I hope I didn’t scare all of Razzball away last week when I took shots at Grey’s rankings. A long beautiful relationship could be in the near future for us. I CAN’T screw this up. Today, we’ll take a step back and look at one player I’m not enjoying as much as Grey. In this instance, Grey doesn’t love him too much either, I just have much lower expectations for this mystery man (if the title didn’t spoil it for you). There was a legal case where someone, we’ll call him/her Joshua, sued a dry cleaner for $60+ million because he claimed the pants he received were not his. I’ll repeat this for you: he goes and sues for what he believes was an improper exchange of pants. WHO THE **** DOES THAT? He later decided, oh, $53 million would do if you want to settle. I mean, come on dude, how big of a A-hole do you have to be do this to someone, let alone for a pair of pants? So the judge in this case decided this man is spewing venom, trying to take advantage of the owners and quickly ruled in opposition of Joshua and charged him to pay the legal fees of the defendants. Want to hear something funny? Joshua couldn’t even prove that the pants they gave him were not his. You see Joshua here? Don’t be like Joshua.
Now let’s get down to business. I strongly dislike Grey’s rankings of Freddie Freeman. He’s a solid contact 1B that strikes out over 20% of the time, has very average power, and plays on a terrible team. Let’s look at his hit tool first; I expect him to get on base well, hit for a solid average… but that’s the extent of it as his team’s lineup is just abysmal. The Braves second best hitter is debatable, but can either be Hector Oliveira or Nick Markakis, and I expect either of them to have very lackluster counting-stats this coming season. If Freeman doesn’t surpass 80 runs or RBI’s, I wouldn’t be surprised. His hit tool is plus, sure, and a consistently high BABIP (.280+) should be in the cards. He also walks well, but with bad-to-mediocre protection, that might come down a bit.
And his power tool especially is something that bothers me a lot when I’m taking a corner hitter. You have a great deal of power in the first three rounds, and I’m almost guaranteeing I’m taking one of them already and not worrying about needing 30+ HR from a power position when power is lacking in this day and age. I want to have one of Goldy, Rizzo, Abreu, Miggy, Encarnacion, Davis, or Votto. He’s played five seasons so far, in the prime of his career, and has never hit more than 23 homeruns. Freeman was never a power guy in the minors either and I have no reason to believe he would start now. Add in he is recovering from a wrist injury and the power is even lower for me. I’m not loving Grey’s ranking here, and it’d be okay to grab him right around where Grey has Freeman ranked, but I’d rather just wait or buy something else. 2016 Season Projections: 78/20/75/.288/2.
