MLB Daily Notes, March 17
Screwed up auction drafts, Matt McLain, spring correlations, and the big three prospect watch
Auction drafts are a different animal, man. You can really mess those things up. And I proved it last night! It was a 14-teamer with a $260 budget, and your boy left $33 on the table.
The #1 rule of auction drafts is probably don’t leave any money on the table. I left 12.6% of my money unspent. I'm probably already cooked. I listen to a lot of country music, so I know that a real man blames his mistakes on whiskey. And that’s what I’m doing. I was having a good time with a couple of glasses of some Evan Williams stuff I bought for cheap yesterday in the great state of Indiana. The actual problem, I guess, was a lack of solid tracking software. I should have had something telling me the pace of spending and how many $5+ dollar players were remaining or something. I’ll do better next time.
Here’s the team:
C: Drake Baldwin $7
1B: Freddie Freeman $18
2B: Brandon Lowe $7
3B: Caleb Durbin $4
SS: Trea Turner $18
CI: Spencer Torkelson $12
MI: Luisangel Acuna $2
OF: Riley Greene $19
OF: Jac Caglianone $13
OF: Bryan Reynolds $5
UT: Brett Baty $3
BN: Jake Burger $3
BN: Colson Montgomery $3
BN: Kyle Manzardo $5
P: Paul Skenes $40
P: Emmet Sheehan $19
P: Shota Imanaga $6
P: Mike Burrows $6
P: Ryan Weathers $3
P: Cody Ponce $3
P: Taylor Rogers $1
P: Mick Abel $1
P: Cade Smith $25
BN: Matthew Liberatore $3
I feel pretty good about all the guys I bought. I’m not a guy to buy Pirates because I like the Pirates. Seriously. But my target value on Skenes was north of $50, so I threw out $40 and nobody else touched it. That was the first pick of the draft. I’m guessing I could have nabbed him for $35 or something, I was way too aggressive throwing out the price. It would have been awesome to have $5 extra dollars to flush down the toilet! The Brandon Lowe pick was because I desperately needed power and a second baseman, so I went for him late. And I do really like the prices we’re seeing on Bryan Reynolds this year. I guess it will be a plus if the Pirates really smash this year, it will be a double enjoyment.
It’s not an awful team for a 14-teamer. But it’s missing a stud bat, and the stud bats were going for pretty much exactly how much I left on the table. I could have so easily added Pete Alonso to it or someone like that. Or I could have had a second elite closer.
So I gave the subscribers a head start. That’s just the kind of guy I am.
News writer Hunter was also in the league, so we’ll check on his team:
C: Shea Langeliers $23
1B: Willson Contreras $4
2B: Bryson Stott $8
3B: Austin Riley $27
SS: Gunnar Henderson $40
CI: Salvador Perez $7
MI: Gleyber Torres $4
OF: Michael Harris $7
OF: Luis Robert Jr. $10
OF: Kyle Stowers $8
UT: Christian Yelich $12
BN: Brendan Donovan $3
BN: Ramon Laureano $1
BN: Chandler Simpson $1
P: Kyle Bradish $13
P: Logan Gilbert $29
P: Clay Holmes $2
P: Shane McClanahan $1
P: Sean Manaea $1
P: Zac Gallen $4
P: Cade Cavalli $4
P: Kenley Jansen $5
P: Andres Munoz $25
BN: Max Meyer $3
BN: Corbin Burnes $3
Way freaking better than my team. Maybe I should offer him Paul Skenes and someone for Austin Riley and Kyle Stowers or something.
I’m in so many leagues now. And I’m really terrible at manaing all of them during the season. I like to write and do this stuff more than actually play the game. Unless the game is in my home league. There’s nothing better than that home league.
That draft is Saturday morning back in Pittsburgh. We all get together and have this sick draft set up on my buddy’s dad’s back deck. Best day of the year, probably.
And Friday night I have my $350 Online Championship draft. I’ll be doing that at my buddy’s house, so they’ll be helping me and I’m guessing some aalcohol will be involved.
But I can lose all of these leagues and still have a massively profitable season. I spend like 2% of the money I make here on leagues. What a great setup. I’ve got it made.
