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.
When trying to evaluate James Shields I don’t know how to evaluate him. For his entire career he’s played in pitcher’s parks and behind really good defenses. Those two things are big pluses for him because he throws a lot of strikes and his strikeout rate has decreased year-over-year for the past two seasons.
Shields’ greatest fantasy asset is stability and I expect that to continue after signing with the Padres. The past two years he had ERAs well below his FIP and xFIP, which was aided greatly by how good the Royals’ defense was. Royals ballpark is a really good pitcher’s park, but he performed much better on the road than at home (table below).
| Splits | ERA | WHIP | BABIP | K% | BB% | HR/FB | LOB% |
| Home | 3.95 | 1.30 | .323 | 18.8% | 5.7% | 8.5% | 72.8% |
| Away | 2.52 | 1.13 | .276 | 21.0% | 6.2% | 9.6% | 81.5% |
Even though he’s going to a great ballpark I have big questions about the Padres defense. Much has been talked about the outfield defense and I’ll admit that it’s going to be bad. However, no one is talking about how bad the infield defense is. Alexi Amarista is maybe an average defender; Jedd Gyorko is below average; I love Derek Norris but at best he’s an average defender; Will Middlebrooks would be the only above average defender, but it looks like Yangervis Solarte will be the everyday third baseman and he’s below average too. Essentially he’s going to be pitching behind a defense full of below average defenders, which means any gains he got from moving to the NL and to Petco have been negated by the Padres defense.
The year over year strikeout rate decline the past two seasons is not a positive, but even at a low strikeout rate he was still able to have 180 strikeouts. Moving to the NL adds additional 10-20 strikeouts, which means he could still strikeout 200 hitters. The biggest question is how many wins will he have by the end of the year? After all the moves the Padres are going to be better, but I still see them as 80-85 win team, which means I don’t know if Shields will have more than 12-13 wins next year.
My 2015 projection for Shields is 210 IP, 195 Ks, 13 wins, 3.45 ERA and 1.18 WHIP.
