Kendry Morales, 2009 Fantasy Sleeper
March 18, 2009
Category: 2009 Fantasy Baseball Draft, 2009 Sleepers
Remember the blonde chick from the The Real World: Hawaii, who, like, totally fell for Colin? She was the cute girl with the young grandmother body. You know who I’m talking about? Cool. Yeah, she’s not Kendry Morales. Kendry Morales is the doode that the Angels are putting in as their starting 1st baseman. Joly Hesus! A prospect that is going to be playing 1st for an AL team that scores runs like an NL team! How did you miss that, right? Pretty easily. He’s sizz-ucked in his limited time in the majors. In 127 games in the Majors, he’s sitting on a career line of 12/45/.249 with no speed. If you were a Benihana chef, you’d cut the tail of those numbers and flip ‘em into your hat. So what is it that I like about Kendry Morales that makes him a 2009 fantasy sleeper?
Opportunity knocks, Dana Carvey! This spring Kendry Morales is going to get a chance to prove his minor league numbers are no fluke. In the last 6 years, Morales has hit .337 with a .393 OBP through Cuban leagues and the minors. In Triple-A, he has 317 ABs and hit .341 with 15 HRs and a .377 OBP. At some point, Morales’s eye should translate to the major league level, or at least one would hope. Unfortunately, he won’t have 1st base eligibility until he plays some games at 1st in April, but he should get the eligibility soon enough. He’s not going to explode for power suddenly. 20 home runs seems to be about his ceiling. So I guess he’s boring the big boy pants off of you. The only difference between Conor Jackson and Kendry Morales could be 7 steals. For a guy that is going undrafted in lots of leagues, Kendry Morales is a solid AL-Only fantasy sleeper and an endgame target in mixed leagues if you need average and some power.
Tags: 2009 fantasy baseball, 2009 Fantasy Baseball Draft, fantasy sleepers, Kendry Morales
March 18th, 2009 at 11:18 am
yes i been watching him also,where he bats in the order could help also,what do you think of kotchman with the braves this year?290-15-85?
@AL KOHOLIC: I like Kotchman too and he’s in a similar vein to Morales, but I like Morales a bit more.
March 18th, 2009 at 11:32 am
abreau hitting 2nd,vlad then hunter,morales hitting 5th looks like some rbi`s,probably typical angel runs scored though,75-80,still not bad for a late rounder,or in my auction draft where obp and k`s for hitters count
@AL KOHOLIC: Yup, agree totally.
March 18th, 2009 at 11:49 am
i know its baseball time,,but being a louisvilleian(pronounced)loolvul, GO CARDS!!!
March 18th, 2009 at 11:58 am
@Grey:Thanks for the tip on Morales,I bumped Aaron Hill to give him a spot on my bench.One good turn deserves a video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tK5gYqJymIU
@Doug Ault: Nice. “Fourth place in what division?”
March 18th, 2009 at 12:04 pm
@Grey – I like Kendry. I drafted him the last round of a fairly deep league and I’m looking to get some production out of him. What is your current five category projection on him? Same as the one you already did? I heard he was going to bat sixth behind Rivera. What have you heard?
@Bob: 65/17/80/.285
March 18th, 2009 at 1:04 pm
Doooode!!! The Nats cut Baby Webb! WTF?
March 18th, 2009 at 1:09 pm
@Grey, @DougAult – As I previously indicated, I prefer Toronto to Las Vegas. How ’bout them apples, Chipper?!
March 18th, 2009 at 1:19 pm
@Bob:Chipper needs a new tour guide, Toronto is alot of things, but boring aint one of them.
@JR: Huh?
@Bob: I prefer Montreal to both.
March 18th, 2009 at 1:29 pm
@Grey
Mr. Shawn Hill
@JR: Oh. Ha! Bummer. Yeah, he’ll be back, barring injury, so maybe a 50% chance of him returning. I’d put his over/under of GS at 15 and I’d take the under, but if he gets those 15 starts, he’s good.
