Reviewing the News - February 19
We begin a series where we cover all of the breaking news with an eye on how it affects the fantasy game
It’s baseball news season! Teams have reported and spring training games start later this week. Very exciting times for us, and with all of that comes lots of news about player health and playing time plans. We will run some quick posts out this spring to cover all of these news items with an eye on how it should affect your fantasy draft.
Kyle Bradish - Sprained UCL
This was the big one. It’s a sprain, and apparently the Orioles have known about it for awhile. He will start the year on the IL, but is currently throwing. So the best-case is that he only misses a few weeks and then is fine. But the downside is that it doesn’t get right and he requires season-ending surgery.
A quote from him said he’s confident he can be back “this season”. We should never read too much into what a player says, but to me it’s interesting that he chose that phrase rather than “in April” or “early on” or something like that.
Even though it’s just a sprain and he’s able to throw right now, in general terms I don’t view the upside as worthy of this huge risk. Bradish is good, don’t get me wrong, and even though I wasn’t going to draft him at all this year before, that doesn’t mean he can’t fall far enough in the draft to where it’s worth a shot. If you’ve got 5-6 SPs on your team already and you’re around or past pick 200, then you could give Bradish a shot. At that point, it wouldn’t kill your team if you get nothing out of him. So that’s my advice, don’t take him as anything above your SP5, but don’t scratch him off your list entirely either.
Draft Rank Change: Downgrade to SP #98
John Means - Behind in Throwing Program
He wasn’t a standard league pitcher before, and he’s certainly not one now. He’s a month behind his throwing program with an elbow injury. I wasn’t advising anybody to draft him before, so this makes it very easy. Just forget about him for now.
Draft Rank Change: Do not draft John Means
Jose Caballero and Rene Pinto to Start
This was one of the sneakier pieces of news from last week to me. Source (MLBTR) here.
Jose Caballero in 2023
280 PA
.221/.343/.320, 23.6% K%, 10.0% BB
280 PA, 26 SB, 35.4% attempt rate (12th-highest in baseball)
To put that in perspective, here are your full-time players last year that had a SB Attempt rate around 35%.
Josh Lowe (30.7%) - 32 steals
Corbin Carroll (35.5%) - 54 steals
Ronald Acuna Jr. (38.5%) - 73 steals
C.J. Abrams (38.9%) - 47 steals
All of those guys were at the top of a lineup and got on base at a good clip, and we probably can’t expect that from Caballero, but you can see what that attempt rate turns into when a guy is on base. The good news is the lower K% and the higher BB%, and that did turn into a pretty decent .340 OBP. So if this guy is really their everyday shortstop, he is a fantastic late-round option for steals.
Rene Pinto in 2023
105 PA
.252/.267/.456
6 HRs (17.5 PA/HR)
15.9% Brl% (32% K%)
It’s not a convincing sample, but a 16% Brl% and a 17.5 PA/HR is extremely interesting at the catcher position. Catcher is deep enough to where we don’t need to go this far, but in a two-catcher league Pinto is a great second option, and he’s someone to watch early on even in a standard league. He could be a really nice source of homers there. However, with the 32.4% K% and 1.9% BB%, the average and OBP are pretty certain to be bad.
Draft Rank Change: Caballero up to SS #23, Pinto up to C #23
Jarred Kelenic to Play Every Day
The assumption was that he would platoon in Atlanta, but the first report is that they want him to play everyday.
Kelenic Career Splits
vs. RHP: .211/.296/.400, .696 OPS, 95 wRC+, 31.0% K%
vs. LHP: .189/.255/.311, .566 OPS, 61 wRC+, 29.9% K%
Maybe they saw his improvements against lefties in a small sample last year (115 wRC+ vs. LHP, 105 wRC+ vs. RHP), but the strikeouts have never stopped being a problem for him.
He is a career 85 wRC+ hitter, but again, there was improvement up to 108 in 416 PAs last year. So we should forgive him for some of that horrendous stuff in his first two seasons, but we can’t fully forget about it.
For our purposes, the upside is still pretty solid. I don’t think we’re talking about him any longer as a potential fantasy stud, but a 20-20 season in a full-time role with Atlanta is well within the range of outcomes.
The bad news is that he’s going in the early-200’s.
Kelenic ADP By Month:
December: 227
January: 228
February: 224
That’s not a price I want to pay, but I suppose it’s not insane either.
Draft Rank Change: Move up to OF #53 (around Tommy Pham, Jack Suwinski)
Jarren Duran to Hit Lead Off
If you read the Red Sox Team Preview, you know I love Duran this year. And this news was pretty big for him.
Last year he ran a ton, with a 32% SB Attempt% and 24 steals in just 361 PAs. He also hit .295/.346/.482. The bad part of his game [for fantasy purposes] was that he hit only eight homers. However, he impacts the ball extremely well, which to me gives him a real shot at having a breakout year in the home run department as well.
Even if the power doesn’t increase, as a lead-off hitter, he’s going to have a huge steals and runs year if he can maintain that OBP above .330. He did benefit from a .379 BABIP last year, and the strikeout rate (25.3%) and walk rate (6.2%) stuff isn’t ideal. So there’s still some downside here. However, the fact that he gets to start the year as a lead-off hitter is huge for him, and I really want Duran on my team.
The last bit of bad news here is that he’s been getting more and more expensive through the off-season:
I imagine that line stays on the downslope as well with this news just coming out late last week. If he gets into the top 150, that’s pushing it, but in the mid-100’s right now I love it.
Draft Rank Change: Upgrade to a top-25 outfielder (OF2 target)
Shane Baz Is Still Hurt
He is planning to return mid-season. The only way you draft Baz is as an IL-stash. At this point, it would seem like he’s just not a guy who has the arm to be a starting pitcher in the Majors. It’s probably too early to say that, but for our 2024-only purposes, we don’t have to worry about him at all. My condolences to anybody who drafted him before this news came out, he was going in the top-200!
Draft Rank Change: Take Him off the List
Chris Paddack Aiming for 140-160 Innings
This confirms that he’s the Twins #4 or #5 starter, so that’s the main point here.
Paddack was previously one of the top prospects in the game and debuted back in 2019 when he made 26 starts with the Padres and posted a strong 3.33 ERA in 140 innings. There hasn’t been much success since then, however.
2021: 108 innings, 5.07 ERA
2022: 22 innings
2023: 5 innings
Tommy John surgery cost him almost the entire last two seasons, but he got back healthy at the end of last year and is ready to get it going again as a starter.
160 innings implies either a 27 start projection, or just a guy that only throws 4-5 innings on average. So that alone knocks down the ceiling quite a bit, however he is not a guy that has been drafted in standard leagues so we’re viewing him as a deep-league target or a waiver wire guy early in the year depending on how he looks.
The book on him right now is
Bad fastball
Elite changeup
Great command
Low K%
Low BB%
He has a career 4.9% BB% and 24.4% K%, so that’s a pretty darn good pitcher. However, in 2021 it was a 21.6% K% and a 4.8% BB%, so worse there on the strikeout front. And given the lack of a good fastball, he does seem like a guy who would have a lower strikeout rate.
But you can have success with a mediocre fastball if you command it well and have a really good backup pitch, which Paddack has. So to me, he’s one of the top sleeper pitchers to watch this year, and this news doesn’t change my mind on that whatsoever.
Draft Rank Change: Move Up Slightly
Much more news to come this spring, this is just the beginning! I’ll try to do these Fridays and Mondays through February and early March so we can make the needed adjustments to our draft ranks.