Matt McLain
How about this spring from McLain? The Reds almost seemed to have seen it coming. They’ve been starting him at 2B and hitting him in the #2 hole all spring. Right from the beginning! And look at these numbers:
→ 47 PA, .524/.574/1.024, 6 HR, 10.6% K%, 10.6% BB%, 88.4% Cont%, 18.9% Brl%, 24.3% Air Pull%
We always that spring doesn’t matter. But nobody actually believes that. Drafters are creaming their corn over McLain. His baseline ADP was 220, now he’s a top 150 pick.
Stories you can tell yourself when drafting McLain in the top 150:
“He’s hitting 2nd in a great hitters park! Great environment for success!!”
“He’s as healthy as he’s ever been, and the only reason he hasn’t hit on the prospect hype he had coming up was injuries!”
“Yeah I know spring training stats don’t matter, but the underlying numbers with McLain are elite right now!”
This isn’t to say that he can’t be good this year. He has always had that decent power + speed combination, and his rookie year was pretty great for fantasy despite a high strikeout rate.
But there’s no reason to use his spring stats as a reason for predicting a regular season breakout. There’s no correlation between spring stats and regular season stats. There’s just not, man. The correlation coefficient is 0.13.
I made a Tableau dashboard for this. I don’t know why, but I freaking did.
So if you thought McLain was like the #12 second baseman in fantasy a month ago, that’s probably what you should still think today.
Let’s look at what the Main Event big spenders are doing. Second base ADP from those drafts so far:
Jazz Chisholm 24
Ketel Marte 47
Brice Turang 63
Nico Hoerner 108
Ceddanne Rafaela 121
Luke Keaschall 125
Matt McLain 138
Jose Altuve 138
Ozzie Albies 160
Bryson Stott 183
Jackson Holliday 188
Xavier Edwards 190
Jorge Polanco 221
Brandon Lowe 222
Jose Caballero 230
It’s not like there are multiple obviously better players behind McLain. And as we’ve said a lot, second base is the best position to completely punt this year and just take a shot at upside. But McLain in the 11th round doesn’t really qualify as a punt. I don’t think I’ll be drafting him at all.
Top ProSSpects
We are one week away from roster finalizations, and the big three are still all in camp.
We have already established that spring stats don’t matter. But we’ve also already established that nobody actually believes that. And stats do no matter in some regards. A big statistical spring from a hyped prospect does put some pressure on the teams to bring them to the regular season on the big league club.
All three guys have been impressive this spring, albeit in different ways. Konnor Griffin hasn’t done much outside of his four home runs. But four home runs are a lot. There’s also the case to be made that he’s competing with Nick Gonzales to be the team’s Opening Day shortstop. And I don’t think many people buy that he’s not already a better MLB player than Gonzales. But the higher strikeout rate, low contact rate, and things the team could point to while saying he has some things to work on in the minor leagues. But he’s still in camp, man!
As for Kevin McGonigle, I’m not sure what that guy has to prove in AAA. His game is elite plate discipline, and he’s shown that off this spring. Way more walks than strikeouts, an 89% Zone Contact%, and power to boot (42% FB%, 107.6 EV90). He would be taking the place of a better player than Griffin would, but he’s probably the best middle infielder the Tigers have. I think he should break camp and lead off right away. What a talented dude.
JJ Wetherholt is closer to being McGonigle than being Griffin. Griffin has the physical freakish tools that these guys don’t, but he’s a bit more “raw”, you could say. Wetherholt has a .222 BABIP this spring to lower that batting average. His zone contact rate (73%) isn’t very impressive, but he’s made it work with just a 15% K%. Like McGonigle, he’s been insanely patient at the plate. Both of those guys have sub-35% swing rates. That’s too low in my book, but maybe it’s small sample stuff where they just haven’t seen many strikes. The Cardinals have the least chance of winning this year of these three teams, so the Cardinals could use that angle. They might not even want Wetherholt helping them win games in April.
We’ll find out soon! My guess is that McGonigle and Wetherholt make the club and Griffin goes to the minors.
And that’s all the time I have for today.