Comments on: Josh Hamilton, Overrated

By: Johnny

Johnny — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 00:30:50 +0000

Haha someone was absolutely on target.

By: Cotton

Cotton — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 17:41:48 +0000

1000-word posts suck.

By: MrGrinch

MrGrinch — Sat, 02 May 2009 20:12:36 +0000

tired of hearing about this POS, im gonna become a crackhead and then recover and then give money to charity or something so i can become a “hero”

By: Rudy Gamble

Rudy Gamble — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 22:45:55 +0000

@Dave TX: Hi Dave. Thanks for taking the time to speak your mind on our site. If we’re going to poke at Mr. Hamilton’s past addictions, we should at least have the huevos to take some criticism.

Re: Hamilton, this post is more for those on the site that is a bit sick of the Hamilton hype/analysis in fantasy baseball circles. Here is some info to back up our claims:

1) Hamilton went on the DL 3 times in 2007 with 3 different injuries (http://www2.sportsnet.ca/baseball/mlb/players/Josh_Hamilton/). But you’re right that he was durable last year. But 704 Plate Appearances / 619 ABs would appear to be unlikely. Baseball Prospectus’s Player Forecast Mgr estimates 550 ABs. I think safe estimate is somewhere around there which will have an impact.

2) I’ve looked at both Baseball Prospectus’ and RotoWorld’s Depth Charts and they have Hamilton starting at CF with Murphy in LF and Cruz in RF. Hamilton has started in CF during the exhibition. If he was moved to RF, we’d feel a bit better about him holding up throughout a whole season.

3) Hamilton definitely has HR power…when he gets the ball in the air. He’s more of a line drive/ground ball hitter – http://www.fangraphs.com/statss.aspx?playerid=1875&position=OF – and it’s doubtful that he’ll be able to increase from an already impressive 20% HR/FB rate. Maybe Jarmillo gets him to uppercut more but will he mess with such a good thing? Also, he had his worst HR/RBI months in Aug/September. This could’ve been due to the Texas heat but there’s also a chance that pitchers stopped challenging him, no?

4) He’s not really an SB threat (maybe 5-10).

5) His protection goes from Milton Bradley (had a very good year) to Nelson Cruz (who we’re excited about but is no sure thing.)

5) Put it together and the prediction is that he gets about 500 ABs with only 150 in the air and about 25-30 leaving the park. Runs and RBIs regress to about 95 each given less protection + less plate appearances. We’ll go along with the other projection systems and give him a .290-.295 average. These are very good stats but not in line with a 1st round pick where we’ve seen him go in some mock drafts. Our Point Shares (http://razzball.com/2009-fantasy-baseball-rankings/razzball-2009-projected-point-shares-10-team/) project him finishing in the 40’s in value but, if you remove some pitchers above him b/c their ADP’s don’t warrant top 3 round picking, that gets him in the 3rd round not far from Grey’s pick of him at #22 (http://razzball.com/top-100-for-2009-fantasy-baseball/).

So is he SUPER overrated. Nah. But should he be taken in late 1st round/early 2nd round as we’ve seen in some cases. No. (We’re close to in agreement with ESPN which has him at #18. That’s more defensible than Ichiro at #21 – see http://razzball.com/2009-fantasy-baseball-rankings/razzball-2009-projected-point-shares-10-team/ for my rant about him.

Re: the ‘Howard Stern’ antics, there are two sides to every story. ESPN contacts us on whether we wanted to interview Matthew Berry. They did not provide a briefing nor asked for questions in advance. We were expecting to submit the questions and get written answers (you can see our baseball previews where we pose questions to local blogs – http://razzball.com/category/2009-team-preview/ – as examples). ESPN requested we do it over the phone.

Mr. Berry fully acknowledged that he’d never read our site before. Again, ESPN’s bad for not being prepared. PR 101. That probably would’ve helped set expectations but we’ll take responsibility for being inexperienced interviewers. We should’ve thrown some softball questions out there to start before anything more challenging. We may have gone too far in being acerbic or tongue-in-cheek. It obviously didn’t leave a positive impression with Mr. Berry.

We asked some general fantasy baseball questions and also took the opportunity to ask what we thought were interesting questions – e.g., ‘Why doesn’t ESPN back up their ‘manifestos’ with real data given the amazing data set they have at their disposal?’ and ‘Given that ESPN FLB writers are quite vocal in their strategies, does it make sense for ESPN players (of which, we have many) to zag against their strategy vs zig?’ Were we supposed to just ask only Fantasy 101 questions that we already have set opinions on?

