Every year, baseball arrives after the long, harsh winter. Before you know it, guys are crushing baseballs out of ballparks, and often it’s the guys you least expect, or, better, guys you’ve never even heard of. Who remembers Jake Fox? The career minor leaguer set the world on fire in March of 2011, slashing .297/.325/.797 with 10 home runs in 74 at-bats. He became a popular fantasy sleeper that year, but it became clear quickly that Fox was but a desert mirage. He was DFA’d on June 1st and hasn’t played in the major leagues since. This is to say, spring stats don’t mean much. In fact, looking at the Spring Training leaderboards for fantasy insight is akin to looking at a buzzfeed article about Disney princesses for movie advice. There is, however, what I perceive to be a misconception abounding in fantasy circles this time of year — the notion that because spring stats don’t mean much, Spring Training, by extension, doesn’t mean much. I take issue with that last point.
Spring Training is an excellent opportunity to see players in new environments. How does a player’s swing look? How comfortable do they look at the plate? Has a pitcher added a new pitch? Sure, these tidbits are often overblown and players will inevitably fail to meet expectations, but they’re certainly not useless. And, while these bits are important for all players, I would argue they’re especially important with prospects. Anecdotally, can we unravel mysteries like — has Archie Bradley’s fastball velocity returned? Can Carlos Rodon control his fastball? Did Nathan Eovaldi really learn a splitter? You’ve undoubtedly heard about the tepid radar gun readings of Dellin Betances. It would be foolish not to take these things into account when compiling a fantasy baseball team.
In major league camp, we also get to see something we never see during the regular season. Minor leaguers face off against top-tier MLB pros. Houston Astros shortstop prospect Carlos Correa, for instance, was excellent this spring. He slashed .341/.372/.512 in 18 games in major league camp, and upon reassignment to minor league camp he assaulted a ball for a long home run in his first game. "I was playing here in big league camp and I faced pitchers like [Jordan] Zimmermann, [Mat] Latos and all those guys,” he explained, “and I did pretty well.” The takeaway here isn’t that Correa is ready to dominate the major leagues, but rather that the kid’s makeup and confidence are off the charts and he can already hold his own. His spring stats aren’t going to help us project his home run total for 2015, but they do give us reason to believe he will hold his own once he makes the leap.
The most important aspect of Spring Training, of course, is opportunity. A number of position battles were waged and most were determined by how well a player did in camp. The second base competition in Atlanta, for instance, didn’t turn out to be much of a competition after all, thanks to Jace Peterson’s strong performance and top-prospect Jose Peraza’s 1-for-16 effort. It doesn’t mean the two won’t swap places at some point this year, but Petereson will get the first crack to stick at the position.
The last few weeks, we’ve been looking at minor league talent that can impact the game in both the stolen base and home run departments. This week, we’re going to take a detour and look at the revised Top-20 rookies for 2015 with Spring Training now in the rearview mirror. A lot has changed in the last two months, when my first article debuted, and in order to set the record straight, let’s look at the updated version of the list and find out why certain players have risen and others have fallen. Check below to see which players have moved the needle (find notes on player movement in "notes" column):
For reference to previous rookie lists, find links below:
Just remember, as T.S. Eliot put it, "April is the cruelest month." Don't jump ship on a player after a few weeks, or even a month.
With that, happy beginning to the baseball season!
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