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.\

There’s a lot to like about Ervin Santana’s 2014 season. The strikeout rate was the highest it’s been since 2008. The fly ball rate was the same as the previous year. He was able to limit the number of home runs he allowed. He had the lowest FIP since 2008. The swinging strike rate was the highest of career.

There were some trends that were not positive. The walk rate increased nearly two percentage points, which makes sense considering the swinging strike rate was the highest of his career (i.e. he tried to get batters to chase pitches out of the zone). The batting average allowed was the highest it’s been since 2009 (and do not forget that including at-bats from pitchers). Against non-pitchers he had a slash line against of 269/.327/.411, which is far worse than his 2013 numbers.

In regards to his batting average spike, that was mostly fueled by left handed hitters. The table below compares his 2014 season against the 2008-13 seasons against lefties. The first thing you’ll notice is even though the batting average was really high he wasn’t allowing a lot of hard contact; instead he gave up singles that probably found holes.

There move from the Braves ballpark to the Twins’ shouldn’t have any negligible impact on his performance. Since he can be fly ball prone at times he does get hurt by the Twins outfield. Aaron Hicks is a really good defender, but Torii Hunter and Oswaldo Arcia are both below average defenders. In regards to the infield defense, he greatly benefited from playing with really good defenses the previous two seasons. The current starting Twins infield is all below average defenders so I expect some regression to occur.

For the past two seasons he has morphed from a fly ball heavy pitcher to more of a ground ball pitcher. In 2013 his walk rate was the lowest it’s been since 2008. This would indicate he threw more strikes, but that wasn’t the case. His strike zone percentage was the same in 2012 as 2013. That indicates his command and approach didn’t really change. I bring this up because in 2014 the walk rate rose to the levels of the previous four seasons before 2013. Therefore, I expect his walk rate to be in the 7.5-8.5% next year and the WHIP to be in the1.23-1.33 range.

My 2015 projection for Santana is 195 IP, 3.72 ERA, 1.25 WHIP, 162 Ks and 12 wins.