing pitch­ing, we look for three pri­mary com­po­nents: 1) pitch­ers who can get strike­outs; 2) pitch­ers who can limit home-runs, usu­ally through strong GB rates; and 3) pitch­ers who can limit their walks. In Brett Anderson’s career he’s posted a 54% GB Rate (allow­ing just 0.78 HR/9), struck out 18.3% of the bat­ters he’s faced, while walk­ing a puny 5.8%. While the strike­outs rates are just league aver­age, the ground ball and con­trol rates are elite. Throw in a strong pitch­ing envi­ron­ment in Oak­land and it’s easy to see why Ander­son has posted a 3.57 ERA and 1.25 WHIP in his career. Unfor­tu­nately for Ander­son fan­tasy own­ers and enthu­si­asts like myself, he’s failed to top 115 innings in each of the last three sea­sons. Anderson’s had oblique issues last sea­son after his recov­ery from Tommy John Surgery in 2011. A year removed from Tommy John, I hop­ing Ander­son can con­tinue to build on the strong small sam­ple we got last year. While he’ll be hard-pressed to repli­cate the 1.03 WHIP or the 2.57 ERA, his 3.06 xFIP heav­ily influ­enced by a career high 59% GB Rate sug­gests a low 3’s ERA and 1.20’s WHIP could be in his future. Ander­son is still being drafted a bit on poten­tial as his ADP is hov­er­ing just out­side the Top 150 over­all. Even an Ander­son apol­o­gist like myself would admit that’s on the high end of where I’d like to take him, but I’m opti­mistic about Ander­son even if he’s being treated like a growth stock in the preseason.

Derek Hol­land (SP — TEX): Derek Hol­land was in the news on Thurs­day as sto­ries out of camp sug­gest the Rangers have asked Hol­land to politely stay out of the news a bit more this sea­son and take his craft a bit more seri­ously. Holland’s per­son­al­ity was allowed to shine through when he was post­ing a 16–5 2011 sea­son, but is being asked to tone it down after a “down” 2012 sea­son (4.67 ERA, 12–7 record). Holland’s career-path has been a bit mad­den­ing. In dif­fer­ent spurts he’s flashed all three elite skills you’d like to see. In 2010, he struck out 21.3% of the bat­ters he faced. In 2011, he posted a com­mend­able 46% GB Rate; and in 2012 he cut his BB Rate down to 7.1% of bat­ters faced. Unfor­tu­nately the com­bi­na­tion of the three skills has never sur­faced for more than a few starts and Holland’s fan­tasy own­ers have been left try­ing to solve the enigma on a start-to-start basis. Last year Hol­land actu­ally cut his WHIP by 10% (1.22 WHIP, 1.35 the pre­vi­ous year) thanks in part to a reduced BB Rate and some good for­tune, but still saw his ERA rise by nearly 20% (4.67 ERA, 3.95 ERA in ’11). The HR ball was the big prob­lem last year as Holland’s FB Rate reverted to 40+% and over 15% of them cleared the fences. It’s easy to dream on the 26-year-old Hol­land putting all the com­po­nents together in one sea­son, but past his­tory sug­gests it’s unlikely to come. The strong offen­sive envi­ron­ment in Arling­ton will prob­a­bly keep his ERA in the low-to-mid 4’s and with­out a dom­i­nat­ing K Rate, his fan­tasy value becomes heav­ily reliant on W’s. His cur­rent 22nd rd ADP doesn’t sug­gest fan­tasy own­ers are expect­ing much, but it’s hard to even see value in that ADP cur­rently. A long-time fan­tasy kryp­tonite of mine, I’m even start­ing to lose faith that Hol­land will fig­ure it all out.

Brett Lawrie (3B — TOR): one of the biggest dis­ap­point­ments of the 2012 fan­tasy base­ball sea­son, own­ers appear to be tak­ing a slightly more cau­tious approach to Lawrie early on. Most are still bet­ting on a ver­sion closer to the 2011 Lawrie than the 2012 as he’s still going inside the Top 70 over­all, but his ADP has regressed from the Top 40–50 he saw last sea­son. Lawrie’s a dif­fi­cult player to project because the two sam­ples we’ve seen are so vastly dif­fer­ent. In 2011 Lawrie was a fly-ball, power-hitting machine who was effi­cient on the base-paths and a ter­ror for oppos­ing defenses. In 2012 Lawrie posted a 50.2% GB Rate, chased 31% of pitches out­side the zone (22% in 2011), and was caught steal­ing 8 times in 21 attempts along with numer­ous other gaffes on the base-paths. Per­haps most con­cern­ing was how con­sis­tently below aver­age he was all sea­son. Lawrie posted just ONE month with an .OPS above .725, and fin­ished on a down note post­ing a .670 OPS in the 2nd half. Just 23, Lawrie should have more growth in the power depart­ment but it’s impor­tant to note, he posted just one minor league sea­son with a slug­ging % above .455. It’s easy to say Lawrie’s 2013 prospects fall some­where in between his 2011 and 2012 sea­sons but it’s hard to feel con­fi­dent about any pro­jec­tion placed on him. I’m inclined to believe a rebound in the power depart­ment is com­ing and the R/RBI pro­duc­tion will get boosted by an improved lineup around him, but the range of out­comes around Lawrie’s 2013 sea­son remain high. Our cur­rent pro­jec­tion con­sid­ers him fairly val­ued based on ADP.