EDIT: Typo. Word.
March 18th, 2009 at 1:37 pm
@Grey: Montreal? feh
It’s all downhill after a corned beef at Ben’s
@Doug Ault: I just remember being able to (legally) drink and go to strip clubs when I was younger. That leaves a good impression.
March 18th, 2009 at 2:05 pm
Morales? Borales. WGAS I say.
The chick from Real World Hawaii was not cute. There was no redeeming quality to her other than her tats.
March 18th, 2009 at 3:11 pm
@Grey: Don’t Canadian women have to wear pasties though?
@Frank Rizzo: Well, she wasn’t hot, but I’d peg her as cute.
@BigFatHippo: Those are maple leafs.
March 18th, 2009 at 6:02 pm
Apologies for the link away, but this is funny (to me anyway):
http://mlb.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20090318&content_id=4024744&vkey=news_mlb&fext=.jsp&c_id=mlb
For some classic big hitting check this out:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ABVP4zvpMFw
The fun starts at about 2:30
@Steve: That Manny video is awesome.
“Wait, where’s the insects?”
EDIT: Typo. Word.
March 18th, 2009 at 6:32 pm
Looks like Rinku and Dinesh are not even the best cricket players in baseball now.
March 18th, 2009 at 6:38 pm
@Grey: The insects? I missed that part.
Did you check out the other clip? A famous day in New Zealand cricket. Not big in the general scheme of things, obviously, but you know what I mean.
@Steve: I did see the other clip, but, and I hope we can still be friends, I don’t understand cricket.
March 18th, 2009 at 6:43 pm
@Grey: I tried, Grey, I tried:
http://razzball.com/andrew-mccutchen-2009-fantasy-outlook/#comments
March 18th, 2009 at 6:45 pm
@Steve: I don’t get it either, what’s 6 sixes?
In our world, that’s double evil.
@Steve: I remember but I haven’t been following The Grand Old Game, as they say in your parts. Or not, I have no idea.
@BigFatHippo: That’s boxcars!
March 18th, 2009 at 6:50 pm
@BigFatHippo: In cricket, a ’six’ is when you hit the ball to and over the boundary – the ‘fence’, if you will.
So called because the batsman (batter) gets six ‘runs’ (points) for doing so.
To do what the guy in the clip did (to do it six times in such a short time) is very rare. Especially when he has very fast bowers bowling to him.
March 18th, 2009 at 6:55 pm
Sorry to clog up the thread, but here’s how cricket is exlpained to foreigners…
You have two sides, one out in the field and one in. Each man that’s in the side that’s in goes out, and when he’s out he comes in and the next man goes in until he’s out. When they are all out, the side that’s out comes in and the side thats been in goes out and tries to get those coming in, out. Sometimes you get men still in and not out.
When a man goes out to go in, the men who are out try to get him out, and when he is out he goes in and the next man in goes out and goes in. There are two men called umpires who stay all out all the time and they decide when the men who are in are out. When both sides have been in and all the men have out, and both sides have been out twice after all the men have been in, including those who are not out, that is the end of the game!
*** If anyone cares…
I’m ranking in Sportsline for my AL-Only league. Sportsline has good functionality, but their projections are silly. In what world is Brandon Wood hitting 17 HRs? Fairy tale world? Is this draft happening in fairy tale world? I forget. I thought it was happening in the real world. I need to check this.
March 18th, 2009 at 6:59 pm
@Grey: That’s 2 sixes, 5 is Yahtzee (turn em upside down you got 35), 6 is a Cricket thing. 1 is, well, 6……..I need another beer…….
@Steve: They should call it The Ol’ In N Out!
Snap! Us Americans are ignorant!
March 18th, 2009 at 7:02 pm
@Steve: OK, now I’m really confused. Umpires are players?
