I gave you a Wander Franco dart throw! Wheee! I slid a Alec Bohm dart throw in your DMs! Sexy! I alley-oop’d you a MacKenzie Gore dart throw — Horny time! — Monte Harrison — check! Tyler O’Neill? You best believe it! Kyle Lewis? Yum! Nate Pearson? *wearing a Canadian tuxedo* It was my pleasure. So, now the sexiest of the sexy, A.J. Pollock! Okay, he’s the most boring dart throw ever. He’s like the dart throw you make while reenacting a scene from Too Hot To Handle where you’re not touching anything. “Ooh, yeah, baby, how do you like that non-touching? You like that? You want more of nothing? Huh? You bad boy!” That’s me 70-something days into quarantine and slightly losing my mind. The great thing about Dodgers’ manager, Dave Roberts, okay, really the only good thing, besides his ability to steal one base so the country gets a free taco, he’s able to get a lot of players at-bats. Somehow, Roberts has always managed to get part-timers at-bats even when they didn’t have a job. Case in point, Enrique Hernandez had 460 plate appearances last year and Chris Taylor had 414. That’s with Taylor only starting 91 games, and Hernandez starting at seven positions. Dave Roberts is the ultimate Dart Thrower, because he seems to label a bunch of darts with players’ names, then throw them at a lineup card. So what can we expect from A.J. Pollock for 2020 fantasy baseball and what makes him a great dart throw?
All about that universal DH, bay-bee. With the Dodgers’ depth, they’re one of the few NL teams that can swallow up the DH and make good with it. By the way, I get now why they’re pushing for a universal DH in this shortened season. But, honestly, it’s super unfair to just about every NL team. Even the Dodgers, who have the players to DH, did not build their team all offseason to have an extra hitter in their lineup. I’m not saying the Pirates would’ve went out and actually signed a free agent hitter — never! — but if they knew all offseason they had the DH incoming, it would at least put them and all NL teams on a level playing field. Can you imagine any other season where teams had no idea of the rules going into the season? If the universal DH were actually to become rule of the land in the NL, they’d prolly give the teams about two years to prep for it. Actually, at least two years! They started playing around with a pitch clock in the Arizona Fall League in 2014 and still haven’t instituted it into the majors. Any hoo! The great thing about Pollock’s previous years is he’s injured so much he has a large sample size of small sample size seasons. In 2017, he went 14/20/.266 in 112 games; in 2018, he went 21/13/.257 in 113 games and last year he went 15/5/.266 in 86 games. If there’s at-bats for Pollock, and he’s healthy, well, let’s look at the Steamer projections for him in 93 games: 50/16/54/.254/7 in 400 PAs (projections there are for him in 241 PAs, but I roughly prorated them up). That’s basically a number three outfielder in a 100-game season, and, if there’s only 82 games, he’s prorated down, but won’t lose his value. Pollock might not be as exciting as some other dart throws, but he feels like the kind of pick that is actually valuable vs. sexy.
