Lets take the example of Joel Pineiro (he’ll be the subject of many posts this off-season).  I got into quite a row with some fantasy blogger about a month ago concerning whether Pineiro’s K/9 rate can return to 2001-2004 levels of 6.5-7.1 vs. his current 4.4 K/9 this year.  He asserted that Pineiro can actually improve from this year by upping his K/9 rate while maintaining his new GB% because Pineiro “owns” the skill of that higher k/9 rate.

I dissent.  You can’t look at Pineiro’s K/9 “skill” in a vacuum.  Instead, we must look at much more complicated skill of “demonstrating a K/9 while throwing this set of pitches”.  Pineiro’s old K/9 rate was with his old arsenal of pitches.  Now, he is throwing a sinker.  So the skill we are looking at is “the ability to strike out batters while throwing a sinker that gets 60% GB”.

So will his K/9 rate go up?  Maybe through regression, more familiarity with the sinker, etc, yes.  Because he’ll return to his old skill?  No, that’s silly.

Notes on their ideas:

1. Dukes is someone to just leave off your roster entirely.  No one will draft him.  Plus, with Willingham, Morgan, and Maxwell, where is Dukes going to play?  (I guess I’ll need to post about Maxwell soon).

2.  Callaspo is interesting, and if he’s right that he’s due for an increase in ISO, then yes, he’d be interesting.  As is, it’s mostly empty BA.

And the rest are not really worth talking much about now.

The problem is, you can’t win by spending most of your hitting dollars “at value” you’ve got to make a substantial profit.  So what should I have done?  Gone after guys Werth, Lind, and Choo instead of Hart and Rios.  I knew all about those two, I knew they were sleepers long before Matthew Berry shouted it to everyone.  Why didn’t I pick those guys?  Well, one, I was playing in a pretty good league, so they all went for around $8 so while there was profit, it wasn’t insane profit for the risk, and I didn’t go any higher.  But one of the reasons why I didn’t go higher was that I had the idea set in my mind to go after these five tool contributors.  Problem is, most of them are OF.  Finally, why did I go after OF studs like Braun and Holliday vs. guys in the infield?

Here are some truisms for any 10-12 team league where OF is pretty deep.

1. For the same price as an elite OF you can get an elite infielder

2.  Infield has less depth than OF

3.  The replacement level for OF is MUCH higher than for other positions.  So if someone doesn’t pan out, there will always be a good replacement on the waiver wire.

So what should you do?

1. Ignore most of those 5 tool contributors, usually they are not overvalued, just properly valued, someone will take them around the $14-16 range.

2.  Caveat, you still bid on these guys of course, and if they happen to fall through the cracks (I also got Hunter Pence, a comparable player for $4) great, you’ll get a good profit.

3.  Instead, you go for the sleepers.  Yes, OF sleepers end up getting shouted to the world, but hey, pay the $8 for a Werth or Lind and, worst comes to worst, you get $5-8 of value out of them.  At least you only sunk $8 of “at value” money vs. $16 of “at value” money for McLouth.  And at best, you’ve got some of the profit that you will need to win your league.

4. There are sleepers, who I define as guys waiting to break out, and then there are guys that just fly under the radar.  They are near replacement value but still better than replacement value.  Say $2-3 players who you just get for $1 or $5 you get for $2.  If you are going to do this, the best place to do it is OF because as mentioned above, the basement for OF is so much higher than the basement for every other position.

5.  During the season don’t be afraid to drop your sleeper/flyer OF guys and pick up another off the waiver wire, someone (or multiple someones) will make the leap, and just pull the trigger, you only spent $1 on the guy on your roster right?

But projections currently put him at 26 HR 27 SB .271 AVG.  A good set of numbers, but note that neither HR or SB are elite, although the combination certainly is rare.  The problem is that you can get HR hitters and SB specialists who both have .270 AVG for much cheaper than the usual $40 Sizemore goes for.

Caveat: Could he put it all together?  Yes.  A BABIP of .291 (last years) is odd on a guy so fast and with such power.  A higher AVG would mean more steals, more value from AVG, and more Runs and RBI.  But count me as one guy willing to let someone else pay for him.  What about him being injured, will so many be scared away as to make him undervalued?  Well, maybe, I’d pay 20-25 for him, but not much more.

