Over-Under: Carlos Quentin and Matt Holliday
Overrated
Did Carlos Quentin have a ridiculous 2008? Yes. Did he finish 5th in AL MVP voting? Yes. Would he have hit 40 HR if he hadn’t missed a month with that injury? Probably. Is he worth the 27th pick in the draft? No.
Quentin is an intriguing player who clearly has elite power. The problem is that he’s a lifetime .262 hitter. So you take Adam Dunn, add in about 5-10 SB, and you have Quentin (my forecast is .254-85-27-93-6). Now consider that the White Sox lost Nick Swisher’s bat this offseason, and didn’t do much to replace it. Now how do you feel about him?
I have Quentin ranked in the same tier as these outfielders: Curtis Granderson (ADP of 49.8), Chris Young (ADP of 137.1), Jay Bruce (ADP 92.1) and Andre Ethier (ADP 164.4). Good players, yes. But not great ones. Pass on Quentin and pick up one of these other guys, who will help your fantasy team just as much for a lot less.
Underrated
Matt Holliday is a perennial lock for a first round pick, or at least he was until he was traded from the Rockies to the Athletics this offseason. My jaw dropped as I saw that he’s being taken with an ADP of 36.6. That’s the end of the 3rd round!
Look, I know that Colorado is a hitter’s paradise and Oakland is one of the worst hitting parks in baseball. But that doesn’t mean a guy loses 2+ rounds of value!!! People are falling for the old “it’s Oakland Coliseum, you gotta look at Holliday’s road splits and discount that a little bit” trick. But that just doesn’t hold water.
Holliday is a premier hitter, and even with the park adjustment he’s still one of the top outfielders out there (see an earlier explanation I wrote here). With a .302-110-29-107-15 forecast, I have him ranked just behind Grady Sizemore, who’s being drafted 7th OVERALL in most leagues.
I find it funny how you cherry picked the BA stat.
yes quentin has a MLB career .262 BA, but does the fact that quentin hit .288 in his first full season not count or that he hit .313 over 379 career MiLB games not count?
According to your sleeper section, you say john baker has a shot to hit .300. seems youre using contradictory logic since he has a career .276 MiLB BA over 2100 ABs, and only has 179 MLB ABs
And what does losing nick swisher have anything to do with quentin? swisher wasnt good last year by any statistical measure and swisher had most (382 of 497) of his ABs in the 1, 7, and 8 positions (and 0 batting 4th), while quentin had 349 of 480 ABs om the 3 hole.
Hey Q, thanks for your comments. I wouldn’t call it cherry-picking. Quentin played in one of the more hitter-friendly parks in the PCL in Arizona’s farm system, and facing lesser competition didn’t hurt. Quentin is a good power hitter, but he’s also a free swinger whose contact rate sits at around 76% and he whiffs almost 20% of the time. Also, for all of his minor-league success, he’s never managed a LD% of more than 16.4% in the bigs. Any saber guy will tell you that’s not a good combination for batting average. I’m not the only one that thinks so. Bill James (who’s usually very optimistic) has him at .277, CHONE at .268, Marcels at .269, Oliver at .262, and ZiPS at .269.
Baker is also a big strikeout guy, but he’s maintained a 19-20% LD rate for at least the past three years in the minors (he hit very well at 24% for the Marlins last year in a short sample), and his consistently above-average BABIPs suggest that he has learned to use what hitting skills he has well. Looking at his projection, I should have probably regressed him more, but he’s still a decent candidate for a good batting average, which is more than you can say for most low-level catchers.
Swisher didn’t have a good year, but he is a power bat that adds protection to the White Sox lineup. Even with the horrible season, he was 5th among regulars in OBP, and his career numbers suggest that he will do much better this year. My point is that he WILL be missed in that lineup.
Ken Williams made a concerted effort to go small ball this offseason, and while it will be less frustrating to watch on the basepaths, I suspect it will cost them offensive runs. That means fewer PA and scoring opportunities for everyone.
im not one that puts too much stock into the LD% stat bc of the discrepency of ruling what is a LD.
http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/index.php/what-i-hate-about-line-drives/
goes into some detail, i have other issues with it like when someone gets jammed and hits a soft liner to 3rd, that gets coded as a LD but it shouldnt be indicative as a hard hit ball, and what to do with a ball thats sorta LDish sorta FBish.
Also, most projection systems use some method of weighting the last 3 years stats to predict the upcoming seasons numbers. IMO that is fundamentally flawed bc it doesnt allow for player progression or regression.
for example, lets use nick markakis (hes the first person i could think of in 4th full year)
http://www.fangraphs.com/statss.aspx?playerid=5930&position=OF
wouldnt it be reasonable to assume that he should improve his power numbers as he approaches his prime? but CHONE, Marcel, Oliver (all 3 i believe use a weighted avg of past seasons approach, i dont think bill james does) all see a decrease in markakis’ skills
all 3 project decreases in HRs, SLG, OPS, ISO, BB%, OBP, wRC, wRAA, wOBA, even though all those stats have increased each year for 3 years. HRs took a small step back last season but there were less ABs, and his HR/FB increased.
Hey Q, again, thanks for your reply. Line drives are nowhere close to a perfect stat, I’ll give you that. But in baseball stats, what is? I think the issues that you raise about classification of certain types of balls are valid, however, I think that in a large enough sample size, those things should even out on the whole. We are definitely working with an inherently noisy system in batted ball data (at least as it is done now). I’m looking forward to seeing some of the new data using HITf/x, and seeing how that does in breaking things down.
But back to my point. Like you, I’m not a fan of using LD% as a direct estimator of BABIP or average; however, the numbers are remarkably consistent from year to year and between leagues for the LD/GB/FB data that we have. So I do think there’s something there. I’ve done a crude analysis to try and improve the LD% + 0.12 method here:
http://saberrattling.wordpress.com/2008/12/03/working-the-numbers-on-babip-estimation/
I also agree that relying on a simple 3 year average or weighted average makes it tough to track player development accurately. That’s why in my projections I include an aging term (which is still pretty rudimentary), but does credit especially young players who have accumulated significant experience in the Majors and penalizes older players in decline.
Even age-based projections like PECOTA are not necessarily that different, as they have Quentin down for a .273/.363/.485 performance and Markakis at .286/.368/.466 this year. Seems they too figure he’s in for a bit of a power hit in 2009.
Quentin is over-rated only due to his injury history. He does not have the batting eye of a .250 hitter. No way. His power potential is ELITE. 600 ABs and your looking at a possible MVP candidate. Risky? Yes, but pay-off potential is huge.
Hey, thanks for your comment. I will agree with you that injuries have hampered Quentin quite a bit. He also has very good to great power, as you state.
I’m not sure batting eye has as much to do with batting average as you suggest – there are plenty of hitters who have high OBPs and power but don’t hit for much contact: Adam Dunn, Jack Cust, Carlos Pena, etc. I’d put Quentin into this kind of category until he proves otherwise.
Also, please be aware that this forecast was made in March for the 2009 season; we already have a new forecast out for Quentin and everybody else in early release (there will be a lot of adjustments made before Spring Training). Thanks for reading and hope you will leave input on other articles!