The end result was verbatim (at least 1-2 questions/replies were not included b/c neither the question nor reply was that interesting). We did not edit his comments out of context as he said in the chat (there was some re-ordering for flow). If he wanted to pimp the ESPN fantasy baseball platform, we would’ve printed that. We’re fans of the new platform. We mention ESPN 11 times in the post!

So it’s disappointing his experience was so unsatisfactory that he had to go Buzz Bissinger on us in the chat room but such is life. We don’t really have any ill-will or desire to propagate a flame war. And that’s that.

Thanks again for taking the time to share your comments with us and Razzball nation. Hope to see you again.

Rudy

By: Dave TX

Dave TX — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 20:15:26 +0000

I became curious about your site when your Howard Stern antics became common knowledge at the ESPN blogs. Apart from this lame and adolescent behavior, I decided to dismiss the fluff and investigate if your predictations had any merit to them. One prediction that caught my eye was your Hamilton is a “2009 Fantasy Schmohawk.” You contend that Hamilton is essentially an overrated Carlos Lee with a nice story. Unfortunately, you don’t back it up with anything more than bizarre insults and three flawed conclusions. I’ll skip over the insults for obvious reasons. But, the comment about his wife was particulary tasteful. Stay classy man. Let’s move on. You contend that Hamiliton is overrated because he produces numbers similiar to Carlos Lee. How many years has Hamilton played in the bigs? One? One and a half? I’m not going to knock Lee because he is a solid second round selection. You got that part right. But, putting a cap on Hamilton’s potential production with such limited data is negligent. If you’re going to be equitable about this comparison, then you should take Lee’s 1999-2000 numbers and match them up. You are comparing numbers from a vet in his 10th year with a 1.5 newbie…right? There is no “typical” for Hamilton. There is no defined pattern. Even worse, you seem to think that players and coaches have no idea how to improve swings, health ,and wear-and-tear issues. I guess they are just numbers to you. This leads us to your final two flawed conclusions. “”…Hamilton wore down last year and he’s injury prone.” Hamilton did wear down last year. Does that mean he will wear down every year from now on? That’s silly. Were you aware that they moved him to RF? Were you aware that they plan on limiting his extra-curricular activities this year? Last year was his first experience with the Texas heat. It’s not Florida heat. It’s not California heat. It’s the kind of heat that drains the body and mind. It takes time to get used to it. Big men seem to have a harder time acclimating themselves to it. There is a better chance that he produces better numbers this year after the break because he understands exactly what he is up against. Plus, the team understands this and has made plans to keep him fresh. Of course, anyone who had bothered to research the subject would know this. But, I digress. Hamilton is injury prone? Really? That must be a extremely subjective definition of the word for you to think that this is true. Let’s see…he played in 156 games last year. Hmm. He played in center and now he’s in right. His team has mandated that he rest more and not hit the inspirational speech circuit after every game. I don’t know bud…156 games in his first full season and he is moving to a less demanding position with a team mandate to rest more often tends to dispute your conclusions. How many injury prone players log 156 games? But, even if that does not meet your insanely high standards for health, why discount the fact that this year should be less taxing on his health? Something doesn’t add up. I have my suspicions, but let’s just stay friendly and professional. Maybe it will rub off on you. Now, I’m know this is going to hurt your brain but let’s introduce some baseball knowledge into this discussion. I’ll dumb it down for you in order that you can both grasp it and make enough room in your challenged mind to retain it. Hamilton has one of the best, pure power strokes in the game. It’s not a Carlos Lee swing. There is a reason why Hamilton has been offered multiple chances to redeem himself. His potential is off-the-charts. If you attempt to refute this, then you refute your own knowledge of the game. Accepting that Hamilton’s unpolished swing is different than Lee’s, it is important to add another factor into the equation. Rudy Jaramillo is considered one of the best hitting coaches in the game. He has created, fixed, and altered so many average big league swings into respectable power strokes that the list of his beneficiaries is staggering. One of his current projects is Hamilton. This will be the first year that Hamilton and Jaramillo have worked together. Jaramillo was wise enough not to tinker with the swing last year in mid-stream. Jaramillo is going to modify one of the most powerful strokes in the game into one of the most efficient and powerful strokes. The Fort Worth Star-Telegram just released on story on this very subject. (http://www.star-telegram.com/284/story/1246129.html) It’s a good read. If you had done your research, you would already know all of this. You would also know that Hamilton basically skipped the lessons of double and triple A ball. For the first time in his life, he is being taught the things that Lee knew in 1999. So…is he an overrated Lee? Not hardly. Hamilton is Hamilton. You haven’t seen a player with this much talent before and you may not again. Sometimes hype is well-warranted. Hamilton will get hurt this year but he will recuperate faster. Hamilton will get tired this year but he will rebound faster. Everything has been set up for him to have a monster season. It seems odd that you would conveniently forget all of these factors that are fundamental to a responsible fantasy analysis. Of course, that’s assuming that you comprehend what a responsible fantasy analysis is in the first place. You may not. Maybe you just don’t like the guy or his message on a personal level and have decided to validate your flawed conclusions with further flawed data. The first article you submitted on him seems to lend creedence to this theory. All you have presented is fluff, insults, and incomplete data to validate your conclusion. Since you made the effort to present your case again with equally laughable data, one must conude that the issue with Hamiton is personal and not professional. You don’t like the man. Because of that, you cannot accept the talent. It’s all very simple. Now go ahead and delete this post. If I know your type, you can’t take what you dish out. I didn’t use curse words or potty-mouth humor to make my case either. I just hit you with the facts and presented it in a logical and civil manner. I didn’t scream for attention with childish verbosity. It’s ironic how this style is much more effective than yours…huh? Your only hope is to look for mispellings and grammar errors. When you resort to that tactic, you know you have been crushed. Enjoy.

