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.

Victor Martinez is really good and as I wrote in last years fantasy guide we saw how good he could be during the last three months of the 2013 season. That said, I didn’t think he would hit a career high 32 home runs and .335 batting average. Usually when an older player (he turned 36 in December) has career highs in those categories the fantasy community will assume a major regression is coming, but I don’t see that happening.

Obviously there will be some regression in both the power and batting average, but it will not be significant. The image below shows his extra base hit percentage (XBH%) and his home runs since 2004. I did not include 2008 because he only had 270 PAs. The first thing I noticed was his home runs last year was a little fluky, but the extra base hit percentage suggests he was making a lot of hard contact and should be able to hit 23-28 home runs next year.

In regards to his batting average he hit .268 on ground balls, which is 25 points higher than his totals from 2009-13 so a regression in the batting average should occur. However, the batting average shouldn’t regress below .300 mark because he’s only hit below .300 once and that was in 2004 (.283 batting average).

In early February Martinez tore the meniscus in his left knee while working out. The extent of the injury is unknown. He could only be out a couple of weeks and still play in Spring Training. Another scenario is he begins the season on the DL. If begins the year on the DL it’s hard to not think he’ll get off to a slow start. He missed the entire 2012 season after tearing the anterior cruciate ligament in the same left knee. In 2013 his numbers were pedestrian but he took off during the second half of the year.

This injury certainly doesn’t improve his fantasy viability, but it may lower his value to the point where he may be a draft day value. As of early February I have no idea how severe the injury is. In general I avoid drafting players already injured because there is a higher likelihood of repeat injury and a decrease in production.

For now I’m keeping my original projection before the injury. My 2015 projection is 570 ABs, .308 AVG, 25 HRs, 98 RBI, 88 Runs and 0 SBs.