Crooked Pitch

It was a nice, calm, peaceful day in the twitterverse yesterday when @jasoncollette unknowingly kicked off a name calling, eye raking slap fest that had all the intensity of a sorority house pillow fight. Well, it might not have been that interesting, but when Jason said

Why is it that Jose Lopez is going later in mocks right now than Aviles, Uggla, and DeRosa? Lopez is going as a solid late rd value lately.

the battle began between @theroundtable, @fakebaseball and myself.

To make a very long story short(er), After multiple people got involved in the slug fest, the gauntlet was thrown and I was challenged to rank these mid-tier second basemen and to back up my rankings. Oh, and I also had to throw in Kelly Johnson too. So, here’s what I think about Jose Lopez, Mike Aviles, Dan Uggla, Mark DeRosa, and Kelly Johnson.

First off, let’s take a look at their numbers from last season.

• Lopez - .297/.322/.443 17HR, 89RBI, 80R, 6SB in 644 at-bats
• Aviles - .325/.354/.480 10HR, 51RBI, 68R, 8SB in 416 at-bats
• Uggla  - .260/.360/.514 32HR, 92RBI, 97R, 5SB in 531 at-bats
• DeRosa - .285/.376/.481 21HR, 87RBI, 103R, 6SB in 505 at-bats
• Johnson - .287/.349/.446 12HR, 69RBI, 86R, 11SB in 547 at-bats

Just looking at last years numbers their rankings look something like Uggla, DeRosa, Lopez, Johnson and then Aviles.

But now, let’s take a look at some 2009 projections and their current ADP on Mock Draft Central.

• Lopez - .282/14/74/69/5 and has a current ADP of 166.31 (late 14th round)
• Aviles - .285/12/63/72/8 and has a current ADP of 152.97 (mid 13th round)
• Uggla - .257/26/83/94/5 and has a current ADP of 61.89 (early 6th round)
• DeRosa - .274/14/70/73/4 and has a current ADP of 188.04 (mid to late 16th round)
• Johnson - .280/14/64/80/9 and has a current ADP of 219.98 (early 19th round)

You can see that mock drafters think Uggla should go first, then Aviles, Lopez, DeRosa and finally Johnson. However, by just these projections I think Uggla should go first. After Uggla you’d take Johnson, Lopez, Aviles and finally DeRosa. But, I’m not stopping with last years numbers and projections. I want to delve deeper into some numbers from these guys.

I want to look at some trends for these guys. Aviles was a rookie last year so he only has that year to go off of (unless I use MiLB numbers, which I won’t). Johnson only has two consecutive years to look at, so his trend data isn’t as solid as I’d like. But, the other three guys have three solid years of data from which I’d like to look at walk rate, strikeout rate, and home run to flyball ratios.

• Lopez - His BB% improved from ‘07, but his ‘08 4.0 BB% isn’t as high as his ‘06 of 4.1%. His K%, however, is trending fantastically from 13.3% in 2006 to 12.2% in ‘07, to 10.4% last year. His HR/F ratio is also headed in the right direction. His 8.2% in ‘08 look a lot better than his 6.4% in ‘07 and his 5.7% in ‘06. I’d like to see Lopez walk a bit more, but his strikeout rate looks really good and so does his HR/F. His fly ball rate even went up after the All-Star break last season. More fly balls + an upward trending HR/F ratio = good things.
• Aviles - Had a 4.1% walk rate, a 13.8% strikeout rate and a 8.3% HR/F ratio. Other than a weird August where he hit dramatically fewer fly balls and fewer home runs, Aviles stayed pretty steady with these ratios all season. It’ll be interesting to see if he can keep that up in ‘09.
• Uggla - He’s walking a lot more (12.7% in ‘08 versus 7.3% in ‘06), striking out a lot more (32.2% in ‘08 versus 20.1% in ‘06) and his HR/F ratio which was pretty consistent between ‘06 and ‘07 (13%) jumped a lot to 18.4% in ‘08. It may be unrealistic to think he’ll keep that HR/F ratio in the high teens, and his K% is starting to scare me.
• DeRosa - Only one of these three ratios trend in the same direction for DeRosa over the last three years. His BB% is continually rising from 7.8% in ‘06 to 12.0% in ‘08. But his K% and HR/F bounce around like a pinball. His K% went down in ‘07, but back up to 21.0% in ‘08. His HR/F ratio went down in ‘07 but back up in ‘08 to 13.7%.
• Johnson - His BB% dropped in ‘08 to 8.7% from 13.2% in ‘07. His K% also dropped from 22.5% to 20.7% and unfortunately his HR/F ratio dropped from 10.3% to 7.6%. The pop seems to have left Johnson’s b at.

In concluding this assessment, I want to add a look into their contact rates and their hit rates to get a little more info into plate discipline and any luck factors that might be in play. I’ll also mention in what round these guys should be taken. Also pay attention that from this point forward, they’ll be ranked.

1. Dan Uggla - His power potential makes him the obvious number one on this list. But, I’ve never been a big fan of his batting average. Also take  into account that he has a miserable 67.7% contact rate and was a little bit lucky with his batted balls (32.3% hit rate) and Uggla’s batting average could get worse. I think his HR/F ratio will come back down (in fact it dramatically dropped in the second half last year) which could result in a power drop off as well. Because of these fears, I wouldn’t take a chance on Uggla until the 8th round. And I might even pass him by completely in favor of the number two and three guys on this list.
2. Jose Lopez - I love the way his fly ball ratio trended upward an extra 4% in the second half last year. If he can keep that going in addition to his natural HR/F improvements from year to year you might see 20-25 home runs out of Lopez. He also has the best contact rate (89.5%) of anyone on this list and his hit rate was pretty close to normal at 31.1%. In addition to his extra power potential, Lopez has the tools to hit .300. Feel comfortable taking him in the 10th to early 12th rounds.
3. Kelly Johnson - Johnson’s power seems to be fading away, but I still like his double digit potential in both steals and home runs. He has tendancies of being very streaky, which makes him a more valuable roto hitter than a head-to-head guy. And his contact rate (79.3%) and hit rate (34.4%) don’t lend well to him approaching the .300 level at all. Johnson shouldn’t be taken until the 14-15th rounds, maybe later.
4. Mark DeRosa - This guy had a career power year at age 33 (last year). If you pay for those numbers and expect them to be around in 2009, you’re crazy. His contact rate is too low (79.0%) to make a run at .293 again and while his hit rate (32.5%) is right in line with his career average, there are way too many chances for DeRosa to bomb in ‘09. He’s not a safe pick any more and will be moving to third base in Cleveland (which will kill his value in 2010). If he’s around in the 17th round grab him as a flier, but have other options in mind if he’s not the hitter he was in ‘08.
5. Mike Aviles - What a rookie season this guy had. And those of you grabbing him in the 13th round right now are paying way too much for him. He had a hit rate of 35.9% last season, which is incredibly high. When that rate normalizes Aviles’ batting average will suffer. With a contact rate of 86.1% it won’t drop down to Uggla’ish levels, but what good are his other numbers if he brings a .285 batting average to the table? Draft Aviles in the 17th to 18th round knowing that he can’t possibly repeat his ‘08 numbers in 2009.

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 5th, 2009 at 3:13 pm and is filed under Draft Strategy, Fantasy Baseball. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.