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.

From 2011-12 Evan Longoria missed substantial amount of time with tissue injuries (oblique strain and hamstring strain), but in the past two seasons he’s played 322 games and appears has found a way to stay healthy. Even though he played every game last year he didn’t really do a whole lot especially in regards to the power.

The image below shows his fly ball batting average and ISO since 2008.

Obviously ISO is dependent upon batting average so if the batting average is low so will the ISO. That said, the trend does not look good. When a players power drops off the next thing I look at is the extra base hit percentage. The table below shows his extra base hit percentage and like the previous image the trend does not look good.

Not only did the home run power drop off significantly, so did the doubles and triples. The reason why he didn’t hit a lot of extra base hits was due to the poor performance on fly balls (table below).

It looks like he had some bad luck and there should be some positive regression in the batting average and extra base hits, but last year his ground ball rate was the highest its been since 2009. He’s going to play all of 2105 at the age of 29 so there is hope the power positively regresses, but the trend doesn’t look good. Either way, I don’t believe he hits more than 29 home runs next year.

In regards to his batting average, it should positively regress, but not as much as you think. If he’s making less hard contact it’s going to be more difficult for the .285 BABIP to positively regress significantly (because batting average is dependent on either making hard contact, being fast or being lucky).

I project 575 ABs with a .267 AVG, 22 HRs, 90 RBI, 77 R and 2 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.

After his worst fantasy, Starlin Castro had a nice rebound season 2014. In five Major League seasons he’s had the following batting averages: .300, .30, .283, .245 and .292; of those five it’s easy to see which number does not belong.

He’s always been healthy, playing in 158-plus games from 2011-13. He missed 23 games last year because of an ankle sprain; it happened when he was sliding at home plate. That’s a fluky injury I’m baking on him playing at least 155 games next year. If he didn’t get hurt he easily would have had the most home runs in his career (in the 16-18 range). He’s only 24 years old (he turns 25 in late March) so it’s possible we continue to see an uptick in the power. Below are his average fly ball and home run distances for his career:

The table below shows his extra base hit percentage for his career:

To recap, he’s not hitting the ball much farther and he’s not hitting a lot more extra base hits. It’s very possible he arrives at Spring Training looking much bigger (i.e. good weight) and starts to make harder contact, but if a power surge is coming, I don’t see it in the data.

For two years he’s stolen less than ten bases; and in those two seasons the stolen base success rate has dropped too, which leads me to believe I cannot expect more than ten. Overall, Castro is what he is – he’s a .290-plus hitter with 14-18 home runs and a couple of stolen bases.

I’m projecting 650 ABs with a .291 AVG,  16 HRs, 5 SBs, 75 RBI and 70 R.

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 suffering a brutal, freak ankle strain in 2013 Jose Reyes bounced back and nearly played a full season. In early April he missed 16 games with a hamstring strain. Since 2009 he’s only averaged 115 games played. Other than 2013 ankle strain all of his injuries have been tissue based injuries. For example, an oblique strain in 2010, hamstring strains in 2011 (twice) and in 2014. These types of tissue injuries means there’s a higher likelihood of re-injury in the future because these injuries are due to the body breaking down. And since he’ll turn 32 in June the probability of tissue injuries reoccurring again in 2015 are high.

Some fantasy owners may bucket Reyes as a speed-first player and usually these types of players see a dramatic drop in fantasy production after they turn 31 (the best current example is Michael Bourn). However, Reyes does have a lot of speed, but he has a little pop too, averaging nearly 10 home runs a year. The question is there a chance he could go back to the 16-19 home runs he hit in his early 20s?

Last year he had 4.7% HR/FB rate, which is 1.3 percentage points lower than his career rate. What’s also odd about the low HR/FB rate is he plays in a bam box of a home ballpark. Last year his home HR/FB rate was 5.4%, which is still below the career rate. He’s hitting more fly balls, which is great because if the HR/FB positively regresses and he plays in 140 games (which is a big if) he could hit 13-15 home runs.

Like Troy Tulowitzki, if you draft Reyes you want to draft another shortstop and put him in your middle infield spot because if Reyes gets hurt you’ll have more options on the waiver wire. Considering his propensity of tissue injuries I cannot project to play more than 130 games, but if he can play that many games I can see him nearly repeating 2013s numbers with room for a little more pop.

I’m projecting 550 ABs with a .289 AVG, 13 HRs, 53 RBI, 90 R and 30 SBs.