3/14 Spring Training News & Analysis
Hello from Lower Burrell, Pennsylvania! I have a bunch of free time this morning. Having nothing to do is a very weird experience for me, but I guess in some ways I never have nothing to do, because I can always just come here and write some baseball stuff.
There’s this awkward day in the middle of when I need to be here for work and when our home league draft is tomorrow, so it’s going to be a weird day for me. The typical day when you have a full-time job, a thing like this Substack, and three kids is pretty much non-stop stuff to do from waking up to when the kids fall asleep at night. A good portion of that stuff I do is typing on a computer, so I’m not acting like my life is hard, but when you have a day away from home without much to do, you really stop knowing what to do with yourself.
My friends have babies now, though, so I’ll go hold a couple of them until they start crying.
Cam Smith
Let’s talk about this Cam Smith guy. He’s an Astros’ prospect whom they acquired in the Kyle Tucker trade. And he’s having a huge spring (.409/.519/.773, two homers, 18.5% K%, 18.5% BB% in 27 PAs). He was the 14th overall pick in the draft last year out of Florida State.
There’s not much chance he makes the team out of camp, but he’s been getting some reps in the outfield, and the Astros do have some openings in the lineup. Here’s his page from the MLB DW Player Lookup Tool which is still mostly under construction.
I really don’t know what to do with that tool. I think it has promise, but I can’t say I’m too impressed with it right now and I don’t want to spend a ton more time at the current moment developing it. Maybe it’s something I’ll take another look at next fall.
But you can see that Smith has raked everywhere so far. 179 wRC+ in his short time in the minors last year with a slugging above .700. The guy clearly has big-time pop, but facing Major League pitching is a whole new world and who knows if he’ll be able to handle it in his first go at them.
I have focused a lot more on minor leaguers this year than in the past, and I have to say I kind of hate that about myself.
It seems like Smith could get a chance in the Majors this year, and he’s someone to monitor.
I saw that someone drafted him in one of those Main Event drafts I talked about yesterday. And that would seem to prove my point about the big players not always being very smart. But who knows, maybe whoever that was is an inside who knows Smith will make the team or be up very early.
The thing about NFBC waiver leagues is that players are not available to be added until they’ve played an MLB game. So you have two options with prospects who haven’t debuted yet at this point in the year. You can either draft them and lose $0 in your FAAB budget, or you can wait until they get called up to try to outbid your competition for them. These prospect call-ups go for huge money, so it does make some sense to take shots at prospects in the draft to see if they can get in the MLB lineup early.
But even if they do, they most often suck for a month or more before they can even truly contribute. I think you’re looking at July or so before you can reasonably expect a CAm Smith type to be helping your fantasy team, and that’s assuming he ever does! And that’s assuming he gets called up at some point this year. I mean the kid was sitting in college classes like ten months ago. Okay, he probably wasn’t going to class, but you get it.
More Pitcher Standouts
Next, let’s look at some big strikeout totals from spring so far. Just nine pitchers have struck out 15+ hitters. Here they are along with their innings totals.
Kenta Maeda 19 K, 12.2 IP
Robbie Ray 17 K, 9.2 IP
Jared Jones 17 K, 12.0 IP
Cristopher Sanchez 17 K, 11.2 IP
Cole Ragans 17 K, 11.1 IP
Hunter Greene 16 K, 12.0 IP
Gavin Williams 16 K, 8.0 IP
Osvaldo Bido 15 K, 12.2 IP
Joey Cantillo 15 K, 9.2 IP
Good mix of studs and surprises there. I’ve seen Osvaldo Bido getting some hype. It’s worth checking out his pitcher profile on the main dashboard.
He threw just 63 innings in the Majors last year, but the numbers were decent. It was a 15% K-BB% with a 12.6% SwStr%. Both of those marks are a nudge above the league average. He was very good at keeping the ball in the yard (6% HR/FB, 86 PA/HR). With the 29% FB%, I’d say there was a large amount of luck there, and the ballpark shift from Oakland to Sacramento won’t be helping him.
For super deep leagues, he could be fine. But he’s not someone to consider in the top 350.
Robbie Ray has struck out half the batters he’s faced this year.
Plenty of bad hitters on the strikeout list, but Robbie Ray striking out a ton of guys is not an unexpected thing for us to see. He’s healthy and ready to rip. He has been a favorite target of mine this year because he seemed to be somewhat forgotten about a ton of last year recovering from injury and then showing us a walk problem when he did return.
The thing I picked up on when I was evaluating him was the mismatch between the 11.6% BB% and the 37.1% Ball%. A 37% Ball% is high, but it’s usually a 9-10% BB% rather than 11%+. Ray projects for a 27.5% K% and an 8% BB% for me this year. I could see something like 29% and 9%, but he’ll be around that range. It will be a high K% and a not-great BB%, but I think it can work pretty nicely. I like him.
Joey Cantillo was another guy I thought stood out in my draft prep. He showed a nice ability to strike out Major League hitters last year, and that’s always the first step of fantasy success. His Ball% was even worse than Ray’s at nearly 39%, and he turned in a 9.2% BB%. So it’s the opposite. I would have expected a higher BB% from Cantillo than he actually posted.
This stuff isn’t always as simple as input Ball% = output BB%. Some guys are better (or more willing?) at throwing strikes when they absolutely need to, and that can change things. I whipped up a quick scatter daddy:
The guys well above the line have a good shot at lowering the BB% this year, and vice-versa. I’m being overly simplistic in a world that demands over-the-top complexity, but that can be nice for a change.
Main Event ADP
I’ve added the four Main Event drafts that have been completed to the ADP dashboard. Check that out here. Your top 25 SPs in that format so far:
Skenes
Skubal
Crochet
Wheeler
Gilbert
Burnes
Sale
deGrom
Snell
Ragans
Cease
Lopez
Valdez
King
Yamamoto
Sasaki
Schwellenbach
Glasnow
Imanaga
Bibee
Ober
Nola
Ryan
Miller
H Brown
The big difference in that league is waivers. That makes guys like deGrom and Glasnow a little bit more appealing. You can’t put them on IL, but you can at least replace them if they’re out for a long time.
You can find all kinds of other stuff by playing with that dashboard. For now, I’m taking off!