Category Archives: What To Do About…

Pressing The Panic Button: Jesus Montero

by Ben Carsley

When I was a younger man, newly enthused by the idea of scouting and analyzing prospects, I loved few things more than player comparisons.

It’s a trap that many of us – even the most seasoned pundits – fall into on occasion, and you read about them all the time. Byron Buxton is the next Andrew McCutchen. Jose Iglesias is the new Rey Ordonez. Any catcher who can’t really catch but can hit is Mike Napoli. Anyone with plus-plus control is Greg Maddux.

I think comparisons deserve a bit more leniency when it comes to Fantasy prospect talk, since what we’re really talking about is just an end stat line. So maybe Miguel Sano is nothing like Giancarlo Stanton, but if the numbers look the same at season’s end, the comp is a good one. Robbie Erlin isn’t going to be as good as Mark Buehrle, but if his stats play up in Petco and the numbers match up, you’re justified in invoking the name.

But there is one link between player and prospect I made several years ago that I had hoped would stay hidden in dark corners of the Internet forever. One so glaringly foolish that I am cringing a bit as I write this now. Yet the only way to improve oneself is through self-reflection and honesty, and so I shall share my secret with the TDG family now.

I compared Jesus Montero to Frank Thomas. Continue reading →

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What To Do With Aramis Ramirez

by The Dynasty Guru

As dynasty leaguers, we usually spend a disproportionate amount of our time focusing on young players and what they could be. After all, that’s a huge part of how you have to build a successful roster. What we, collectively, do not spend enough time focusing on are the post-prime (32 or older) crowd that can help us win titles right now. Today I’m going to focus on one player who doesn’t quite seem to get his due in long-term leagues and could probably be had for below market value in your league.

If it seems like Aramis Ramirez has been around forever, it’s because he pretty much has. He debuted for the Pirates back in 1998 as a teenager, and has bounced his way around the NL Central with the Cubs and now the Brewers. Now 34 years old, Ramirez just finished up the first year of a 3 year, $36m contract – which was commonly seen at the time to be a bit of an overpay on behalf of Milwaukee. The funny thing is that he was so good in 2012, that according to FanGraphs, he was worth $29.1m alone in 2012. Of course, this takes into account some fluky UZR performance, but you get the point – he was very good this past season.

When most people think about Aramis Ramirez, three separate things come to mind: consistency, early season struggles and injuries. We’re going to tackle them now.

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What To Do About Aroldis Chapman

by The Dynasty Guru

Those of you who drafted Chapman for this season, took him hoping that he would make the rotation out of spring training. He certainly looked the part – with a 2.12 ERA, 18 K and 2 BB in 17 innings. Yes, they are spring stats, but with Chapman, it was all that we had (other than a handful of starts at Triple-A back in 2010) – and the scouting reports were positive.

We all know what happened from there. Chapman ended up getting bumped from the rotation in favor of Mike Leake and ended up turning in one of the greatest seasons a relief pitcher has put together in the last decade or two. He threw 71 2/3 innings with a 1.51 ERA, 0.81 WHIP and a 122-23 K/BB rate. Not only was he completely dominant, but he took over the closer’s role from Sean Marshall in May and racked up 38 saves in essentially four months on the job. If Chapman was going into 2013 as the Reds’ closer again, he’d be the #1b at the position to Craig Kimbrel’s #1a (who’s making history in his own right).

However, things appear about to finally change for the flame-throwing left-hander. The Reds signed Jonathan Broxton to a 3-year deal earlier this week, and not only gave him closer money, but also spoke publicly about wanting to move Chapman into the rotation for 2013. And therein lies the dilemma for keeper/dynasty league owners. In this off-season of both role and performance uncertainty, how do you value Aroldis Chapman?

