2/29 Preseason Prep

Toronto Blue Jays
What to do with Brandon Morrow?
I know some of you are probably a little sour over us touting Brandon Morrow heading into last season, only to have his fantasy statistics once again drag behind his peripheral stats. In the past two seasons Morrow has posted FIP's of 3.16 and 3.64 despite actual ERA's of 4.49 and 4.72. My thought? There is too much potential here to get scared away. A lot of the fantasy community was high on Morrow as a sleeper last season, but a large percentage of those believers are now non-believers. That's good for you because it means you can draft the high risk/high reward Morrow much later in drafts this year, even though he did not experience a drop in skills. Once again Morrow was able to mow batters down, striking out 26.1% of all batters he faced last season - only Clayton Kershaw and Zack Greinke were better in that regard. Also, Morrow's control improved significantly for the second straight season as his BB/9 have fallen from 5.68 to 4.06 to 3.46. Bottom line is Morrow's strand rate for the most part has ruined him the past two seasons. He posted marks of 69% and 65.5%, whereas the league average is around 72%. If anything, we might expect Morrow to beat the league average because a high K rate often correlates with a higher strand rate. I'm heading into 2012 and betting that Morrow's fantasy stats catch up with his skills. If he has another year where a low strand rate derails him I may concede he just can't pitch with runners in scoring position, but I am not ready to do that at this point.

Has Ricky Romero turned into a fantasy ace?
I talked about Ricky Romero on the Fantistics podcast this past Sunday and noted that he is not a fantasy ace just yet. Romero's sub-3 ERA, status as Toronto's #1 SP and a previous top draft pick along with his youth (27 YO) are all factors leading him to being drafted as a top 25 fantasy SP. Unfortunately, there are a few warning signs that Romero is going to regress this season. While he has a phenomenal GB rate (career 54.6% mark), his K and BB rates are merely league average and that is not going to play well in the AL East. Romero's BABIP last season was extremely low at .242 (career mark of .285), and his strand rate, despite the modest K rate, was very high at 79.2% (career mark of 74.8%). In other words, he was the anti-Brandon Morrow last season. Romero is a really nice young pitcher who could be a stud at some point, but heading into 2012 he is much more likely to post an ERA in the mid to upper 3's than to repeat a sub-3 ERA. Draft accordingly.

Pittsburgh Pirates
Will Pedro Alvarez Bounce Back?
Pedro Alvarez had a horrific 2011 campaign after exciting fantasy owners with his display of power as a rookie the year before. Alvarez's power fell completely off as his ISO dropped from .205 to .098, and he hit just 4 homers compared to 16 in 2010. If you've seen our projections, you know we are not high on Alvarez bouncing back to starting fantasy 3B caliber - calling for just 19 homers and 58/68 in RS/RBI. The reason for the conservative projection is Alvarez's horrendous plate discipline. I admittedly overlooked, or at least didn't put as much stock into it as I should have, Alvarez's high strikeout rate when writing about him heading into the 2011 season. Sure enough, Alvarez's 30.8 K% stayed almost the same (30.5%) and it really took a toll on him. Alvarez's chase rate got even higher last season, growing from 29.7% to 32.2%. The only reason Alvarez's already poor K rate did not rise is he was able to make more contact on these pitches outside of the zone (56.3% of the time) than he did the previous year (47.5% of the time). While this spared Alvarez's K rate from growing, it likely led to his power downfall. Putting these "pitcher's pitches" into play led Alvarez to see his GB rate rise by almost 10 percentage points and his HR/FB% drop 7 percentage points. In hindsight this looks like a struggling hitter who was swinging at everything just hoping to make contact. After completely falling apart in 2011, and with the Pirate's adding Casey McGehee leaving Alvarez's playing time uncertain, it is easy to see why we aren't high on Alvarez. There is some light at the end of the tunnel. One, as Drew alluded to on the podcast, is the idea that once you possess a skill, you own it. In Alvarez's case, that would be his power, which really did show tremendously well for a 23 YO rookie back in 2010. Also, keep in mind that Alvarez did battle injuries in 2011 and has reportedly showed up to camp trimmed down and completely healthy. If you are optimistic, draft Alvarez in the mid to late twenties in terms of 3B off the board; our rank puts him as the 39th ranked eligible 3B.

