2012 Fantasy Baseball Rankings, Advice & Analysis
 Today I would like to talk about going on hiatus. First of all, let me apologize to TheFantasyFix.com world for not writing a new Finding the Mean article in a month. I received a new assignment at work that is a huge upgrade in the actual amount of real work I must do. To put it in baseball terms, it is the equivalent of pitching every game in Petco and then moving to Rangers Ballpark in Arlington. As Matt Harrison can tell you, the latter can be brutal. In my defense, however, I am not the only person who took the month of April off. Many fantasy studs seem to have decided to go on strike this season. Some have done so through lack of production such as Hanley Ramirez, Carl Crawford, and Adam Dunn. Others have done so through injuries such as Evan Longoria, Josh Hamilton, and Ryan Zimmerman. I guess my lack of writing can only be attributed to the lack of production as opposed to injury. The only injury I received in the month of April would be the occasional (ok maybe not so occasional) hangover. But I digress. Let my finish this ramble of a preamble by saying that my goal is to do one of these every week. I will not make promises other than it will not be a whole month before you read me again. Sorry once more, and let’s get to baseball. Normally, each week I give you a hitter and a pitcher who are underperforming and will eventually right the ship. This week I thought I would talk about some guys who I believe are over-performing and will eventually trend back to the fantasy muck from whence they came. Just remember, everyone regresses to the mean eventually. The first hitter is currently the second most added player in ESPN leagues, Justin Smoak. I think it is safe to say that his season thus far has been “Smoak and Mirrors.” Totally terrible joke I know, but seriously, this guy will not hit anywhere close to the .296 that he is currently. Right now his BABIP is a bloated .339. For his career, albeit short, that number is .271. I realize that he is only 24 years old, but I do not see a turnaround coming anytime soon. Perhaps I am a bit too biased against the guy because of my Rangers fandom. When we sent him to Seattle for Cliff Lee I could not have been happier. I have always felt like he was vastly overrated. He definitely has some power potential but not anything special (his career high in HR is 22 split between AAA and the Majors). Also, playing in Safeco does not help that potential. Last season Safeco was the second worst hitter’s park in all of baseball, both in runs scored and in home runs. In 2008 and 2009 it was bottom 10 in both categories as well. The offense around him does not help his cause either. Currently the Mariners are sixth worst in runs scored in the Major Leagues. That team is composed of Ichiro and basically nothing else offensively. I would sell Smoak in a heartbeat right now if I could. My Prediction for 2011 Justin Smoak: .240, 20 HR, 60 R, 65 RBI Our pitcher this week who is vastly playing over his head is Josh Tomlin. Currently outperforming Tim Lincecum on the ESPN Player Rater, Tomlin has nowhere to go but down. As it stands right now, Tomlin boasts a 2.43 ERA and a 0.81 WHIP. Sounds pretty good right? Only when you look closer at the numbers can you see that it’s all Smoak and mirrors. Yeah, I went there twice. First of all, he does not strike anyone out. His K/9 ratio is just over 5. What makes matters worse are all of his “luck” stats. His BABIP stands at a tiny .157, his LOB% is a huge 90.9%, and his tERA is 5.38. Those numbers should tell you everything you need to know. He will regress. Drastically. Whenever the fall from grace starts to happen it will be ugly. My Prediction for 2011 Josh Tomlin 170 IP, 10-13, 100 K, 5.00 ERA, 1.40 WHIP (May 4, 2011 - Photo by Otto Greule Jr/Getty Images North America) Written exclusively for the Fantasy Fix by Corey Herron. Corey is an Oil & Gas Landman who is hoping desperately that Eric Hosmer will not put up Smoak and mirrors numbers. You can find him on Twitter @coherron. Follow The Fantasy Fix on Twitter @thefantasyfix or for Free Fantasy Sports Advice use our Quick Fix to get help with your team! Tags: The Fantasy Fix, 2011 Fantasy Baseball, Fantasy Baseball Advice, Finding the Mean, Corey Herron, Justin Smoak, Josh Tomlin Add Comment  Deadlines. We all have them. I am no exception. In fact, I have a very important assignment for work that is due in approximately 15 hours. No matter what else is going on around me though, I always find myself thinking about fantasy baseball. It truly is an addiction. If Rachel Uchitel had to go on Celebrity Rehab for being addicted to love, then surely Dr. Drew would have something to tell me as well. But they always say addiction can only be cured if the user really wants to be cured. I do not. As of this writing, Opening Day is in 7 days, 17 hours, and 18 minutes. Thus, you are on a deadline as well. You have one week left to complete your drafts