Reviewing the News - February 29
Breaking down the latest news from MLB Spring Training from a fantasy baseball perspective
Have to give credit to Jeff Zimmerman and his Mining the News series on FanGraphs for some of the stuff I’ll write about. His series is a must-read every spring as he really digs up some useful information. I do my best to not copy his work, but it’s pretty tough to do! So check him out for sure.
Injuries
Kodai Senga
The most recent news is that he received a PRP injection and won’t throw for three weeks. That was four days ago, so I guess we should say 2.5 weeks now! I’m not into drafting pitchers that are already injured, and I had some doubts about Senga’s command even before this. But as always, if the price is right [free], he could be worth an IL stash. In six drafts I’ve captured since the news started coming out on him, he’s gone:
114
129
189
195
203
It’s probable that the 114 and 129 were drafts where he was actually picked before the news and then the draft just finished after it, so it would seem that Senga will be something like 200-220 right now. That’s probably still too much for me, but we’ll see where it lands. In shallow leagues (250-350 picks total in your draft), I’d swim to clearer waters.
Matt McLain
This oblique thing popped up again for McLain, which is not what we want to see. He went on the IL on August 28th with an oblique issues last year and did not return. You would have thought that 5+ months of rest on it would have fixed it, but apparently not! And how do you not figure it will be a nagging problem this year now? If it didn’t get right over a full off-season, how can we feel confident it can get right and stay right while he’s playing games with it?
I liked McLain a lot as a value middle infielder with 25-25 upside, but now I don’t think I can confidently pick him. I’ll need a pretty good discount on him, and we haven’t seen that yet.
Matt Brash
As a setup man, he wasn’t a standard league guy (in non-holds leagues at least), but he’s not healthy now and it’s possible he misses a significant amount of time (although the report is pretty muddled, check it out here and hat tip to Chris Clegg for digging it up)
Andres Munoz benefits a little bit from that, and it would seem that Gregory Santos would step into the primary setup role.
Josh Jung
He experienced minor calf discomfort. So that doesn’t sound too scary. It’s minor, so that’s not major. It’s a calf, so that’s better than a shoulder or oblique or something, and it’s just discomfort, which I mean - I feel minor wrist discomfort right now and I’m playing at 100%.
I wouldn’t worry about Jung, and I might even dive in on a potential one or two round discount on him.
Closer News
Carlos Estevez / Robert Stephenson
I don’t react much to managers saying stuff about closers. I don’t think they really care about having a set closer. Fantasy players care about that, in real life it doesn’t really matter.
The quote is also pretty funny:
Angels manager Ron Washington was direct when asked whether Carlos Estevez will be the club’s closer to open the season.
“Right now, we’ve got him as a closer,” Washington said. “So we don’t need to talk about that.”
I can’t tell the TONE just reading the words, but in my head I read it as Washington being pissed at even getting asked a question about it and just wanted to get done with it.
But still, Stephenson was going ahead of Estevez recently, so that should probably stop for now.
I would just fade both of them, personally.
Mason Miller
Nobody ever said Miller was the closer, all that was ever said was that he’d be a bullpen arm for them. Given that the A’s have a bad bullpen, fantasy analysts just made the assumption that Miller would be the closer.
But to me that was always too assumption-y. The Athletics probably don’t even really want to try to win this year, and the primary goal with Miller was always just to try to keep him healthy for once to see what they have with him.
The recent news was that he would work in some multi-inning situation, and yeah, that makes sense to me! There’s no way they’re closing the door on him being a starter in the future, so having him stretched out a bit to see if he can get 70-90 innings this year makes a lot of sense. Avoid him in your drafts.
Pitch Velo
We probably shouldn’t get hung up on this stuff at all since we’re talking mostly about one-inning of work as pitchers are just getting going, but some early velo bumps to keep an eye on (I would say that if the velo stays that high all spring, we should expect it to stay high as we go into the regular season):
Other
A.J. Puk’s New Role
The Marlins are going to give Puk a shot at the rotation. He’s tried this before, unsuccessfully, but he’s getting a go at it. He threw 26 pitches to get his season started on Tuesday
9 Sinkers
8 Four-Seamers
4 Splitters (new pitch)
3 Sweepers
2 Sliders
And then the news from Jeff is that he’s also adding a changeup and a cutter. So at this point I’m calling bull. I don’t think this dude is really going to be letting seven pitches rip, but yeah, he needed to make some changes to go from a bullpen role to the rotation.
I doubt the splitter will be much of a thing, I didn’t even know left-handed starters were legally allowed to throw a splitter. But he could very well be throwing the three fastball variations and two breaking ball variations, pretty exciting stuff. Keep a close eye on him for sure, could be a nice SP waiver wire addition early in the year.
Mets Rotation Battle
Things have really fallen apart for the Mets in the last 12 months. Going from Scherzer/Verlander/Senga to this:
That’s quite a fall. There’s a battle for the fifth spot apparently between Megill, Lucchesi, Butto, and Kranick. All of this probably stink, but Megill would be the one I’d have an eye on if he wins the job. He is throwing a cutter this spring and he threw the slider was harder in that first outing, as we explored in the daily notes previously.
It’s hands-off for fantasy, for sure. The more interesting part would be when these prospects come up. They have a pretty interesting trio of top prospects in Mike Vasil, Christian Scott, and Dominic Hamel. All are in position to debut this year with health and minor league success, but none of them are draftable right now, they are just names to know for when the call-up does happen.
That’s it for the news updates and my takeaways. I’ll probably get another daily notes out tomorrow.