2/28 Spring Training News & Analysis
Some content announcements and analysis on a few spring standouts
Last day of February! The good months are about to begin.
Announcements
It’s the last full day of the sale I’m running. Paid subscriptions are just $59/year for today and part of tomorrow. If you lock that in today, you’ll have that price for the life of your membership. And you’ll get everything I do here; there are no tiered subscriptions or extra payments for the more valuable things like the daily projections.
Two other things are in the works. There will be more than just me contributing to these pages this season. Nothing is official yet, but it’s going to happen in some fashion.
Expanded Dynasty Coverage
There will be more prospect coverage on these pages this year. The minor league dashboards will be improved, and more reports will be added. I’ll dedicate a weekly article or a short section in the daily notes to prospect talk, and I’m hoping to have someone else who is much better at that than me join the team. But I can’t say anything yet because it’s not a done deal.
In-Season Player Props
Paid subscribers already have access to a very nice daily player prop analysis sheet. That sheet compares takes my projections and searches different sportsbooks for the best player prop bets. So that’s already going. But what I’m looking to do is bring in someone to write a daily prop analysis article. That person will use my projections along with their own analysis and recommend a few player props per day. We’ll track the progress along the way and, if nothing else, have some good times sweating some bets.
Last year, the hitter strikeout props paid for everybody’s memberships by themselves until the sportsbook took them away. When they came back, they had fixed the lines. I’m not going to sit here like a lot of these other betting dudes online and tell you we smash bets and make a guaranteed profit, and it’ll no doubt make you money and pay for your subscription. But I can tell you that the projections are solid, and the way I do the math on the betting values is correct. If you’re going to bet, it’s a good way to go about it.
MLB DW Fantasy League
To paid subs only: there are six spots left in the league! If you want in, check out the details here.
Spring Updates
I talked about a handful of starting pitchers to monitor in March and April here:
You can check that out. I went into some detail on Will Warren, Clay Holmes, Tylor Megill, Brandon Sproat, Quinn Mathews, Bubba Chandler, Tyler Mahle, and Sean Burke.
One guy I missed that needs a mention is Cadan Dana. He threw three perfect innings yesterday with three strikeouts.
I wrote him up in the Angels preview, so paid subscribers can check that out here. But let’s take another quick look.
He spent most of last year in AA:
23 GS, 136 IP, 2.59 ERA, 0.94 WHIP, 27.4% K%, 7.3% BB%, 0.66 HR/9
That’s a 20% K-BB%, and you know we like that. He skipped AAA and made three starts in the Majors, but it did not go well for him.
I’m not going to judge him on his first ten innings in the show. Unfortunately, we don’t have any pitch mix data on him since he’s never appeared in AAA. I can tell you more from the AA stint, though:
SwStr%: 14.2%
Strike%: 48.5%
Ball%: 35.1%
Those are encouraging numbers. I went and checked for Dana in Tim Kanak’s fScores. He tweeted that out in February, so I can share it here:
Mid-90s four-seamer and a power slider! That’s a decent recipe for some strikeouts. The Angels don’t have a fantastic rotation, but they do have four guys who are clearly going to start the year in the rotation. Dana’s only path to a spot in there would be an injury or beating out Reid Detmers.
It doesn’t seem likely that he’ll be in the rotation right away, but he will be a pitcher worth taking a shot on when he does get a chance.
Max Meyer threw 13 pitches this week. The only thing you can ever take from 13 pitches would be what pitches were thrown and how hard.
The fastball was up two miles per hour, and he threw a curveball, which he did not throw last year. It’s quite possible that the velo bump will disappear, and he’ll scrap the curveball. But, if nothing else, it gives us something to monitor for the rest of his spring. I don’t see what the point would be of starting Meyer back in the minors this year, so my guess is that he’s in the MLB rotation and ready to throw 130-150 innings this year.
He’s interesting, nonetheless, but if the velocity is truly up this year, that makes him a bit more interesting!
It came out yesterday that Freddie Freeman is still dealing with some ankle issues, and he’ll probably get extra days off in the first half. They specifically said he might not play day games after night games.
I have Freeman as my #4 first baseman. This news isn’t enough to make me move him under Pete Alonso, but it is enough to bump him down in the overall ranks and bump him down to my second tier at first base.
Here’s some February ADP data for the top seven first basemen.
Take all of that however you will. I think it’s pretty safe to say you’re not getting steals from Freeman this year. I don’t think I’ll have him very high on my price-considered first baseman ranks, which will probably come out later today.
One more guy to mention! How about Victor Scott II??? He’s 5/9 this spring, with a homer and two steals. The point of saying that isn’t to react to him being 5/9 with a homer and two steals, but to once again mention the fantasy upside this guy has if he can find some way to get above a .320 OBP in the Majors. I don’t think it will take a ton for the Cardinals to give him the centerfield job. They must want to see what they have in the kid, and his defense in the outfield is fantastic.
So, if Scott is playing every day for the Red Birds, there’s a very good chance he steals enough bases to matter in most fantasy leagues.
I don’t really care about what numbers he puts this spring, but if he keeps racking up the hits, he’s going to force the Cardinals’ hand to make him the Opening Day centerfielder. That’s what we’re monitoring.
The other late-round Cardinal I’ve been taking some shares of is Nolan Gorman. His name is at the top of the dashboard page I’m looking at right now, so I figured I’d tell you that he is tied for the team lead in plate appearances this spring with ten. But yeah, he’s 0/10 with five strikeouts (does have a walk though!!!!). There’s little doubt that he will soon be 1/13 with seven strikeouts and a 450-foot moonjob homer. Watch!