LOGIN

Let the hard sell begin.  I feel like I’m that dealer with the bad comb over in the polyester suit at the used car lot trying to sell a jalopy.  Minus the car analogy, I feel like I’m describing Woody Harrelson in Kingpin.  You know the film and if you don’t, it’s streaming on Netflix right now.  And by right now, I mean when I wrote this.  If this post isn’t live before they’ve pulled it, mea culpa for getting you excited about it and also, mea culpa for getting you excited about it in general…it’s a Farrelly brothers movie and it’s not one of their best and ‘best + Farrelly bros’ google search should tell you all you need to know about that phrasing.  BTW, this post isn’t sponsored by Netflix…but it should be!  Seriously, Razz movie reviews.  When does this happen?  We can stick with the sports section.  We’ll cover every 30 for 30!  But I digress even further than I normally would.  Given how we all feel about Travis Snider at this point in his career, you’d think he was Roy Munson on the baseball field, metal hook for a hand and all.  It’s true, he never lived up to our dreams and probably won’t still.  But in a deep league setting, that ain’t our concern.  So with that in mind, let’s take a look at Snider and how he can help you with your nasty 7-10 split for the 2015 Fantasy Baseball season…

So first off: the trade happened.  Cool right?  Nah, it ain’t cool.  I had this sucker written two days before that shizz went down and now I have to do some massive editing.  I mean, I’m happy we know he should get the PT chance he deserves with the Orioles but from the writer’s side of things, I’m currently retyping this with only two fingers, one from each hand.  You know what I’m sayin…anyway, the stats that lead me to talk about Travis are still valid.  Snider saw a surge in his batted ball distance, going from 273.07 in 2013 to 301.68 in 2014.  That was the 3rd best growth in batted ball distance last year behind only Marcell Ozuna (breakout season) and Drew Stubbs (he plays in Colorado…duh).  To be fair, though, that stat doesn’t really say much.  Tyler Flowers had the 4th highest.  Tyler Flowers hit .241 and struck out 36% of the time, making Chris Carter look like Ichiro Suzuki.  All this to say, it’s not indicative of success, fantasy or otherwise.  But the other cool stat was his K%; Snider has been a little too much of a windmill for his career with a 25% K-rate.  However, in 2014 he was able to chop that number down to a respectable 18.7% to go with a healthy 9.5% BB-rate.  Keep in mind this was over 359 plate appearances so we’re not talking about a statistical aberration.  The stats tend to say he’s now more selective at the plate and it’s resulting in squaring up more pitches.  Now one other concern of note: the ground ball rate.  He’s supposed to be a power hitter and his GB% last year was 49.4% and for his career, he’s never had it lower than 40% except his rookie year in 2008.  That said, his career HR/FB% is a respectable 13.3% (with 2014 seeing it at 16.5%).  Dayan Viciedo hit 21 HRs last year with a 45% GB rate and a much worse batted ball profile.  In other words, Snider could poke out 18-20 while holding down a respectable average above .260 if he holds his gains from 2014.  When you also consider that Camden Yards plays very well to lefties, a surprise 25 HR campaign isn’t too crazy of an idea.  So forget the career that never really began with Snider.  Instead, think of Camden as his Vegas and every pitcher as his Ernie McCracken while he bats with a prosthetic right hand…yeah, you’re now gonna go watch Kingpin.  Run, before it’s no longer on streaming!  Oh and draft Travis…yeah, that too.