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What To Do About Matt Harrison

by The Dynasty Guru

Matt Harrison was one of my guys coming into the season. He was being valued well outside the top-75 starting pitchers in the pre-season (his ADP among SP in the pre-season hovered around 90). Of course, this seemed a little crazy to me because he was a well thought of prospect (#3 in the Braves system behind Jarrod Saltalamacchia and Elvis Andrus going into 2007 and #90 overall prospect per BA; #79 overall prospect per BP) coming off a season in which he was a top-50 fantasy pitcher while only throwing 185 innings. Not to mention, he was an important piece of the Mark Teixeira trade between the Rangers and Braves (it’s still crazy how great that haul was for Texas).

I wrote a post in October back at Roto Hardball (which I cannot link to, as the site is now defunct) comparing Harrison to fellow rotation-mate Derek Holland. Here’s an excerpt: “When you hear Harrison and Holland compared, there’s the underlying narrative that Holland is much younger, has higher upside and better stuff.  In reality, they are much closer than you think in all three areas.” My conclusion was that I’d rather have Harrison for the 2012 season and going forward in long-term leagues — which has appeared to be a good call so far, as Harrison is the #27 fantasy SP this year, compared to Derek Holland at #55.

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What To Do About Edwin Encarnacion

by The Dynasty Guru

Hold him tight and don’t let him go. How’s that for hard hitting analysis?

Many of you who drafted Encarnacion with a late round pick in 2012 are being treated to playoff trips, and possibly even championships. After all, one player can only make so much of a difference, but when a player taken outside the top-200 becomes a top-10 overall player (#7 to be exact), you feel that in the standings. As I’m typing this, Encarnacion is one HR and one RBI short of a 40-100 season, and that doesn’t even take into account his .279 average and 13 SB. He’s been a stud at a position that started off shallow and thinned out even more due to injuries. So give yourself a big pat on the back for having the extraordinary foresight to draft him and let’s move on to what happens next.

The first big ticket item, which will affect Encarnacion’s value in 2013 and beyond, is his eligibility. The 3B eligibility was great while it lasted, but it’s over now, as he only logged 1 appearance at the position in 2012. That means he’s relegated to 1B/Util duties going forward. Now, if you are in an auction format or a keeper format where you lose the equivalent draft pick, this doesn’t really matter to you – he was drafted so low in March that he’s a no-brainer to keep even with the loss of eligibility (for example, I have him at $8 in a 16-tm keeper league). But in a straight keeper or dynasty format, this matters. And this isn’t a blip on the positional radar, he’s not getting this eligibility back.

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What To Do About Colby Rasmus

by The Dynasty Guru

There have been few players in the past decade or so that have seen the dramatic landscape shifts to their value as Colby Rasmus has. He’s been a bust, a sleeper, a breakout player, a post-hype sleeper, a bad clubhouse guy, a change of scenery guy, a bust again, a breakout player again and (right now) a man who apparently makes very bad decisions. And for a player who has had just one season of above league average production (he had a 129 wRC+ in 2010), Rasmus still generates a very high word count from fantasy prognosticators. Now that he’s 26 years old, most of these words have changed from the “what this guy could be” variety to “what in the world is this guy?”

So, what in the world is this guy? At this point, he’s a career .245/.315/.428 hitter with 74 HR, 24 SB and a 0.39 BB/K rate in 547 games – but that doesn’t begin to tell the story. Rasmus is now at the point in his career that many former top prospects have found themselves – neither here, nor there. Lest we forget how good of a prospect Rasmus was, here’s what Kevin Goldstein said about him in February of 2008:

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What To Do About Lance Lynn

by The Dynasty Guru

It’s a story as old as time. A young pitcher, for whom expectations are relatively low, is given a rotation spot to start the season and he runs with it. He pitches well through the first month or two of the season, but you hold him because no one is offering you close to the value you think he’ll return over the rest of the season. He starts to struggle a bit and you worry the league is catching up to him. You think about dealing him for less than you still think he’s worth because he’s “your guy”. You hang on to him and he gets a second wind. The trade offers get a little better, but still not enough. Then he hits a wall and you’re left wondering how to value him going forward.

