2016 Fantasy Baseball Player Profile: Jake Lamb

Jake Lamb is a 25 year old third sacker for the Diamondbacks. A 6^th round selection in 2012, Lamb has a distinguished minor league career under his belt. He had a bit of a rough rookie season in the bigs, that happens to a lot of folks, and as a result there were a lot of eye balls on him this spring. Lamb responded by hitting .404 with a 1.205 OPS and 15 RBI over 24 games to cement his spot in the starting lineup with the D’backs (I’ll get back to that below). Is Lamb a potential top-15 or even top-10 option at the hot corner in mixed leagues? Let’s take a look.

THE NUMBERS

Coming into the 2015 season, last season, he was the 78^th ranked prospect according to Baseball America and 80^th according to MLB.com.

The major numbers are as boring as all get out. Hello Martin Prado. Seriously. Those big league numbers stink for a guy folks are counting on.

SKILLS

A quick scouting report on Lamb. Lamb has nice power thanks to lift in his swing and solid bat speed. Also has a solid approach meaning he knows how to avoid swinging at pitches he can’t handle (that doesn’t mean that he can’t be pitched to and pulled into the swing and miss). Lamb can have problems driving the ball on the outside half of the plate and there are zones where he has trouble putting the barrel on the ball.

As I jokingly pointed out above, Lamb’s production to this point of his career is the dreams of waiver-wire fodder. In addition to his poor fantasy numbers he also has a .323 OBP and .403 SLG, two numbers that are as boring as you can get (the league average’s since 2014 are .328 and .416). Lamb also owns a 0.34 BB/K rate, just under the league average. Nothing here, at all, stands out. Might as well also toss in his .143 Isolated Power mark that is below the .152 league average. He also owns a 1.44 GB/FB ratio which doesn’t play in to his skills. Here’s why. Lamb is not a .300 hitter. He might not even be capable of batting .280 over the course of a full season. Given that he has some lift in his swing, the belief has always been that he could be a 20-homer bat at the big league level. It’s hard to see him getting there given what we have been witnessing. Here’s more about what we have been witnessing.

Lamb has a 9.5 HR/FB mark. That’s as league average as you can get. A number like that can still lead 20 homers, but you need to play daily to get there. You also would benefit from a strong fly ball rate. Lamb doesn’t own one of those. Through 160 big league games Lamb has a 32.3 percent fly ball rate. That’s two percentage points below the league average. A league average fly ball rate and HR/FB ratio means that only way you’re likely to hit 20 homers is if you play daily. Even then, it’s not close to being a lock that you will get there. That brings me to a very salient point when it comes to Lamb playing daily.

Lamb is a split machine, and that doesn’t bode well for his chance to be in the lineup on a daily basis. Check out his work during his young big league career.

As much as you might like Lamb those numbers against lefties are beyond worrisome. They are actually distressing. Oddly hit against lefties in the minors, but he’s done nothing at the big league level. It’s virtually impossible to avoid being in a platoon if you have a wOBA of .233 against lefties. Unless Lamb picks it up, a platoon could easily be coming.

PLAYING TIME

Brandon Drury crushed the ball this spring batting .389/.423/.722 with four homers and 10 doubles. He was a star. His strong effort forced the Diamondbacks to keep him around once the season started. Thus far he’s appeared in 12 games batting .257 with a .289 OBP and .457 SLG. He’s also struck out nine times while walking only one batter.

Remember earlier when I was talking rankings? How surprised are you to learn that according to Baseball Prospectus that Drury was ranked ahead of Lamb (see page 14-15 in the BP Futures Guide, 2015)? Something to think about.

The D’backs are 9-8 after sweeping the Giants.

In 17 games Lamb has been active 16 times leading to 66 plate appearances. Meanwhile Drury has 38 plate appearances in 12 outings.

Lamb has played third base 16 times.

Drury has played second once, third twice, and outfield six times.

Drury has hit 5/7/9 once each, 6^th 10 times and second three times.

Lamb has hit second/sixth/seventh once each, 5^th four times, 8^th twice and 9^th three times.

Lamb is playing daily and is the better bet for short-term work, but Drury is lurking.
 

Note that with A.J. Pollock out with injury that there is an opening in the lineup the club has to fill. That’s kinda what Drury is doing now, filling in. With Pollock out months recovering from his elbow surgery, it’s possible that Lamb will continue to play, even against lefties, as the team deploys a guy like Drury to help fill out the lineup.

CONCLUSION

Lamb hasn’t hit lefties.

Lamb isn’t a .300 hitter.

Lamb is likely to be nothing more than an average power bat for a third sacker given league average rates in the fly ball category and HR/FB ratio.

There are aspects of Lambs game that are interesting, but there are also more than one pratfall that could trip him up. Despite his hot start, I just don’t see how Lamb is any different than Nick Castellanos, Trevor Plouffe and Brett Lawrie. Sorry if you disagree, but I just don’t see it.

Ray Flowers can be heard Monday through Friday, 7 PM EDT and Friday on SiriusXM Fantasy Sports Radio (Sirius 210, XM 87). You can also hear Ray Sunday nights at 6 PM on the channel talking fantasy sports. Follow Ray’s work at Fantasy Alarm and on Twitter (@baseballguys).