Investing & Maybe Fantasy Baseball

Yesterday afternoon I saw on twitter that the A’s signed Nick Punto to a one-year, $3 million contract which could become a two-year contract if he’s active on the roster. My initial reaction to the story was, “this is a horrible deal. I have no idea what they’re (A’s management) doing. They should be focusing on xyz … .” I’m glad I waited 24 hours before actually writing anything.

This is a solid signing. First of all, Punto is a plus defender who provided 1.5 dWAR (according to Baseball Reference) and will be the super utility player who plays all over the infield except for first base. Second, he’s a pretty good hitter against left handed pitching. The table below shows his stats for the past six seasons. That tells me he could be platooned with Eric Sogard or Alberto Callaspo at second base. Third, by all accounts he is really good teammate, which continues my theory the A’s are actively trying to create a lot of positive chemistry in the club house.

With the going rate of $5 million dollars per one WAR, the Punto signing could be a tremendous value since he had a WAR of 2.2 last year, 0.8 in 2012, 1.5 in 2011 and 1.7 in 2012 (according to Baseball Reference). Punto isn’t the type of player that will put the A’s over the top, but he will be one of those unsung heroes whose value will seldomly show up in the box score. Also, if for some reason the team tanks Punto will have value from other contending teams so the A’s could fetch a grade C prospect.

It’s been awhile since I posted here, but I assure it is not for a lack of #want. Instead I’ve writing for TTFB and Baseball Professor. I wrote about Eric Hosmer at TTFB and Chris Davis at Baseball Professor. If you want to stay current on what I’m writing your best bet is check out those sites. In the next few days you’ll see I profiled Ian Kinsler and Jason Kipnis. Below is the player capsule for Matt Carpenter. The “RK” refers to the positional rank and are subject to change. The “Player Rater” numbers are positional player rater values taken from ESPN and NFBC.

Bats: L | Age: 27 | Team: Cardinals | Position: 2B, 3B | RK: 3 | Player Rater: ESPN (3), NFBC (4)

A show of hands of who saw Carpenter putting up the season he did in 2013? I literally had no idea he had this in him. In last year’s guide I had him as a fringe top 15 second base candidate who could score some runs, provide a little pop, but ultimately would regress because the BABIP was not repeatable. Not only did he repeat the BABIP, it actually increased. As of now, Carpenter is my second ranked second baseman because he provides two elite category statistics: runs and batting average. One could argue there’s no way the Cardinals are going to hit .330 again with men in scoring position so Carpenter’s major league leading run total will decrease. That’s true, but the Cardinals should replace Pete Kozma at shortstop and they’re replacing Carlos Beltran with Matt Adams and David Freese with Kolten Wong so the offense should be at the very least the same as last year. On the surface Carpenter’s RBI total seems really high a leadoff hitter in the National League. Among second basemen he only ranked 18^th in plate appearances with runners in scoring position, so it’s likely his .413 batting average will regress and therefore his RBI totals should regress. The bat is for real; he can hit righties and lefties and most importantly, reduced his strikeout nearly five percentage points while maintaining his walk rate.

With the World Series coming to a conclusion, every baseball must now endure the winter with no baseball. The best way for me to brave through these five months is thinking about the game and specifically, evaluating a player’s fantasy baseball value. Last year I wrote my first fantasy and although I’m very proud of the work, there were still silly errors, grammar mistakes and frankly, bad analysis in certain spots. This year I’ve begun the construction of the 2014 guide two months earlier and will be ready to go by the end of February.

Without further adieu below is my first player capsule for Buster Posey. The “RK” refers to the positional rank and are subject to change. The “Player Rater” numbers are positional player rater values taken from ESPN and NFBC.

Bats: R | Age: 27 | Team: Giants | Position: C | RK: 1 | Player Rater: ESPN (7), NFBC (5)

Last year I said it was crazy for Posey to have an ADP of 18.25 (in NFBC) and 17.3 (in ESPN) because he clearly was not going to hit .385/.456/.649 for an extended period of time again and not provide the same value as 2012. Turns out, I was right. Hooray! That said, I still had him rated as the best catcher, which turned out to be wrong. Looking at the baseball cards stats it’s easy to see why he finished so low. His power numbers and batting average decreased to career lows (for a season with at least 100 games played). Before 2013, his career HR/FB rate was 15.5 percent, last year it was 9.7 percent. The amount of ground and fly balls that were hit were essentially the same over his career, which leads me to believe his HR/FB rate should increase towards the 13-14 percent range. Prior to 2013 his career BABIP was .339, but last year it was only .312; obviously it appears he got a little unlucky with balls in play and the manifestation of that is shown through the well hit average (WHAV). In 2010 and 2012 his WHAV was .301 and .288 respectively. However, last year it was only .247. I expect a rebound season where he’ll finish the year with a .310 batting average with 20 home runs.