What is this, the 50th Razzball post on Desmond Jennings? Cute, Random Italicized Voice. All I can say is my love never peters for Jennings. (<– Cheeky!) Let’s look at some of things I’ve said in the past about Desmond Jennings. “Desmond Jennings was elected Sheriff of Fantasy Baseball Heartthrob Town and finally arrested The Zodiac Killer…. Jennings has three nipples. The third nipple won this year’s Project Runway…. Jennings will be in the first class of the Hall of Fame with Babe Ruth, Cy Young and Ty Cobb because they’ll close up Cooperstown after the Mayan apocalypse then reopen with a whole new first class. New baseball, as it will be known, will have seventeen third basemen on the field at once and will be played with a ball called a Pfft.” On top of all that! Jennings had a solid rookie year. Let’s take a looksie. In 287 plate appearances, he hit 10 homers with 20 steals while batting .259. He was cooking with gas until he burped through September hitting only .160 with 2 homers and 2 steals. So, yeah, he basically did all that 2011 damage in August (7 homers, 9 steals, .333 average in 108 ABs). But enough of this preambling around, what can we expect of Desmond Jennings for next year, and what makes him a 2012 fantasy baseball keeper?
What makes him a 2012 fantasy keeper? Do you hear yourself, Introductory Paragraph? Is that rhetorical? He’s the Sheriff of Fantasy Baseball Heartthrob Town! In 2012, Jennings can be B.J. Upton without the razztastic average. His 10 homers in two and a half months seems to be on the upper reaches for next year. A 7 homer month is a lot. Averaging three homers per month seems about right. The steals aren’t going to go anywhere. For hitters with at least 280 plate appearances, Jennings was the 6th fastest according to Bill James’s speed score, just ahead of Michael Bourn. Doode’s fast. The fickle pickle in all of this is the batting average. A .300 hitter in 2012 he won’t be, but he won’t be a sub-.200 hitter either without a whole lot of bad luck. In the month of September when he looked lost, he had a horrendous .195 BABIP, which was the 2nd worst in the entire league for hitters with 100 plate appearances. (Of course, in his crazy good month of August, his BABIP was on the opposite side of the tilt.) If all of that normalizes, he’s gonna be a .275 hitter next year. So for 2012, I see his line close to 80/16/65/.275/35 with upside on the power and speed and downside on the runs and average. Whether he gets priced out of the market in redraft leagues, we’ll have to wait and see on, but he’s definitely a 2012 fantasy baseball keeper. Now excuse me so his third nipple can make me a ball gown for the 2012 People’s Choice Awards.