We could be talking about Chris Sale, Jeff Samardzija or a handful of others here — but for today, it’s Lance Lynn of the St Louis Cardinals. The main problem about establishing the proper value for any of these types of players is that on some level, we already thought we knew who they were. Lance Lynn was a very helpful bullpen piece for the 2011 Cardinals in his 34 2/3 IP — so much so that they brought him back after he was recovered from his oblique strain to pitch meaningful innings in the NLCS and the World Series. We knew he was going to get a chance to start while Chris Carpenter was on the shelf (at the time that was only supposed to be a month or two) and then he would shift back to the bullpen and be a set-up guy. We also now know that it didn’t play out like that.

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What To Do About Ike Davis

by The Dynasty Guru

I promise this series will not all be about first basemen who are not living up to the potential we’ve graced them with, but this particular player was suggested by a reader and there’s certainly enough here to make for an interesting piece.

Still only 25 years old, Ike Davis was considered by many to be an overdraft when he was taken 18th overall in the 2008 draft out of Arizona State, and he did nothing his first professional season to quiet those doubters – hitting exactly zero HR in his first 239 plate appearances. Power was supposed to be a big part of his game, so even his supporters were a bit surprised. However, in 2009, Davis hit nearly .300 and powered out 20 HR across two levels (High-A and Double-A). After a very brief stint in Triple-A to start 2010, Davis was called up on April 19th and did not look back, hitting .264 with 19 HR in his rookie season. His 2011 season looked like it was going to be a breakout for him, but after just 36 games of hitting .302/.383/.543, an ankle injury sidelined him and eventually ended his season. This led to him being a trendy sleeper for 2012, but this season has been more negatives than positives thus far.

In spring training, Davis was diagnosed with Valley Fever – otherwise known as “that thing that made Conor Jackson terrible at baseball”. While the Mets downplayed the seriousness of it (medically, it can be either not a big deal or a really big deal), the more Davis slumped in April, the more questions came up about it. To be fair, the Mets and Davis never changed their stance on this – and did not blame the slump on the Valley Fever. But we just don’t know. At the end of May, Davis was hitting .170 with 5 HR, 21 RBI and 49 K’s in 171 PA and hearing calls for him to be demoted to Triple-A.

But since June 1, Davis is hitting .254/.326/.525 with 17 HR, 47 RBI and 63 K’s in 273 PA – and those calls have clearly quieted down. The most interesting thing about Davis’ season is that essentially been a 7-10 split on his PECOTA projections coming into the season. And, yea I just dropped a bowling metaphor. Right now, his .221 batting average is less than his 10% weighted mean projection of .224, while his projected HR total of 27 is higher than his 90% weighted mean projection of 26. So while that’s interesting and all, the important question going forward is what does this mean we should expect out of him next year.

To answer that question, let’s dig a little deeper into his numbers. First of all, a .247 BABIP in 2012 jumps out at you – especially compared to his .321 and .344 numbers from 2010 and 2011. Now I’m not the type to look at this and scream that it’s all luck and regression is coming, though I do think that’s a part of it. Interestingly, Davis has a career high line drive rate of 21.9% (above the MLB average of 20.9%), but he’s only hitting .578 on those line drives and that’s over 100 points lower than league average. All in all, I don’t believe he’s a .330 BABIP player like his career average coming into the season was, but he should settle somewhere between .280 and .300. On the other end of the spectrum, he also is unlikely to carry a HR/FB rate of over 21% going forward. The fences being moved in at Citi Field have probably helped a little, but he’s also averaged over 400 feet on his 2012 HRs and only three of them would have been HRs in fewer than 20 MLB ballparks. So his power is legit, but probably not quite this legit (which would be nearly 40 bombs over 600 PA). The other thing to watch with Davis, are his lefty/righty splits, as in his career, he’s got an 835 v RHP and a 647 OPS v LHP. If you’re in a daily league and can sit him against above replacement-level LHP while he still struggles in this arena, you can extract even more value from him.