for the 2011 season. (Yes, I know some people draft after the season begins, but I’m choosing to believe that these people do not exist). It’s a long 162 game season, but your draft is obviously the most important aspect. The old adage is that you can’t win your league on draft day, but you can definitely lose it. Truer words have never been spoken. To help make draft day a little easier, I am once again here to give you a hitter and a pitcher whose underlying numbers predict future success in the 2011 season. Just remember, everyone regresses to the mean eventually. Don't forget to check out The Fantasy Fix 2011 Fantasy Baseball Draft Kit! Our hitter this week is Matt Kemp. Wow Corey, you’re really going out on a limb talking about someone being drafted in the top 30? I’m choosing to highlight Kemp because there are some places (cough-CBS-cough) that are in no way giving Kemp the respect he deserves. His average draft position on cbs.com right now is 64. Just let that number sink in for a second. They are basically saying there are 63 better players in fantasy than a guy who had 28 homers and 19 steals in a down year. If any of you out there are in an upcoming CBS draft (and why you would be using CBS is beyond me) make sure you draft Kemp before the fourth round. His ADP on ESPN right now is 27 and I even think he is top 20. This is a guy who is absolutely capable of going 30-30. Although he has never accomplished this feat as of yet, he has had a season of 26-34. When you look at last year, the first thing you notice is his ugly .249 average. his is what we call an outlier. Generally, in every case of analysis on just about any topic, there are variables that completely stick out. It’s called “noise.” Find the mean here: .342 .290 .297 .249. Those are his last 3.5 seasons of batting averages (the .342 was in half a season.) When you average those together you get close to a .288 hitter. That is what Matt Kemp is, a .285-.290 hitter with great power and speed. Oh, and he’s only 26. So why did he suffer so badly last year in the batting average department? He was unlucky. Compare the above numbers to these: .411 .361 .345 .295. Do you see a pattern? These, of course, are his BABIPs over the same 3.5 seasons. Higher BABIPs = higher averages and vice-versa. My Prediction for 2011 Matt Kemp:.290, 30 HR, 25 SB, 85 R, 100 RBI _________________________________________________________ This week’s pitcher is another Matt, however this Matt only has one T in his name, Mat Latos. In this case, it is somewhat hard to find the mean in Latos’ numbers since he is only 23 and the sample size is so small. So instead, let us focus on how truly dominant Mat Latos was last season. The following is where Latos ranked last season amongst starting pitchers: ERA: 13th WHIP: 8th Ks: 19th FIP: 6th xFIP: 9th K/BB: 8th BA Against: 6th This week I am going to introduce you to a new Sabermetric number, tERA. From Fangraphs: “True Runs Allowed (tERA) is a defense-independent metric built by Graham MacAree from StatCorner that is meant to improve upon FIP and xFIP. The most common complaint about FIP and xFIP is that they completely ignore performance on balls in play, while batted balls can still tell us something about a pitcher’s skill level. Groundballs are good (since they normally result in outs), flyballs have a higher probability of resulting in extra basehits, pop-ups are almost guaranteed outs, and line drives are the most likely type to end up as a hit. tERA includes all of these variables and is based on the same scale as ERA, FIP, and xFIP.” Mat Latos had the best tERA in baseball last season, 2.53. If there is one downside to Latos this season, it is the possibility of injury due to innings increases. He threw 56 innings in 2008, 123 in 2009, and 184 last year. That is quite a workload increase for such a young guy. However, if he stays healthy, Mat Latos will be a truly dominant pitcher in an extreme pitcher’s park. My Prediction for 2011 Mat Latos:15-12, 3.00 ERA, 1.10 WHIP, 200 Ks ***Editor’s Note: The day after this writing, news broke that Latos will probably start the season on the DL. Adjust drafts accordingly. Corey Herron is an Oil & Gas Landman who probably won’t make his deadline because of this. You can find him on Twitter @coherron. Follow The Fantasy Fix on Twitter @thefantasyfix or for Free Fantasy Sports Advice use our Quick Fix to get help with your team! (March 3, 2011 - Photo by Christian Petersen/Getty Images North America)  Tags: The Fantasy Fix, Fantasy Baseball Draft Strategy, 2011 Fantasy Baseball, Fantasy Baseball Advice, 2011 Fantasy Baseball Auction Values, 2011 Fantasy Baseball Rankings, Corey Herron, Matt Kemp, Mat Latos, Los Angeles Dodgers, San Diego Padres  Numbers. Fantasy Baseball is defined by them. Standard 5x5 leagues use ten of them. These ten numbers are probably the most important numbers you will think about from March to September. But should they be? Fantasy Baseball has come quite a ways in