The Conundrum here is less about his stats and more about (1) what his perceived value will be and (2) where will he be playing.

San Diego is going to have to trade him, either this winter, or during the season.  They can’t pay him, and they are so far out of contention that they need to rebuild.  And a change to anywhere else would appear to make him a 50 HR threat, well, unless he’s getting traded to an AL team, but that is another post for another day.

So what happens if everyone catches on that he might be traded or if he actually does get traded?  I think if he does get traded the hype machine explodes (rightfully so) and there is no profit to be made here, although you could probably get him at value.  But what happens if he is not traded (even though we both know he will be eventually)?  Do people remember his crazy first half, his very awful middle of the season, or just look at the 40 HR and don’t dig into the numbers?  Probably the last one, but it is at least possible that some will shy away from him, especially owners who had him this year who remember the black hole he was for a few months.  If that turns out to be the case, feel comfortable to get him at value between $15-22, because you know he will be worth it once he’s traded.

It all really revolves around his AVG.  From 2005 it has been: .306; .286; .247; .286; .268.  What’s driving that?  Two numbers that don’t necessarily move together: K% and BABIP.

His BABIP in those same years: .355; .338; .298; .328; .318.  Now as you’ll notice, that .247 AVG from 2007 is easily explained away by the .298 BABIP, just an unlucky year.

His K% those same years: 23.7%; 27.4%; 26.2%; 23.7%, 30.4%.  Wow, look at that last one.  That’s what explains the low AVG this year.  His K% rate got up to silly levels.  But he did this while maintaining a BB/K of .58.  Why is he striking out so much?  Well, he’s obviously not making as much contact.

Let’s look at his Plate Discipline stats on Fangraphs.  The O-Swing and Z-Swing numbers are steady at 20.5% and 62.7% respectively, within 1% each of his career average.  The real problem is his O-Contact% which is down 10% from 58.9 to 48.5 from last year.  Although his Z-Contact% is also down to 79.9 from 83.6.   This all combines for a Contact% of 71.7%, down from 77% last year.

Now I don’t know enough about the math, and I haven’t run across many studies about how these numbers vary from year to year.  But it doesn’t look good.  Intuitively, one would think Swing stats are less luck and more under control of the hitter.

So here’s the thing.  If you think he’s declining in his K%, then his ceiling on AVG is .270.  With that basement of .247 staring at you.  But lets say we get to spring training and he’s talking about a new batting stance, his numbers look much better in ST, what then?  Well, with a good BABIP year and a return to his 23% K%, he could be a .300 hitter.

What does all this mean?  .300 and he’s a top 5 hitter.  .270 and he’s somewhere around the 12th best hitter.  .247 and he’s in the mid 20′s in the rankings.  Along with Reynolds, Reyes, and Sizemore, he’s a guy with first round ability but a large range of what he can produce.  Which to me isn’t what you want in your high round or high dollar guys.  So when the bidding happens, don’t let anyone steal him, because like I said, he’s still in the 20′s even at the low end, but it is a $10 swing in value between top five and mid 20′s.

1.  Usually people are very “free” with their money early on, to the point that those who are put out early are usually overvalued.

2.  The one exception seems to be the first one or two guys who are put up for auction.  Everyone is still tentative, no one knows what the market looks like yet.  But someone still could decide to overpay.

So what should we do?  If you have the first or second spot in an auction, go ahead and throw out a guy with some real name recognition that you believe will most likely be overvalued but who, if you could get him at value (trust me you won’t get him undervalue), you would be happy.  This way you can either soak up some early money with a guy you knew you were probably not going to get or buy some decent value early so you can start setting your lineup.

What kind of player is this?  It must be someone who is very consistent so that paying for him at full value (but no more) will get you full value (barring unforeseen injury).  But it also can’t be someone that every person there would want on their team (ie Pujols or Hanley) because then owners won’t be gunshy about buying early.  The poster child for this I believe is someone I just wrote about as overrated: Nick Markakis.  He’s good, $16 good, but not $26 good.  So either everyone stays quiet and you get him for around $16, or you let him go for $26 and sit back and wait.