March 18th, 2009 at 7:05 pm
Would you drop Danks, Wang, Balfour or Saunders for Nunez?
While ranking his AL-Only team, Grey, “Who are you DeWayne Wise? I know DeWayne Wayne. I know Duane Reade. I do not know you DeWayne Wise.”*
*I do. It’s from this riff Pedro Martinez did about Karim Garcia. I wish I could find it on Youtube. It’s classic.
@Doc: I’d drop Saunders, unless you really need starters, then I’d drop Balfour.
March 18th, 2009 at 7:08 pm
@BigFatHippo: No. They are there only to adjudicate as in baseball.
March 18th, 2009 at 7:10 pm
@Grey: Who is Karim Garcia? Classic Pedro, I remember that.
@Grey: Um, the video’s all over the internet. Try Google.
March 18th, 2009 at 11:07 pm
@Steve:im having trouble on here already and you throw that grasshopper game at me,,wasnt that on abbout and costello ,,gotta agree with hippo,,i need another drink
March 18th, 2009 at 11:38 pm
@AL KOHOLIC: Just keeping you on your toes.
March 19th, 2009 at 6:29 am
I don’t want this to sound pretentious; I’m not trying to imply that I rub elbows with very important people in the world of Major League Baseball. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, I am an unqualified nothing-burger in the circles of the professional sports world (but I stayed at a Holiday Inn Express last night). Anyway… on one occasion I met an MLB scout assigned to Cuba (he’s a Canadian citizen, in case you’re wondering how an MLB scout could roam freely in the land of Fidel Castro – maybe this happens anyway). Cuba is a very popular tourist destination for Canadians who become immiserated by our intolerable winters. But I digress….
This, for me, was a rare opportunity to pick the brain of a qualified, professional assessor of baseball talent (no, it wasn’t Matthew Berry). As a fantasy baseball enthusiast, I was interested in the upside potential of certain Cuban players, and Kendry Morales was amongst them. The scout’s comments concerning Kendry Morales were less than flattering. In fact, the scout described Kendry Morales as being one the least (if not -the- least) intelligent baseball players he’d ever scouted. Apparently, aside from a mediocre skill set, Kendry Morales is intellectually challenged to the point where he can barely even process batting signs. His exact words to describe Morales: “grossly overrated”. It seems that Kendry Morales is the Derek Zoolander of baseball players, except he hasn’t retained Maury Ballstein as his agent and he doesn’t involve himself in gasoline fights.
Anyway, the story reminded me a bit of former Dodgers’ slugger Pedro Guerrero’s post-retirement struggles with the law http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/baseball/mlb/news/2000/06/06/roundup_ap/. The CliffsNotes version of the story is that, in 1999, Pedro Guerrero was arrested by the D.E.A. for conspiracy to traffic cocaine. At trial, his lawyer successfully argued that Guerrero’s I.Q. (70) was too low for him to comprehend the fact that he was involved in a drug deal. On a personal level, I’ve relied on the “ignorance” excuse many times in my dealings with my wife (thought the dishes were already clean, thought she was washing the bed sheets so I didn’t bother to make the bed, etc., etc.). As it turns out, the “idiot defense” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idiot_defense can be employed to absolve us not only from irritating our spouses, but even felonious acts punishable by life in prison. Good to know, because I’m way too pretty to go to prison.
Anyway, the scout -did- sing the praises of Chicago White Sox prospect Dayan Viciedo, whom he’d been following since Viciedo was 16. Take this for whatever it’s worth, but he envisioned Viciedo as having the potential to mature into a 35+ home run hitter with plus batting average at the Major League level.
March 19th, 2009 at 6:59 am
Thanks Grey.
March 19th, 2009 at 1:58 pm
@101 M.P.H.: Kendry Morales: A model, idiot.
March 19th, 2009 at 3:44 pm
@Josh: Kendry Morales can dere-lick his own balls, thank you very much….