With the Phillies minor league preview coming up this week and recent trade rumors surrounding the Phillies' ace, I thought it would be worth checking in on Cole Hamels and where his value stands right now in fantasy - particularly in keeper leagues. In some very early 2015 rankings, Hamels has appeared in the #10-#12 range. I don't disagree with that ranking, but I've also seen him listed as a pitcher to avoid and some scuttlebutt about Amaro being to aggressive in his asking price for Hamels in trades. There is never a shortage of opinions on the internet, and attempts to devalue assets in real life sometimes carries over into our fantasy rosters - leading us to question our players. I'm hoping that's not the case with Hamels, who remains one of the best pitchers in baseball and is deserving of the #1 slot in fantasy rotations. Anything less is undervaluing him in my mind.
Monthly Archives: November 2014
Learn more about our 2025 Fantasy Baseball Subscriptions!
The best daily/weekly player rankings/projections (hitters, starters, and relievers) for each of the next 7-10 days + next calendar week starting Friday. Kick-ass DFS lineup optimizer and projections for DraftKings, FanDuel, and Yahoo!.
I don’t have enough spam, give me the Razzball email newsletter!
Weekly Razzball news delivered straight to your inbox.
2015 NL Top 10 Fantasy Prospects Index
November 29, 2014 | Fantasy Baseball Prospects | 11 Commentsby: Mike
This index is a compilation of the National League top ten prospect lists publishing this offseason at Razzball. Click on a team name to view the original posts with commentary on each player listed. Clicking on a player's name will take you to their Razzball player page with stats, projections, etc. The index will be updated as each new top ten is released, but the rankings will not change once they are posted.
Offseason Stock Report: Early Round Busts
November 28, 2014 | Uncategorized | 78 Commentsby: Big Magoo
Greetings and welcome to the first installment of the offseason stock report. If you love this silly, fake game as much as I do, you’ve either shined up your 2014 winner's trophy several times and have shamelessly admired it since the end of the season or have shed many tears over the disappointing fantasy results that you've just endured. Either way, it's time to move on and look forward to the start of the 2015 season.
In this series, I will attempt to analyze the performances of various players from this past season and project what can be expected from them next season. After digging into all of the underlying peripheral statistics, each player will be deemed either a “buy” or a “sell” depending on whether he can be expected to improve, regress, or maintain his most recent level of production. Much like commodities on the actual stock market, the idea is to buy low on a player that stands to gain value in the near future while selling high on one that is likely to lose value. Of course, players who are already valued highly but appear likely to maintain a high level of production should be targeted, while players who have experienced a sharp decrease in value and appear unlikely to improve upon their current production levels should be avoided.
Without further ado, let’s dig into three of the biggest early round busts from the ’14 season and decide if their poor results are a sign of things to come or if a rebound is on the horizon.
This was a yearly tradition until I didn't do it last year, so I've decided to bring it back and make it a semi-annual tradition. Semi-annual traditions are better anyway. They're not as stuffy as annual traditions, being run by a timetable and whatnot. They come and go as they please. ESPN Fantasy Baseball is the number one result in Google when you search fantasy baseball. Yay, for them. But what are people searching Google for when they find Razzball? Since it’s a holiday, I decided to break away from the normal schedule of 2015 fantasy baseball rookies and look at exactly what people do search Google for when they find us. These are all queries straight from our analytics. Last year, we had our biggest year. Over 15 million people found us. (I think about 14.9 million found us with the search query “What is SAGNOF?” Neverthehoo…) That’s a big Happy Thanksgiving to you from all of us here at Razzball. On a side note, I was hospitalized the last two nights with a kidney stone. Why has no comic book hero ever faced a 4-foot tall villain named Kidney Stone? A millimeter-sized one is incapacitating, forget a dwarf-sized one. As I lay in the hospital, I thought about what a lousy way to spend Thanksgiving. Then Cougs posted in the comments the other day what was happening with me, and I realized this wasn't a bad way to spend Thanksgiving. This was spending it with some of those that I am most grateful for. You. Oh my God, go to the hospital for two days and suddenly you sound reborn into a sap. I'm fine, out of the hospital now, but I might be a bit touch and go until Monday. Anyway, here are 20 actual Google searches for people who found Razzball and my answers to their Google searches:
2015 Minor League Preview: Washington Nationals
November 26, 2014 | Fantasy Baseball Prospects | 19 Commentsby: Mike
Organizational Talent Rankings via Baseball America
2014 (24) | 2013 (13) | 2012 (1) | 2011 (14) | 2010 (24)
2014 Affiliate Records
MLB: [96-66] NL East
AAA: [81-62] International League - Syracuse
AA: [53-89] Eastern League - Harrisburg
A+: [78-58] Carolina League - Potomac
A: [87-53] South Atlantic League - Hagerstown
A(ss): [34-41] New York-Penn League - Auburn
Graduated Prospects
None
The Gist
The Nationals won 96 regular season games in 2014 but were eliminated in the NLDS by the Giants. Along the way, Anthony Rendon emerged as one of the best young players in the National League and Bryce Harper returned from injury to have a solid second half. Harper just turned 22 in October. Tanner Roark took the fifth starter gig and ran with it, rounding out a nasty starting rotation. Unlike some other contenders, the Nationals' farm is in good shape. In addition to the talented major league rotation, the Nats have some of the best pitching prospects in the minors. They are also loaded with toolsy outfielders that could contribute to the major league roster soon or be used as trade bait to fill other needs. In the 2014 draft Washington used its first round pick to land even more pitching - drafting right-hander Erick Fedde 18th overall.