It’s still early, hell, the season only ends today.  This thing could go two ways.  Either everyone will realize that Markakis is overrated and shove it down our throats next spring until he’s actually underrated, or no one will notice at all, and he will continue to command too high of a price.

Like many other savvy fantasy owners, I dropped him when he was traded to Detroit in the classic anal rape trade of an overacheiving veteran to a team that needs to placate its fans with a deadline deal to show they are serious about contending.  Washburn fell apart.  To the tune of a 2.64 ERA in Seattle and a 7.33 ERA in Detroit.  Obviously he wasn’t as good or as bad as either of those numbers, but defense did play a good deal into it.

So what does this mean for fantasy owners?  Well, first, Seattle pitchers are all starting to look interesting.  You could plug any journeyman veteran into the rotation and he could have a half run improvement on his ERA.  The only problem is that Seattle might not sign any free agent pitchers this offseason.  With King Felix, Rowland-Smith, French, Snell, Morrow, and Bedard (when healthy) they are set for pitchers for a team trying to undue the damage of bad contracts.  Does that mean they might not sign a pitcher on his last legs for $1 million?  No, they might.  But mostly it means that you’ll have to gamble that a bunch of young unproven pitchers (plus one stud and one injury risk) will turn the corner.  And while it is nice to have a nice defense as a cushion, the Seattle situation is more of a case study of the value of defense in fantasy.

There will  be a good crop of free agent plus defenders this winter.  So what I suggest is to look and see where teams make a massive swing in UZR when/if they sign these guys, or bring a young speedster/gloveman to replace a lumbering veteran.  Teams that do could see a big swing in team ERA.

Furthermore, I think we can break this down further.  GB pitchers will benefit most from improvements in infield defense and catcher defense (since GB lead to more singles, which means more stolen base opportunities, which means catcher defense becomes important).  FB pitchers will benefit most from improvements in OF defense.

I bet that no more than one or two guys in your league are thinking about this.

1. Anderson is currently getting full PT in KC. Now when Coco Crisp comes back that might change, so that is something to monitor next spring training. But let’s assume that he is going to be the full time starter. Note that UZR/150 has him at +11.3. So his defense would keep him in the lineup if we were dealing with a smart team, with KC, who knows.

2. It’s undeniable that he has speed. Plus Plus speed. Hasn’t had a minor league season of under 40 SB. Even this year in 280 AB he has 25 SB. His Speed Score on Fangraphs is actually higher now than ever at 8+. Double 280 ABs and that’s 560 AB, basically what a full timer gets. That is 50 SB. And that is with only a .240 average. Imagine what he could do with a higher one.

3. You see that .240 average and cringe. I see a .280 BABIP this year and a history of around .330-.340 BABIP in the minors which in 2007 and 2008 remained steady in the cups of coffee that he got at the Major League level.

4. A .330 BABIP would give him an average between .285-.295.

5. He’s greatly cut down on his K% this year over his time in the Majors 2008. As he turns 27 next year, it is very possible that he can break the magical 10% K% (90% contact) that a real speedster needs.

6. With the possibility of a higher average and full PT, a .285-.295 90 Runs 60+ SB season is possible.

7. Downside? A fourth OF who platoons and gets 25 SB. He does have trouble hitting LHP.  His slash numbers are .283/323/.381  against RHP and only .231/.278/.250.  So unless he can improve that split he might only be a part time player.  A part time player that can hit .285 and steal 25 bases though.  If you can get someone else to be on the other side of that platoon, he’s still valuable. So obviously don’t pay more than $3 for him, but if you can get him for $1 or in your reserve rounds, go do it.

Now, who to pair him with in the platoon?  How about Matt Diaz who has had a mini-breakout this year.  His platoon slash this year has been

RHP: .255/.349/.400 LHP: .412/.464/.640 (now that is a small sample size, but damn.  Over his career he’s hit .347/.383/.537 against LHP.