Mark Teix­eira (1B — NYY): After a 3rd con­sec­u­tive year of Teixeira’s per­for­mance lev­el­ing off, fan­tasy own­ers have started to treat Tex like a for­got­ten asset. His ADP has dipped out­side the Top 60 as the declin­ing 5-category Roto pro­duc­tion is being more focused on than the skills. Teixeira’s skills aren’t free-falling like his 5-category pro­duc­tion might sug­gest. A down year in count­ing totals due to a reduced # of games played has weighed heav­ily on own­ers’ minds. Dig­ging in on Teixeira’s skills though you see more lev­el­ing than pre­cip­i­tous decline. His BB Rates and K Rates have mod­estly declined along­side one another as he’s putting the ball in play ear­lier in counts than he has in the past, while his ISO has stayed between the new nor­mal (for him) of .220-.240. The 1st gap down for Tex actu­ally came back in 2010 but an elite Yan­kees lineup around him inflated R/RBI totals and fan­tasy own­ers largely missed it. As the Yan­kees lineup around him has thinned, Tex’s R/RBI totals have started to nor­mal­ize and he now appears to be a .250–85-30–95 type hit­ter. The bat­ting aver­age won’t rebound as Teixeira’s stopped using the whole field, but the power should rebound after an abnor­mally high GB Rate last year (41%, career 38.3%). Look for that to set­tle back in around 35–38% where it’s typ­i­cally been with the Yan­kees which will allow Tex to chal­lenge 30–35 HR’s once again along with 95–100 RBI’s.

Ricky Romero (SP — TOR): Ricky Romero was quoted on Thurs­day as say­ing his elbow feels “100 times bet­ter” than last year. Romero’s per­for­mance last year fell off more than any other starter in base­ball. He con­tin­ued to get GB’s (53.5%) at a strong clip, but his swing­ing strike rate dropped from 9.6% to 8.3% and his K% (15%) and BB% (12.7%) were both way worse than the league aver­age. Romero didn’t undergo any surgery on the elbow, so ques­tions remain over how healthy he’ll be head­ing into this year. Given how bad he was last year, I’m inclined to take a wait-and-see approach with Romero. We’re cur­rently pro­ject­ing a rebound, but I per­son­ally need to see much-improved com­mand from Romero in the spring before I invest a draft pick in him. Indi­ca­tors sug­gest there’s plenty of room for a rebound, but with no off­sea­son pro­ce­dures done on the balky elbow, I’m a bit skep­ti­cal rest will sim­ply bring back the 2011 ver­sion of Ricky Romero.

Reid Brignac (MI — COL): The Rock­ies acquired Reid Brignac on Thurs­day from the Rays. The Rays needed to clear space on their 40-man ros­ter and the Rock­ies wanted to pur­sue some more infield depth behind Troy Tulow­itzki and Josh Rut­ledge. The trans­ac­tion pro­vides lit­tle value on the Col­orado side other than giv­ing them some insur­ance in the MI, but would seem to lock in Ben Zobrist as the backup SS option should some­thing hap­pen to Yunel Esco­bar, poten­tially allow­ing Zobrist to retain the SS eli­gi­bil­ity he earned in 2012.

Much like 2B it gets real thin real early.….….

http://mlb.mlb.com/mlb/prospects/watch/y2013/

Boy it gets late awful early with this  group (translation…very VERY thin position)

A few sur­prises here.….but over­all its pretty much what you would think a list like this would look like

As with any long term rank­ings lists ( espe­cially catch­ers )there is a huge degree of opin­ion , sub­jec­tive thought and down right dart throw­ing. What we can tell is the below list tends to error on side of long term poten­tial rather than a vet­eran who is just so-so and will always be just average.