Red Sox Reorient With Panda And Han Lee
November 25, 2014 | Fantasy Baseball Daily Notes | 71 Commentsby: Grey
Earlier this offseason, it was reported that the Red Sox coaches didn't like Yoenis Cespedes. Wait until they get a load of Hanley Ramirez! If you were to put "Happiness That You Have Hanley" on the Y-axis and "Time Spent With Hanley" on the X-axis, you would find a line that starts at the top left and slopes right down to the bottom right. For what it's Wuertz, the enjoyment of Hanley matches directly with the chart of Pancake Eating. After one bite, "Mmm, that is delicious." After two bites, "Not bad at all." After three bites, "I'm gonna try and douse these with some maple syrup." After ten bites, "You gonna share your bacon or should I order my own?" That's Hanley. Try to douse him with maple syrup, but when it's July and your team is in the pennant chase and he has a sore hamstring, enjoy! From a real baseball standpoint, I hate the move for the Red Sox. You had Xander Bogaerts for short, you nabbed Panda for 3rd (which I'll get to shortly) and now you have Hanley playing left and Home Run Derby Champion Yoenis that you have to trade for the most you can get. (By the by, I love that everyone refers to Yoenis as Home Run Derby Champion Yoenis, so I will now do the same.) That's not even mentioning Allen Craig, Will Middlebrooks, Mookie Betts, Jackie Bradley, Daniel Nava and Juan Francisco. It's kinda sad that all of those guys would be starting for the Padres (and Astros and Marlins and about ten other teams) and for the Red Sox they're trade bait. Maybe the Red Sox will also sign Han's brother, Head. From a fantasy perspective, this is about as good as it gets for Hanley. Will this mean he'll play 150 games? No, I didn't say that. It's hard to account for insouciance (Word of the Day!). If he shows up at Fenway in April and wants to play, great. If he shows up at Fenway in April and doesn't want to play until August, it wouldn't surprise me. If we get 150 games from him (it will be nothing short of a miracle), I'd give him the projections of 86/24/91/.266/17. I'd only count on a 130 games though, which would knock him to 72/20/84/.268/12. Anyway, here’s some more offseason moves for 2015 fantasy baseball:
Dalton Pompey, 2015 Fantasy Outlook
November 24, 2014 | Fantasy Baseball Rookies | 80 Commentsby: Grey
Rock Master Scott from Rock Master Scott & the Dynamic Three, famous for the song, The Roof is on Fire, was vacationing with his family in Pompeii, Italy in the early 1980s, when he saw the ruins in the volcanic ash. He passed his Minolta camera to his grandma, so it wouldn't bang into anything, and laid on the ground, mimicking a victim from 79 AD. Then, he started screaming the chorus to his now famous song, only since his family was there, he screamed, "Let the motherfudger burn. Burn, motherfudger, burn." This is a little known fact, similar to the little known rookie prospect, Dalton Pompey. He was barely inside the top 20 for Jays prospects coming into this year. Some people ranked Kevin Pillar above him. The same Kevin Pillar who is followed on Twitter by the Sons of Pam Porn for his conversations with Jason Paritek and Curt Pilling. The same Pillar who is a platoon outfielder at best. The problem with the rankings of others is they are ranking for real baseball value. A center fielder like Pompey, who can hit .250 and steal 30 bases, doesn't exactly fly the pants flag when it comes to real world prospects. To illustrate, let's go into the Fantasy Time Machine. In 2007, the Giants received a marginal prospect from the Pirates. A hitter that was ranked the 27th best prospect on the Pirates at the time, in a system that was awful. Baseball Prospectus said at the time, "The Giants didn't trade much and got less in return with Rajai." Another article called Rajai, "a non-prospect." A third article says, "Rajai Davis, the main player the Giants acquired in the deal, presents low upside." All Rajai had was speed. Rajai hasn't stolen less than 34 bases in any year since 2009 and has three years above 40 steals while also being crowned The King of SAGNOF. Last year alone, Rajai was the 35th ranked outfielder in fantasy. A) No one knows anything about what a player will do. They're all guessing. B) The one thing you can count on translating from the minor leagues to the majors is speed. C) There's no C. Anyway, what can we expect of Dalton Pompey for 2015 fantasy baseball?