the last few years. Nowadays sabermetrics have given us new numbers with acronyms like wOBA, BABIP, xFIP, and LOB%. These strange figures can be overwhelming to those who are unfamiliar with them. Rather than try to teach you how to use advanced metrics, I defer to the geniuses at Fangraphs, who have given us an amazing dictionary that defines these numbers and how to use them. Just click through the dropdowns and give yourself a base of SABR knowledge. The basis of “Finding the Mean” will be to highlight one hitter and one pitcher each week who are under or over performing based on their more advanced numbers. The concept behind the title is that, almost always, a player will naturally gravitate toward an average. Our first player to look at this season is the guy I am completely all in on, more so than any other. He is Shaun Marcum. I will be trying for Marcum in every league this year (Even AL Only, I don’t care what the rules say.) All kidding aside, this guy was great last year for the Blue Jays. Let’s start by looking at some of his 5x5 contributions from last year. He went 13-8 with a 3.64 ERA in the AL East last season. Not counting the Blue Jays, there were 3,092 runs scored in that division last season, an average of 773 runs per team. In comparison, the NL Central (not counting the Brewers) gave up 3,409 runs with an entire extra team. This comes out to an average of 681.8 runs per team. Almost 100 less runs per team. I think it is safe to infer from this that Marcum will have a much easier opponent to face each night. To go along with his wins and ERA, Marcum had a fantastic 1.15 WHIP. He accomplished this by allowing less than two walks per nine innings while holding opponents to a .241 AVG against him. To put those numbers in perspective, Tim Lincecum walked over three batters per nine innings and had a .238 AVG against him. The one 5x5 category Marcum isn’t completely dominant in is strikeouts. He had 165 in 195.1 innings last season, which comes to 7.6 per nine innings. Although not elite, these numbers are still completely serviceable. The more advanced metrics seem to back up what the above numbers say. Marcum had a 3.64 ERA, FIP of 3.74, and an xFIP of 3.90. Differences of .1 and .26, respectively. As a comparison, lets look at David Price who is currently going 44 spots ahead of Marcum according to ESPN’s average draft results. Price had a 2.72 ERA, FIP of 3.42, and xFIP of 3.99. Differences of .7 and 1.27, respectively. This shows that Marcum’s ERA was not based on luck like Price’s but rather by skill. The final advanced number I would like to highlight for Marcum would be his strikeout to walk ratio. This is a great primer to show a pitcher’s ability to stay in control. Last year Marcum’s K/BB of 3.84 was sixth in the majors behind only Cliff Lee, Roy Halladay, Jered Weaver, Dan Haren, and Josh Johnson. That is some pretty damn elite company. My bold prediction for Shaun Marcum this year will be: 17-8, 3.30 ERA, 1.10 WHIP, 180 K Our hitter to profile this week is a guy that absolutely killed owners last year. Aaron Hill followed up his monster 2009, where he hit .288 with 36 homers, with an abysmal 2010 that found him and Mario Mendoza being mentioned in way too many of the same sentences. But, was his bad performance based on diminished skill or rather by luck? Aaron Hill had a BABIP of .196. Everything about that number screams that his .083 drop in AVG was not his fault. The league average BABIP is right around .300 (and Hill’s is .288) so just exactly how bad is a .196 BABIP? Here is why Fangraphs is the greatest website in the world. I took every Major League player’s seasons since 1913 (the earliest that Fangraphs has BABIP for players) and sorted the players by their respective BABIPs. The players had to have a minimum of 320 plate appearances in the season. This gave me 10,590 “seasons” worth of data. Would you care to make a guess who was dead last in BABIP out of those 10,590? That would be 2010 Mr. Aaron Hill, who joined 1968 Curt Blefary (.198) as the only two players in the past 97 years who had BABIPs under .200. Aaron Hill literally had the unluckiest season of ALL TIME. Another reason I believe Hill will greatly increase his value is his home park. The Rogers Centre was eighth last year in total runs scored and fourth in home runs hit. If Hill gets back on luck’s good side he can take advantage of the same park that Jose Bautista hit 54 out of last season. My bold prediction for Aaron Hill this year will be: .275, 30 HR, 90 Runs, 90 RBI Written exclusively for www.thefantasyfix.com by Corey Herron. Corey is an Oil & Gas Landman who loves Fantasy Baseball like Charlie Sheen loves goddesses. You can find him on twitter @coherron.  Tags: The Fantasy Fix, Corey Herron, Aaron Hill, Shaun Marcum, 2011 Fantasy Baseball, 2011 Fantasy Baseball Draft Guide, 2011 Fantasy Baseball Rankings, Milwaukee Brewers, Toronto Blue Jays, BABIP | 
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