The night before I wrote this post I had a dream that Matt Adams was painted green from head to toe and sitting above Mike Matheny who was dressed as Princess Leia in a bikini as I bartered for the return of the carbon-frozen Grady Sizemore, after we went nipple shopping and Matt Adams decided on silver dollar ones. I think I have to do less Soda Streaming prior to bedtime. At least I wasn’t dreaming about Candy Crush. (BTW, if you’re seeing the symbol for AT&T and thinking it looks like a blue striped candy, you need other hobbies. Totally speaking from experience here.) Let’s see if we can get excited about Matt Adams without picturing him slowly unlatching his bra. Last year, Fatt had more homers than anyone with so few plate appearances (the only other players that were even close were Hanley Ramirez and Wilson Ramos). In just 319 plate appearances, he hit 17 homers. This comes in an era when 24 homers is a lot — hey, Joey Votto, I’m subtly looking in your direction. Adams also hit .284 with a ton of counting stats for the amount of plate appearances he saw. Then again, everyone on the Cardinals had counting stats last year. Matt Adams, I understood the most. He loves ribbies. Anyway, what can we expect from Matt Adams for 2014 fantasy baseball and what makes him a sleeper?
Regarding his .284 average, he did it with a BABIP almost as robust as his gut at .337. That’s actually near his career average, so he’s closer to neutral luck there than it might seem. His homers per fly ball probably won’t stay at 21.8% as it was last year, but he doesn’t hit a ton of Barely Out of the Park’ers either. He hit almost none, actually. He hit a few Barely Inside The Park’ers, which he called long singles. He should hit in the heart of the order when he plays, which brings me to my one big concern. The Cardinals could go out and find a 1st baseman to platoon with Matt Adams. They could go into the season saying Fatt’s their 1st baseman, and I still don’t trust the Cardinals to give anyone 500 at-bats aside from Matt Carpenter and Yadier Molina. They could give Pete Kozma 600 ABs at 1st base and win the pennant. They could hit Daniel Descalso leadoff and win 110 games. It’s too easy for the Cardinals and their stupid culture of winning. “Ooh, we’re the Cardinals and we could win a World Series with Sugar Shane Robinson as our cleanup hitter.” You can’t even get mad at the Cardinals because ‘they do it the right way.’ Whatever that means! Do they play for free or donate all of their salaries to the Ronald McDonald House? McGwire hit a brick house of bad pub and left a giant skidmark smeared onto his legacy, but you rarely hear anything about the team he played for during some of his formidable years. Were the Cardinals unaware their star player was bench pressing 475 pounds and had Japanese tourists doing helicopter tours of his bacne craters? Well, whatever the case, I’ll assume Adams gets 450 ABs and project him for 69/25/76/.259/1. As with all sleepers, and why they are sleepers, I could see a lot more upside from Adams. Assuming I’m not standing under him. Then I’m just seeing roundside.
