If you like what you’re reading then you will like my 2015 Fantasy Baseball Guide! Last year’s fantasy guide was more than 150,000 words and had 440 player profiles (of hitters and pitchers). My approach to player evaluation is to ask questions about what the player has done in the past and what he may do in the future. I certainly provide a narrative on how I feel a player will perform, but I also ask a lot of open ended questions that I hope will get you thinking about the information I’ve provided.
After getting a chance to see Jeff Samardzija pitch every fifth day with the A’s there’s no doubt he’s a really good pitcher with just as good stuff; the fastball sits 94-95 and a splitter and slider that true bat missers against lefties and righties. My question about his game is why does he give up so many home runs? And the home runs he’s giving up are to are to fringe Major Leaguers and minor leaguers; players like that shouldn’t be squaring him up, but they do.
Below are the hitters who hit home runs against Samardzija as a member of the Oakland A’s:
- Jake Smolinski
- Robinson Chirinos
- Jon Singleton
- Chris Carter (3)
- Eric Campbell
- Lucas Duda
- Evan Longoria
- Marwin Gonzalez
- Jonathan Schoop
- Manny Machado
- Logan Morrison
What’s odd about his high HR/FB rate is he fits a profile that shouldn’t allow home runs as he generates a lot of ground balls, doesn’t walk a lot of batters and racks up a lot of strikeouts. However, he still allows 11-12% of his fly balls to turn into home runs.
After watching him I think it’s due to inconsistent command. I think that’s going to always be part of his game (at least I don’t see it changing in 2015) and it’s going to hinder his ability to be a dominant fantasy pitcher. Now that he’s moving to U.S. Cellular Field I don’t see the home run issues suddenly going away. In fact it’s more likely to get worse.
He’s trending positively in terms of the ground ball and walk rates, which is encouraging. Even though, the strikeout has decreased year over year, it hasn’t decreased that much and since there were other improvements in the two aforementioned rates I don’t see the drop in strikeout rate as a concern.
Like I mentioned with Chris Sale, I still have huge concerns about the White Sox bullpen. The signing of David Robertson solidifies the closer position, but who are the relievers who are going to shut down the seventh and eighth innings? Therefore, I can only project 11-13 wins.
I’m projecting 210 IP with a 3.40 ERA, 1.18 WHIP, 13 Wins and 200 Ks.
