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 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.

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.

Sometimes players just get better. That’s all I can say about Jose Altuve’s ability to steal bases and everything in general. In the minor leagues he his stolen base success rate was 71.8%. In his first three years in the Majors 73.5%. Last year he stole 56 stolen bases and had a success rate of 86.2%.

The reason why his stolen base output increased so much because he was on-base a lot (duh), but his stolen base rate has been relatively the same in the Majors. The table below shows how often he attempted to steal a base (SB%).

The stolen base rate has increased year-over-year, but not that dramatically. Therefore, in order to maintain the stolen bases level as last year he’s going to have to have the same OBP.

The reason why his OBP was so high last year was he batted .341 (with a .360 BABIP). On the surface the BABIP seems high, but he’s a high BABIP player. In his first three Major League seasons he has a .317 BABIP. Obviously he outperformed his career BABIP by 43 points, which indicates he should regress back to that level. However, it’s possible the regression may not be that much.

His ground ball rate has decreased year-over-year the past three years while the line drive rate has increased, which means he’s making harder contact.

So to recap he’s striking out less and generating more hard contact. Even though he is making more hard contact doesn’t mean he’s going to start hitting 15-plus home runs. He doesn’t have massive home run power, but instead it’s only doubles power (which isn’t a bad thing from a real life perspective!).

From a scouting perspective he added a leg kick (similar to Josh Donaldson and Jose Bautista) before the 2014 season. Below is an excerpt from Ryan Parker’s article at Baseball Prospectus. His article goes into greater detail about Altuve’s new swing.

“Last year, Altuve put himself in a very bad position to hit anything on the outer third, especially if it had break. His lower body had nothing left to drive and his only hope was to spin and rely on his insane hand-eye coordination. The 2014 Altuve puts the earlier version to shame. His new leg lift erases the problems from his prior stride.”

Altuve may not hit .341 again, but .320 is very attainable. Even if he only hits .320 the stolen base output wouldn’t decrease that much. Using last years stolen base rate if he hit .320 he would have had 61 stolen base attempts instead of the 65 last year.

Some fantasy owners may discount Altuve’s 2014 season, but I’m not. He’s hitting the ball harder and his new swing allows him to drive the ball and to hit balls anywhere in the strike zone. He’ll probably be overrated in drafts because of last seasons performance, but last year was not a fluke.

I projected Altuve to hit .320 (in 650 ABs) with 49 stolen bases, 7 home runs, 69 RBI and 85 runs.