How will the move to the National League affect Erik Bedard?
This off-season the Pirates inked Erik Bedard to a one year contract. Bedard quietly posted a decent season last year. He didn't pitch many innings (surprise, surprise) but when he did pitch he was effective. Bedard's FIP on the year 3.64 as he was ever so slightly worse than the league average in BB and GB rate but made up for it with a strong K/9 of 8.70. Moving to the NL, Bedard should only see that strikeout rate rise. Also, even though the Pirates aren't a powerhouse, Bedard should be a bit luckier in the wins department. He only had 5 last season, but his expected win total was 8. Don't draft Bedard hoping for more than 100 innings, but if you are in a league where you can afford to gamble on Bedard late the K rate provides upside, especially with the league change.

Kansas City Royals
Royals lock up Catcher Salvador Perez for 5 years
The Royals have locked up their young catcher Salvador Perez for the next 5 seasons (and possibly more with club options). So, while the Royals have showed faith in Perez, should you on draft day? The fact is, from a fantasy standpoint, Perez is very unlikely to be relevant this season. He offers nothing in terms of power and speed, stealing 0 bases and hitting just 3 homers 158 plate appearances last season in his first go around at the Major League level. Perez had a low ISO (.142) and low BB% (4.4), which doesn't bode very well for his fantasy floor. About the only thing that Perez did do well last season was hit for average with an impressive .331 mark. However, this is very unlikely to be repeated. Perez's plate discipline is not good (.35 EYE, whopping 42.8% chase rate), and he owes the high average due to an absurd .313 singles average. To be fair, Perez's singles average was driven by an impressive LD rate, but that is likely to regress because A.) No one sustains a 29.2 LD% and B.) Perez's lack of plate discipline will likely rob him of some of that solid contact. We project the average to drop all the way down to .265.

What the heck happened to Joakim Soria last year?
Joakim Soria entered 2011 as one of the best and safest closers, pitching at elite status for 4 straight seasons. However, something went wrong in 2012 and Soria, whose career worst ERA in his previous 4 seasons was 2.48 in his rookie year, posted a 4.03 ERA. Was he hurt? Well, Soria finished the year on the DL with a hamstring issue, but given that it wasn't anything with his arm that shouldn't have affected his performance too much. Also, his velocity across all his pitches was right in line with his career marks so that should quell some concern that he was concealing an arm injury. Was he pitching poorly? Yes, but not terribly. His K/9 of 8.95, BB/9 of 2.54 and GB% of 40.5% weren't too far off his respective career marks in those categories of 9.73, 2.48 and 42.5% but certainly were worse. Was he unlucky? Yes. Soria's strand rate was about 10 percentage points lower than normal, his BABIP 44 points above normal and HR/FB% 3 percentage points higher than normal. In conclusion, I think we can just chalk this up to an off year. Soria started slow, pitched a little worse than usual and experienced bad luck. But given good health and knowledge that he finished strong in '11 (5.4 K/BB ratio over 2nd half compared to 2.75 mark in 1st half), I'm prepared to give Soria somewhat a pass. As a result, he's a bit undervalued in drafts so far. Our software ADP (Average Draft Position) has Soria as the 14th closer off of the board, but our projections have him ranked as the 7th best relief pitcher.