By: cockyphoenix

cockyphoenix — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 21:32:08 +0000

oh i missed this one; it’s great

for science

By: Fred Barker

Fred Barker — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 16:11:21 +0000

Hamilton similar to Chipper. He was great last year–for his typical short run before injuries.

By: Baron Von Vulturewins

Baron Von Vulturewins — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 15:48:46 +0000

@Ashley: re: NBA vs. NFL vs. MLB. I agree there’s some element of skills here — hitting a baseball is considered about the hardest thing in sports. Also, there seems to be a much smaller skills-gap between college football/basketball and the real thing than there is between minor league baseball and major league baseball. That said: Kwame Brown, Greg Oden (so far), Brian Bosworth, Ryan Leaf, etc etc etc etc etc. There are busts in all sports.

re: your picks. I’m no keeper league expert, so I’ll just go on the players you’ve targeted. All those are reasonable choices. I assume you need steals, which puts Ellsbury over, say, Granderson, who I like better across the board. But your team seems stacked for power.

I have to admit I’m souring more and more on Alexei. Granted, if he only does what he did last year, he’ll still be valuable. And he could blossom into Soriano Lite. But free-swinging hackers tend to be bust-friendly. All pitchers have to do is figure out the one pitch they can’t lay off of, then throw that pitch, a lot. This is a tried-and-true recipe for Bust Pie.

Given you have a few one-year-wonder guys like Hamilton and Quentin (both of whom I expect to do well again, if healthy) you might want to minimize risk by taking guys like Gonzo and possibly Atkins over Davis. I mean, Davis could be huge, Bruce could be huge, Alexei could be huge — they ain’t all going to be huge, however. Take this from a guy who bet hard on up-and-comers last year (BJ Upton, Rios, Frenchy, Zimmerman) — i.e. all guys I believed would be significantly better than they’d be — and all of whom were worse than expected, especially power wise. Needless to say, it cost me last year.

Davis has great power but not everyone in Texas will hit 40 HRs — it’s just not statistically likely. That said, I like him at 3B. And I like Alexei at SS better than 2B, and don’t see him as significantly more risky than Tulo. Everyone has their caveats. You could go with what you have here and be very happy.

By: bpasinko

bpasinko — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 14:54:04 +0000

I don’t necessarily prefer how in baseball a guy like Hamilton may bust. But I don’t like how in NBA there is literally no roster turnover.

In baseball young studs come in and out of nowhere and a bad team that works the free agent wire well can get infinitely better. In the NBA the only time you can change your roster is if someone is out for the year or there is a trade. There isn’t enough playing time to go around, almost feel stuck.

Once in a while you get lucky and grab Al Harrington before he’s traded, but you can’t compare to the Brauns, Hamiltons, Bruces that come up and help your team, or random career years like Huff.

Kind of unrelated but, does anyone have any experiences with Brady Anderson screwing over their team after that one season?

By: Johnny

Johnny — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 05:22:30 +0000

Josh could bring 1st round value, hitting 40 hr’s, 130 rbis, and jumping over buildings. Albeit very small buildings. Ok, picnic tables.

So I could see his upside as a 1st rounder. But I’m thinking his downside is a 10th rounder with half a season missed or playing hurt with poor numbers.

For my part I could see drafting him if the draft is held early March and then as spring or April heats up get a kings ransom for him. I’ve seen far too many salesmen type managers excel at this strategy to discount it.