Minor Accomplishments: Winter League Update
November 23, 2014 | Fantasy Baseball Prospects | 18 Commentsby: Mike
Put down the turkey leg and up your bandwidth. This is the part where we all huddle around the warm glow of our computer screens to watch streaming video from countries not buried in seven feet of snow. Dust off your Spanish dictionary - it's time for the winter leagues. Granted there will be names you've never heard of but there are cheerleaders...and prospects. There are also some major leaguers getting in the extra reps before we put a bow on 2014. Several leagues playing now will continue until the end of December, but the majority of the players we follow are concentrated in the Dominican and Venezuelan leagues, so we'll roll with them for the most part. Just like the AFL, these are small sample sizes and the competition varies, but some performances stand out and are worth mentioning. Plus dynasty players don't know the meaning of the word offseason. Here, in no particular order, are some of the players that have stood out to me in the winter leagues so far (stats through Friday)...
Alex Guerrero, 2015 Fantasy Outlook
November 21, 2014 | Fantasy Baseball Rookies | 246 Commentsby: Grey
Let's put it out there upfront, the Dodgers shouldn't re-sign Hanley Ramirez. Only Earvin Johnson III's stylist knows exactly what Magic is thinking when it comes to throwing money at a problem. (By the by, am I the only one that thinks Magic's son may have been a hospital mix-up and is really Charles Barkley's kid? Could he be The Round Mound Sausage Hound? Earvin Johnson III goes by E.J., and Barkley works on TNT with Ernie Johnson, who goes by E.J. Hmm...) Maybe the Dodgers do re-sign Hanley and then Alex Guerrero becomes a platoon player-slash-fills in for Hanley when he invariably hits the DL and/or doesn't feel like playing for a month. His last year in Triple-A proved Guerrero can at least compete in the majors. His stats were 15 homers, 4 steals and a .329 average in 65 games. Of course, that was in the PCL, so translating those stats to Earth stats and you have about 7 homers, 2 steals and a .270 average. Not mind-blowing, but remember that's in only 65 games, so it's not as awful as it sounds either. A film starring Alex Guerrero called, "Alex Guerrero, He's Not Awful." Aw, c'mon, baseball players are like us, they have feelings too, and that's not nice. He floated a far way on a raft while eating nothing but Cuban sandwiches, let's give him the benefit of the doubt. Hint to Fidel: maybe you allow the citizens of your country everything, except rafts. I don't know, I'm merely a genius on paper. Anyway, what can we expect of Alex Guerrero for 2015 fantasy baseball?
