Investing & Maybe Fantasy Baseball

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 a hot start to the season Brandon Belt was sidelined for eight weeks to a broken thumb after getting hit by a pitch. Then in July he was hit in the face by a baseball during batting practice. After the incident he dealt with post-concussion symptoms and subsequently missed 46 games.

Since his 2014 numbers and career numbers were underwhelming he may be a forgotten player for many fantasy owners, but do not be one of those owners. In 2013 his batting average, slugging and isolated power all ticked way up from the previous year. Before 2014 drafts some fantasy analysts were saying Belt was poised for a breakout. For the first 35 games he was poised to do just that as he hit nine home runs with a .264/.317/.504 slash line. After breaking his thumb it was a lost season for him.

In last year’s guide I said Belt has been very underrated because his home ballpark suppressed his numbers. The table below shows his career home-road spits.

For some reason he has a .356 BABIP at home in 760 plate appearances. Also, in the last three seasons his home BABIP has been below .347, which suggests he should have a higher than normal BABIP at home. It’s odd his BABIP would be so much higher at home because the ballpark is an extreme pitchers park and suppresses power for left handed hitters. The only explanation for this is he’s able to have a high BABIP is due to the fact he makes a lot of hard contact. That may sound counterintuitive considering his low home run totals, but his career 13.8% HR/FB rate tells me everything I need to know about the rate of hard contact.

What’s the most interesting about Belt’s 2014 season was he became more aggressive at the plate. Swinging at more pitches, but making less contact. It’s possible those numbers were due to after coming off the first DL stint, but before breaking his thumb he was striking out 27% of the time. That indicates his approach at the plate changed from the very start of the season.

Overall, I believe Belt is post-hype sleeper candidate. He’s not going to provide flashy numbers, but I can certainly see 20-25 home runs with a .260-plus batting average. He’s going to hit in the middle of the Giants lineup (either third or fifth) so he’s going to have a lot of opportunities to score and drive in runs.

My 2015 projection for Belt is 510 ABs, .265 AVG, 21 HRs, 85 RBI, 70 runs and 6 SBs.

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.

Before I started doing any research on Anibal Sanchez the first thing I thought of was he’s always hurt. If you look at his injury history you’ll see the primary cause of his injuries have been due to his right shoulder, which is something you never want to see with a pitcher. Last year he went on the DL twice; once for a blister on his throwing hand and a pectoral strain. Despite the long injury history he has made at least 29 starts in each year from 2010-13.

A big reason why the strikeout rate dropped (from 27.1% to 19.8%) so much last year was due to due to the slider. The table below shows the performance of slider since 2010.

What’s funny is even though the strikeout rate dropped significantly hitters were not making more or harder contact against the pitch. What the data is indicating is he became a pitch to contact pitcher when he threw the slider. This could be more beneficial from a real standpoint, but if he’s not going to miss bats his fantasy viability decreases substantially. The big question is will he revert back to his old slider usage or not. It’s possible the blister he sustained early in the season caused the different usage of the slider, but he sustained that injury in late April. Lastly, his slider usage has not changed in the last five years.

It’s important to remember when he’s healthy he can be one of the most dominating pitchers in baseball. His lengthy injury history concerns me enough that I cannot project more than 170 innings next year. If he’s healthy, and that’s a big if, I believe the strikeout can be in the 20-24% range next year.

My 2015 projection for Sanchez is 160 IP, 3.40 ERA, 1.14 WHIP, 140 Ks and 10 wins.

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 the first four months of the season Sonny Gray looked like legitimate top 20 starting pitcher, but in the last two months he faded down the stretch (table below). In fall fairness the August-September data was skewed by a very bad August.

What surprised me about Gray last season was the high walk rate (8.3%). I thought he had impeccable command of the fastball, but that wasn’t the case. In fact, among starting pitchers with at least 25 starts, his walk rate ranks in the bottom 25% of pitchers.

Another trend that caught my eye was he was a much better pitcher on the road than at home (table below), which is counterintuitive because of how much of a pitcher’s park he plays in.

So to recap, Gray has a very confusing profile thus far. He pitched better on the road and was very effective despite walking a lot of batters.

Last year I wasn’t high on Gray entering the 2014 season because I thought the lack of a third pitch would make it easier for opposing batters to figure him out the more times they saw him. For the year he was primarily a two-pitch pitcher but during the last three months he started to incorporate the slider and changeup (image from BrooksBaseball.net).

The next obvious question is how the changeup and slider performed when he started throwing them more the last three months of the season. The table below shows precisely that.

I don’t know what to make of Sonny Gray’s season. He walks a lot of batters, but he misses a lot of bats and generates a lot of ground balls. Since he walks so many batters he’s probably going to regress in 2015.

My 2015 projection for Gray is 210 IP, 3.40 ERA. 1.21 WHIP, 175 Ks and 13 wins.