Investing & Maybe Fantasy Baseball

Welcome to the position tiered rankings for 2015. The tiers are broken out into five tiers with five being the highest and one being the lowest. Five star players are players that will be taken in the first couple of rounds or will go for $30-plus. Four star players will have $20-plus. Three stars $10-plus, two stars $5-plus and the one star are players you want to avoid or players to stash on your bench.

The statistics for each player are my semi-final projections. The projections are going to change going forward, but if you follow me on Twitter @MattCommins I will tweet out when my projections are updated and posted on MattCommins.com. If I was a reader I would focus on the tiering of players and the overall idea of the projections. For example, if I project a player for 28 home runs that means I think he’ll hit for a lot of power.

Links the other position previews:

• Catcher
• First Base
• Second Base
• Third Base
• Shortstop
• Outfield
• Relief Pitcher/Closer
  
• Starting Pitcher

What you will find below are the fantasy tiers for catchers. The value of the catching position depends on whether you play with one or two catchers. If you play with one catcher I recommend waiting before drafting a player. I play in two catcher leagues and I always recommend trying to grab one of the four star or two of the three star catchers because after the three stars are gone it gets bad very quickly.

Four Star

Four-Star Value Pick: Evan Gattis

I love catcher eligible players who don’t have to play the position defensively. Before the trade to the Astros I was going to recommend staying away from Gattis, but since he got traded to the AL he’s going to spend the majority of time at DH. He’s going to swing and miss a lot, but when he makes contact he’s going to hit for a lot of power.

Three Star

Three-Star Value Pick: Yasmani Grandal

Yasmani Grandal’s career road statistics, in 385 plate appearances, is a 15.5% HR/FB rate and a .802 OPS. Moving to the Los Angeles’ ballpark doesn’t mean he’s going to be hitting in a hitters paradise, but moving out of Petco is an improvement. If he stays healthy and that’s a big if, I wouldn’t be surprised if he hits 20 home runs.

Two Star

Two-Star Value Pick: Stephen Vogt

If you sit in the right field bleachers you will hear this chant from the A’s fans “I believe in Stephen Vogt.” Last year in a super utility role he hit nine home runs in 287 plate appearances. He has no competition for playing time. His closest competition is Josh Phegley and he wasn’t good enough to beat Tyler Flowers for playing time. Vogt is going to get the majority of at-bats and makes a lot of contact.

One Star

One-Star Value Pick: Jason Castro

The acquisition of Hank Conger muddles my recommendation of Jason Castro because they’re going to split the playing time, but Castro is only one year removed from a .276 batting average and 18 home runs.

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.

Last year Josh Hamilton missed two months of the season due to a thumb injury. He got hurt sliding into first base, which was a fluke accident. Towards the end of the year he missed 20 games with shoulder and upper-body injuries. In early February he had shoulder surgery to fix an AC joint. “He is expected to resume baseball activities in three to eight weeks, while a full recovery is estimated at six to eight weeks, the team said.”

Hamilton, who turns 34 in May, is a player who no longer has the physical tools to be a top 50 fantasy player, but if he can play 140-plus games the lineup around him could make him a tremendous value on draft day. The shoulder surgery probably makes unlikely he can play 140-plus games at this point.

When he’s active, he’s going to bat either fourth or fifth, which means he’s going to have a lot of RBI opportunities. You may be saying to yourself that he played 151 games in 2013 and he only had 79 RBIs. The reason why the RBI totals were low was because he only hit .224 with runners in scoring position, which is extremely low.

In regards to the power, the HR/FB rate has decreased year-over-year for three years. However, last year was the second to lowest HR/FB rate of his career so there should be some positive regression. That said, I don’t see 40-plus or even 30-plus home runs as a reasonable ceiling for him but I think he is capable for 25 if he plays in 140 games.

Last year he had a career high in strikeout rate and he was able to have .263 batting average with a .350 BABIP. Any time I see a high strikeout rate and high BABIP I immediately think regression. Last year he struggled a lot against fastballs. For example, last year he hit .285 with a 24.4% strikeout rate. From 2008-13 he hit .338 with a 16% strike out rate. These statistics can be one of two things: A) a decrease in bat speed or B) it’s a small sample size. I think it may be a combination of both. If the strikeout rate doesn’t decrease I see the batting average regressing to the .240s.

Since his 2014 numbers were so bad, his injuries last year and his current injury he may be a draft value. Two years ago he was one of the top five best players in baseball so it’s possible he could breakout. However, at the same time he has a low floor. If I’m in a shallow league I would take a flyer at the end of the draft.

My 2015 projection for Hamilton is 400 ABs, .242 AVG, 15 HRs, 65 RBI, 55 R and 1 SB.

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.