Aaron Sanchez, 2015 Fantasy Outlook
November 20, 2014 | Fantasy Baseball Rookies | 116 Commentsby: Grey
*rubs hands together, flour residue and sweat mix together forming pizza dough, places pizza dough in oven, pulls out pizza* Hey, I got an excitement pizza for Aaron Sanchez! Or maybe I should just wash my hands. Nah, this is an excitement pizza! Now, hold on, before you start stuffing your mouth with this excitement pizza, we should discuss why it's so delicious. Last year in a two-month-long foodie festival that is called, A Taste of the Majors, Sanchez had a 1.09 ERA with a 7.4 K/9 in 33 IP. Hey, boring, drop your R because I have a boing! Know what his fastball averaged? 97 MPH. This is weird, I hate camping, but I'm sure pitching tents! I kinda just want to stare at the words-slash-numerals "97 MPH fastball" for a little while longer. Okay, kids might be reading so I need to move on. I'm just feeling so frisky. (Frisky should be spelled frisque; you messed up, English language.) Unfortch, Sanchez was working in middle relief last year with the Blue Jays. "Don't play in a Holds league, Grey, let's move on!" Wait a second, Jumpy McJumpstein, Sanchez was predominately a starter in the minors, and the Blue Jays were trying to keep his innings down. Jumpy McJumpstein, "Okay, I'll calm down. Plus, that Third Eye Blind song just came on '90s on 9!" Anyway, what can we expect of Aaron Sanchez for 2015 fantasy baseball?
2015 Minor League Preview: Seattle Mariners
November 19, 2014 | Fantasy Baseball Prospects | 33 Commentsby: Mike
Organizational Talent Rankings via Baseball America
2014 (25) | 2013 (2) | 2012 (9) | 2011 (18) | 2010 (12)
2014 Affiliate Records
MLB: [87-75] AL West
AAA: [74-70] Pacific Coast League - Tacoma
AA: [63-76] Southern League - Jackson
A+: [66-74] California League - High Desert (2015: Bakersfield)
A: [61-77] Midwest League - Clinton
A(ss): [28-48] Northwest League - Everett
Graduated Prospects
Taijuan Walker, RHP | James Paxton, LHP | Roenis Elias, RHP | Stefen Romero, OF | James Jones, OF | Dominic Leone, RHP
The Gist
The Mariners just missed the playoffs in 2014 and graduated several quality prospects along the way. Felix Hernandez and Hisashi Iwakuma will be joined by Taijuan Walker, James Paxton, and Roenis Elias. Elias had a solid rookie season and will look to keep that going, while Walker aims to show why he was the organization's top pitching prospect. The Mariners took one of the most exciting players in this year's draft when they selected Alex Jackson sixth overall. The farm is stocked with enough pieces to make moves at the trade deadline if they go into buy mode either in the offseason or in July. On a side note, Seattle moved out of the launching pad of High Desert and now calls Bakersfield their High-A home after this year's affiliation shuffle.
Cards Win Heyward In Shel Game
November 18, 2014 | Fantasy Baseball Daily Notes | 193 Commentsby: Grey
The Braves had the 5th best ERA last year in the major leagues. That's with a down year by Mike Minor, and injuries to Brandon Beachy and Kris Medlen. Their runs scored were second to last in the majors. Only the Padres' offense was worse. So, naturally, they trade away Jason Heyward and Jordan Walden for Shelby Miller and Tyrell Jenkins, who had a sub-5 K/9 in High-A last year. Oh...*pounds out a chicken cutlet, fills it with spinach and ricotta cheese, rolls it up, ties it with twine, bakes it on 450 for 18-22 minutes, pulls it out and breathes in the aroma* ...kay. That's the Chicken Florentine pause. Practiced by many, only able to be pulled off by a few. I rarely pull out the Chicken Florentine pause, but trading a top hitting prospect that is only 25 years old, when your team is hurting for offense, is straight up baffling with a pickleback. Are the Braves trying to bring the entire organization down to Fredi's level of intelligence? Did Fredi tell management that they had too many top of the order hitters (they have none) and they needed another arm (they don't)? Are the Braves trying to get featured in the third sequel to Major League? I got questions, y'all! From a fantasy perspective, Heyward's value goes up simply because the Cardinals are a better offensive team. Like someone doing yoga, Heyward will now be surrounded by Matts, Carpenter and Holliday. What will Heyward produce? Go ask the Sphinx. One year he looks like a 30-homer hitter, another year he looks like a middle infielder with 20 steal speed. He could be anywhere from a 15-homer guy to a 30-homer guy. The 20 steals, now in two of five seasons, looks possible, until you see he has a year of only 2 steals. His .271 average last year is around his career average (.262), so that seems repeatable, until you see his .227 average in 2011. At some point, he could have a 30-homer, 20-steal top 20 fantasy season, but to say it's definitely coming is you lying to yourself. You already lie to yourself in other areas of your life, let's not start with Heyward too. For 2015, I'll give him the projections of 91/20/75/.274/15. Anyway, here's some more offseason moves for 2015 fantasy baseball:
