Owing Us Some Back Stats, and the Top 100 Hitters, Week 5

I’ll be honest, picking a creeper early in the year is not an easy task. We have small sample sizes to work with, players under performing and pitchers very hard to predict. I ask myself every week as I prepare these: what angle can I find to make a call? What is a constant that doesn’t change? Where are my pants? Well, the third question is nearly impossible to answer because it’s like trying to figure out where Jimmy Hoffa is buried. The other two are things we always look for, regardless of what point of the season we are at, are park factors, lefty/righty match-ups, Schmotatoness, and batter vs. pitcher history. For example, this week, Brad Miller plays six games and for five of them, he faces right-handers. On the year, he bats .348 against RHP (good thing), but among the five he faces this week, he bats .191 against (not so good), and Hitter-Tron (-$2.5) says he won’t be any good. I’ll pass too. That’s a little snapshot into my process.  This week, I’m going for Schomtatoness and park factors to make my call. Would you like to hear more? Oh c’mon, I’ll give you some Arby’s coupons? Dairy Queen? Fine, then skip to the top 100 and we can fight about that in the comments instead.

This week 9.1% owned Chris Owings gets the Creeper treatment. What is the Creeper treatment J-FOH? Oh, hi there Sky, what are you doing back in my post. I hurt my back dunking on some Oregon football players and enjoy badgering you. Damn, you are the man in b-ball. I know, but why don’t you just answer the question so I can get out of here. The creeper treatment is my version of the Wonderlic test. Where I figuratively and sometimes literally lick the player and wonder what they taste like. This week Chris Owings tastes like Snozzberries. Mmmmhhhhh the ladies love the Snozzberries. Above, I mentioned that I lean heavily on park factors and Schomtatoness early in the year and that is what I’m doing for Owings. He opens the week with a three games series in everyone’s favorite launching pad, Coors Canaveral. Being that he is a right handed hitter you would think I would be playing the split but that hasn’t been the case for him in 2015. He has a .281/.056 righty/lefty split and I’m going to roll with him on that. He faces three right handers in this series and as Grey projected him to have 10 homers this year, I’m going to predict he gets a dong this week. Following the Colorado series he gets to go back home to hitter friendly Chase Field and face 4 more righties. Over his short career he is a .299 hitter at home and thats good enough for me. It’s also good enough for Hitter-Tron who gives hm a dollar value of $18.9 for the week. Oh yeah, I forgot about the Schmotatoness factor. Over the last 15 days he’s batted .288 with 1 knock and 4 bags. He lulled a bit this last week but I wouldn’t worry. He’s been batting 2nd in front of Goldy lately and you can’t complain about location. If you lost Jose Reyes or are searching for a frankeninfidel then I recommend you roll out Owings this week, he owes us for not coming hot out of the gate as many predicted him breaking out this year and taking that step forward.

This week is probably the toughest if you are going Frankencatcher. With the injuries among all the elite backstops your choices are about as slim to none as you can get. I’m still liking Kevin Plawecki (8.0%) and if Nick Hundley (20.3%) is available I would snatch him up for his homestand this week. Watch the Detroit catcher situation closely, hot hitting James McCann (0.0%) has been stealing AB’s away from Alex Avila and with three lefties slated for the Tigers this week I would batty call McCann if you’re a frankencatcher playa’. If you are an owner that can’t batty call and need to go upside then I would take J.T. Realmuto. He flashed a little pop and a surprising amount of speed in the minors (40 SB’s from 2012-2014) and won’t lose any plaing time to Jeff Mathis.

Top-100 Hitters, Week 5

DL – Yasiel Puig, Anthony Rendon, Jose Reyes, David Wright, Hunter Pence, Alex Rios, Christian Yelich

• There is one name I really want on this list and thats Alex Guerrero. He’s a top 100 hitter for me. He might rot on your bench half the time but when he plays he outperforms a bunch of these other knuckleheads. It’s funny but not really…fundrum!…I went to the glossary and thought we had the term MADDENing in there to describe what it was like owning Tampa Bay players when Joe Madden was their skipper. For those that forgot, he was the bench coach under the Sciosciapath. Well Mattingly has been Mattining this year with how he handles good hitters. Joe you got competition.
• The jinx is in, I have finally moved Hanley up my ranks. His numbers are off the charts and swinging like he means it. Oh Hanley, you are so good when you want to be. When will he decide he has done enough and take his annual mystery sabatical to the DL? I got June 12th on my pool. I still don’t trust him long term but that’s just me being me. Interesting side note, his only extra base hits are homeruns.
• Another guy I was bearish on was Starling Marte. He has shown that developing pop that many hoped to get when they drafted him but a HR/FB of 50% is about 37% off his career rate. It’s not sustainable. He hasn’t been stealing bases (3 on the year) and 1/3 of his hits are HR’s. The batting average is low as well as the BABIP but unless he stops trying to put everything over the fence it’s going to stay low. Don’t even get me started on that career high K-rate (32.9%). This one will be interesting to see how it plays out. Maybe he’s the Marte Party or maybe he’s going to be the Donkarte.
• Victor Martinez takes a nose dive in my ranks this week. His ISO is .015, yup that’s not a typo. He has one damn double. Thats it. One f***ing worthless double. I don’t own him anywhere and I think that knee surgery is affecting his game. He’s also old and old people take longer to recover unless they buy a nutribullet and make a superfood extract every day. Victor don’t extract.
• I’m pissed I didn’t buy a Joc Pederson shirt when I went to spring training. He’s been going Cousteau on me because he’s exploring parts of my heart I didn’t even know existed. I heart you Joc. Avisail, we are breaking up.
• Lind, Moistkisses, and Marisnick join us this week in the top 100. They barely missed the cut last week, but I couldn’t keep them out any longer. In fact our Player Rater has Marisnick as the number 6 OF on the season and me the number 20 writer….hey we don’t even have 20 writers! Playa’ Rater is a harsh pimp.
• I finally gave a bump to Pedroia but I am worried his days of swiping bags are long gone. He has one attempt on the year and got caught. Maybe he’s waiting for it to heat up so he doesn’t pull a hammy. Speaking of ham, Fatt Adams is starting to hit, must be looking for that Golden Corral endorsement deal. He’s the Buffett Baron!
• For those that avoided Alex Gordon because of the wrist issues might be missing out on the poor mans Pence. With 3 dongs since April 21st he’s showing us that boring and reliable can be a draft day discount again and again.
• Last week I got a shizz ton of crap for having Braun too high, who’s high now? The Hebrew Hammer goes out and puts up a 4/4/8 line after that nonsense and redeemed himself. Fogeddaboudit!
• Enjoy the Marisnick gif. He’s better than Yelich (they came up with the Marlins at the same time) this year and was a steal by the Astros. Love this kid.

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