Other MLB News
Brett Myers RP (HOU) - The Houston Astros have decided to move Brett Myers out of the rotation and give him the closer's role. This clearly boosts Myers' fantasy value immediately as he goes from a below average starter to...a below average closer. However, in the world of fantasy any closer is valuable - even if it doesn't last very long which might be the case here. Myers' K/9 the past 3 seasons have been 6.37/7.24/6.67, which are certainly well below the level you would expect out of a closer. On top of that he is a bit homer prone despite an above average GB rate; Myers' career HR/FB% is 14.2%, a main reason his actual ERA has only beat his xFIP twice in his entire 10 year career. Who knows? Maybe Myers will be able to up the K rate with the move to the bullpen. For now, though, I am giving him a boost due to the change in a role, but I will not value him as anything more than a bottom 5 closer.

Scott Sizemore 3B (OAK) - Sizemore's MRI revealed a torn ACL so he will unfortunately miss the entire 2012 season. Sizemore was pegged to be the Athletics' Opening Day 3B, a role that will now go most likely to 26 YO Josh Donaldson. He has shown some pop the last couple of seasons, hitting 18 homers in 348 AA plate appearances in 2010 and 17 homers in 503 AAA plate appearances last season. Donaldson also got a cup of coffee last season but struggled mightily, striking out 12 times in 34 plate appearances.

Yovani Gallardo SP (MIL) - Gallardo, like Romero, is a guy I talked about on the latest Fantistics podcast. He is a 26 YO pitcher coming off 2 straight seasons of significant improvements in his BB/9: 4.56/3.65/2.56. He also posted a monster second half last season with a K/BB ratio of 6.87 and K/9 ratio of 10.3, although keep in mind those numbers may be slightly inflated due to an awesome September which often skews things due to end of the year call ups.

Franklin Gutierrez OF (SEA) - Gutierrez suffered a pectoral muscle injury yesterday and has gone for an MRI. He enters Spring Training as the Mariner's starting center fielder. Should the MRI reveal an injury that will cost Gutierrez time when the real games start, backup Michael Saunders would likely fill the void.

Freddy Freeman 1B (ATL) - Freeman partially dislocated his knee cap. That sounds pretty terrible to me, but he apparently had the same injury a couple of years ago and only missed a couple of weeks. He is supposed to be reevaluated today. We have Freeman projected to drop some batting average (lucky singles average last season) but pick up a few homers as he matures physically. We have him as the 20th ranked eligible 1B.

Dee Gordon SS (LAD) - Average draft position has Gordon as the 14th SS off the board, but our projections peg him as the 10th best. Not a huge difference, but enough for drafters out there to gain value. Gordon's average is likely to fall below .300 due to a lack of power (.058 ISO) and plate discipline (.26 EYE). He won't completely tank in the BA department though thanks to a contact rate of 88.4% and LD% of 22.9. Basically this comes down to speed. If Gordon wins the Dodger's leadoff spot he has the speed to steal upwards of 50 bases and score a decent amount of runs. Between the majors and minors, Gordon stole 56 bases in 558 plate appearances last season.

David Wright 3B (NYM) - In our projection notes for David Wright we have ""Will benefit greatly from fences being brought in". I fully agree with this and think David Wright goes back to being a stud fantasy player. Wright was pretty consistently at a 16-17 K% pre-Citi field, but as soon as the new ballpark opened it jumped up to just under 23% and stayed there for the past 3 seasons. I'm in the camp that Wright's K% grew as he tried to adjust and compensate to the spacious park. At age 29, I am hoping that with the fences being brought in, Wright's contact rate will be able to jump back up, and he can just let his natural power take over. It is not quite this simple as there was more wrong with Wright the past 3 seasons than just his home ballpark, but a big bounce back season is still coming.

Matt Wieters C (BAL) - We have Wieters as a top 5 C option this season, as it appears as if this former top prospect has finally arrived. His ISO jumped from .128 to .188 last season while he cut his K rate for the second straight season: 22.3/18.7/15.2. He clearly reached a turning point last year with his OPS going from .728 in the first half to .840 in the second half.

David Price SP (TB) - Look for Price to be an elite SP this year. He only won 12 games but his expected win total was 16. He is also entering his age 26 season with a K/9 that is trending upwards (7.15/8.11/8.75) and a BB/9 that is trending downwards (3.79/3.41/2.53).