Fantasy Baseball Season Preview

Written By: Fantasy Fred


A few predictions and opinions for the upcoming fanstasy baseball season which kicks off with the defending World Series Champion Cardinals playing the Marlins in their new park today (unless you play yahoo and counted the games in Japan, which forced leagues to draft a week ahead of the real Opening Day as acknowledged by both ESPN and MLB).


-Adrian Gonzalez will finish the season as the #1 player in fantasy.  Why? 108 Runs scored, 27 home runs, 117 RBIs, and .338/.410/.548 batting average, on-base percentage, and slugging percentage last year, AND HE WASN'T HEALTHY.  He admitted that for the past two seasons he hasn't been swinging through the ball due to a lingering shoulder injury that is now healthy.  Gonzalez said he had to rework his swing to compensate for the injury but now he's back.  He's a consinstantly great first basemen and I expect him to improve on last years numbers, this year.


-Hanley Ramirez will return to his former glory and finish as the #1 third basemen and short stop in fantasy.  Like Gonzalez, Hanley battled through a few lingering health issues last year which clearly affected his numbers.  The other knock on Hanley was his attitude last year and maybe I'm reading into early reports on his improved work ethic but I think he's over that too.  All accounts say he has been working his ass off in the offseason.  Some of his sabermetric stats from last year are a bit troubling, but I'm going to look past that in light of all the positive reports on him recently.


-Zack Greinke will finish the year as a top 3 fantasy pitcher.  It's hard for me to predict that he will be number one when someone could have a Verlandian season and dominate the league, but Greinke had a K/9 of 10.5 and was one of the unluckiest pitchers in baseball last year according to the sabermetrics (opposing batters had a BABIP of .323 against him).  Greinke did post an xFIP of 2.56, pretty damn good, which doesn't exactly match up with his 3.83 ERA.


-Small sample sizes have led to the overvalueing of Dee Gordon and Brett Lawrie and they will both experience sophomore slumps this year.  Gordon played in 56 games last year and Lawrie had even less with 43.  I'm not saying these guys aren't good or won't be great one day but they are both very young and crazy things can happen in such a short amount of time.  Also, rookies tend to do well, both hitters and pitchers, before there is a reliable scouting report out on them.  Once hitters find out what a pitcher likes to throw in which situations, or in the case of Gordon and Lawrie, once pitchers discover a hitter's cold zones and the pitches they struggle with, players tend to go through a sophomore slump until their talent catches back up.  In addition, Gordon has one fantasy asset--speed.  He struggles to hit it out of the infield on the fly and although his speed is elite, he won't hit above .300 this year.


-Madison Bumgarner will be a Cy Young candidate in the National League.  Look at these first half/second half splits for Bumgarner last year: ERA-3.87/2.52, WHIP-1.338/1.080, K/9-7.9/8.9, K/BB-3.41/5.21.  Seems to me like he was just a young pitcher with immense talent, still learning how to pitch against big league hitters last year.  Well, it also seems to me that he got it figured out towards the end of last year and will be a force on the mound this year for the Giants.


-JD Martinez is a top 30 outfielder.  He plays for the Astros, and listen, I get that Astros suck but even the worst teams still score runs.  He will be batting third for Houston and is hitting behind some decent talent.  I know I just preached about small sample size and the sophomore slump but Martinez is in a no-pressure situation in Houston, and has the benefit of playing for a rebuilding team that is dedicated to developing their younger players.  In 52 games last year, he finished with 29 runs, 6 home runs, and 35 RBIs.  That's at least good enough that more people should be taking a risk on this guy in the late rounds of a draft.


Other players I like (relative to their draft position):
-Justin Upton, young and only getting better
-Carlos Gonzalez, still plays at Coors Field
-Howie Kendrick, hitting in front of Pujols should help his numbers
-CJ Wilson, sub 3.00 ERA in Texas last year and he's playing for the Angels now
-Adam Jones, reliable player that helps across the board and he's young enough that he could still improve
-Adam Wainwright, Tommy John is a routine procedure now so let's not forget about the ace he used to be
-Billy Butler
-David Ortiz
-Melky Cabrera, anything close to the numbers he put up last year and it's a good investment
-Jason Motte, has the closer role locked down on a Cardinals team that may be better than last year
-Brandon McCarthy, pitcher-friendly park in Oakland and is a great late round counter to a high K/high ERA guy like Brandon Morrow


Players that scare me (might pull a Dunn this year):
-Albert Pujols, I'm a little worried that he has late onset downs syndrome
-Ryan Braun, the man was taking steroids and I'm scared he might've stopped for awhile after a close call
-Jose Reyes, never ever healthy except in contract years
-David Wright, production has been dropping for the past few years but nobody seems to notice
-Matt Cain, he always did well as the unheralded San Francisco starter but now he's getting plenty of heralds
-Jonathan Papelbon, never pay for saves
-James Shields
-Jason Heyward, that seemed like more than a sophomore slump to me
-Joe Mauer, 3 home runs total last year and none came at home