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.

Sometimes players just get better. That’s all I can say about Jose Altuve’s ability to steal bases and everything in general. In the minor leagues he his stolen base success rate was 71.8%. In his first three years in the Majors 73.5%. Last year he stole 56 stolen bases and had a success rate of 86.2%.

The reason why his stolen base output increased so much because he was on-base a lot (duh), but his stolen base rate has been relatively the same in the Majors. The table below shows how often he attempted to steal a base (SB%).

The stolen base rate has increased year-over-year, but not that dramatically. Therefore, in order to maintain the stolen bases level as last year he’s going to have to have the same OBP.

The reason why his OBP was so high last year was he batted .341 (with a .360 BABIP). On the surface the BABIP seems high, but he’s a high BABIP player. In his first three Major League seasons he has a .317 BABIP. Obviously he outperformed his career BABIP by 43 points, which indicates he should regress back to that level. However, it’s possible the regression may not be that much.

His ground ball rate has decreased year-over-year the past three years while the line drive rate has increased, which means he’s making harder contact.

So to recap he’s striking out less and generating more hard contact. Even though he is making more hard contact doesn’t mean he’s going to start hitting 15-plus home runs. He doesn’t have massive home run power, but instead it’s only doubles power (which isn’t a bad thing from a real life perspective!).

From a scouting perspective he added a leg kick (similar to Josh Donaldson and Jose Bautista) before the 2014 season. Below is an excerpt from Ryan Parker’s article at Baseball Prospectus. His article goes into greater detail about Altuve’s new swing.

“Last year, Altuve put himself in a very bad position to hit anything on the outer third, especially if it had break. His lower body had nothing left to drive and his only hope was to spin and rely on his insane hand-eye coordination. The 2014 Altuve puts the earlier version to shame. His new leg lift erases the problems from his prior stride.”

Altuve may not hit .341 again, but .320 is very attainable. Even if he only hits .320 the stolen base output wouldn’t decrease that much. Using last years stolen base rate if he hit .320 he would have had 61 stolen base attempts instead of the 65 last year.

Some fantasy owners may discount Altuve’s 2014 season, but I’m not. He’s hitting the ball harder and his new swing allows him to drive the ball and to hit balls anywhere in the strike zone. He’ll probably be overrated in drafts because of last seasons performance, but last year was not a fluke.

I projected Altuve to hit .320 (in 650 ABs) with 49 stolen bases, 7 home runs, 69 RBI and 85 runs.