If Davis continues to demonstrate he is the player he’s been outside of April/May 2012, he could be a nice sleeper for 2013 and trade target in dynasty leagues. So, while he’s unlikely to be a star (and will probably never be a top-5 fantasy 1B), there’s nothing wrong with a player who should be able to hit .260-.270 with 25-30 HR as soon as 2013 and even has a little upside left in the tank as he enters his prime. This season he’s been the 30th ranked 1B on the ESPN Player Rater, but right now Corey Hart is 11th while hitting .270 with 23 HR and good counting stats (73 R/66 RBI). Ike can do this (albeit with more RBI than R), and if he’s being valued outside the top-15 1B next year, he could provide a nice return on your investment.

What To Do About Eric Hosmer

by The Dynasty Guru

Yes, this post has real content — not just me talking about future real content. Win! Anyway…

In April and May, most prognosticators said it was just a slump and he was getting really unlucky. In June he started to turn it around, hitting .270 with 3 HR and 5 SB – and owners thought they would start to get rewarded for their patience. But in July, something changed. On the surface, it seems like Eric Hosmer regressed into April/May territory, but his strike out rate spiked to career high rates. Since he was promoted to the majors last May, here are his K% by month:

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He’s certainly making adjustments to try and perform at the level he’s capable of, but those adjustments are not working. The Pitch F/X hitter profiles at Baseball Prospectus really allow you to see some great next level detail about the differences between 2011 and 2012 from a pitch location perspective. For example, in 2012, Hosmer has a 58% ground ball rate on pitches in the upper part of the strike zone. That rate is double was it was in 2011 – 29%. Also, he’s hit .414 on 41 balls put in play which were off the inside and off the plate in 2011. This year, it’s .238 on 21 balls put in play. These may not be the most meaningful sample sizes, but they start to paint a little more of a picture.

This information is all fine and good, but what does it mean for Hosmer’s future value? If you’ve had Hosmer on your roster in a keeper/dynasty format and you’re in contention, there’s a decent chance you’ve probably dealt him for a nice package of 2012 help. And if you’re a non-contending team, you’ve probably been trying to get Hosmer from the team that has him for a while (hopefully successfully).

I still believe that Hosmer will be a top-10 1B next year, so if you’re going to deal him, make sure you get enough value in return. This season certainly continues to be a step in the wrong direction, but when you’re talking about the top hitting prospects in the game (of which Hosmer was one last season), I operate under the assumption that they will be able to make the necessary adjustments to succeed on the highest level. Just look at what Jason Heyward is doing this year after having a flop of a sophomore season. When dealing with elite talent, trust the talent over the stats because more often than not, the stats will come.

Personally, I have him in both a keeper league and a dynasty league where I’m in contention. In the dynasty league, I’m not dealing him for anything less than a Godfather offer – and I’d recommend that all his dynasty league owners do the same. He’s only 22 years old and has an extremely bright career ahead of him. However, if you’re in contention and someone offers you Albert Pujols, Jordan Zimmermann and Rafael Soriano for him — that might be the time to think about pulling the trigger.

In a keeper format, it’s trickier – especially one with price appreciation. I have him at $3 in a 16-tm mixed $260 budget league, and he remains $3 for 2013 before bumping up $5 each year after that – which means in his age-27 season (2017), he’ll still cost only $23. And in a league where Albert Pujols went for $65 at this year’s draft, that’s a significant value if he is who I think he is. Right now I’m in first place and need offense. Unfortunately, I’m also nearing our $330 in season salary cap. This means, that while I could pick up a stud for him in a vacuum, I’d need to clear active value in order to get under the cap. And dealing him for a $22 Freddie Freeman isn’t enough to get me to give up that future value. With no cap, I would probably have dealt him a few weeks ago – but instead I’m reinforcing around him. Which way you should go depends on the particulars of your league; however, don’t be afraid to deal him in order to put your team over the top. Just make sure you’re actually putting yourself over the top.

I plan on doing a number of posts similar to this, so if you have any suggestions of guys you’d like me to cover over the course of the rest of the season, either let me know on Twitter at @dynastyguru or e-mail me at dynastyguru@gmail.com.