Projo Fantasy Sports Blog

By Michael Salfino

The small sample sizes in the early baseball season create lots of fascinating story lines. Let's get through as many as we can with the usual caveats. All stats are through Tuesday's action.

The pitchers are ahead of the hitters. The Major League average is .252 with 4.3 runs per game versus .268 and 4.8 runs last year.

The Tigers are the poster boys for April futility: hitting .234 and scoring 2.1 runs per game (on pace for about 325). Detroit is an AL worst .149 with runners in scoring position (the Rockies are worst overall with RISP, .111).

Detroit was tabbed to win 92 games by Vegas (actually 92.5). Let's call that a .570 winning percentage. They've lost their first seven games. Odds of a true .570 team losing seven in row: about 1 in 370.

The Orioles were expected to win about 40 percent of their games (65.5 was their over/under Vegas total). Odds of them winning six in a row were about one in 250.

Odds are that the Tigers are worse than we thought; the Orioles better.

Baltimore has been the best defensive team in baseball, converting .788 of balls in play into outs (average is .700). The Reds are the best defensive team thus far in the NL: .776.

Worst defensive teams by league: Giants (.614) and Rangers (.649).

Seattle is hitting .227 on balls in play. On the other end of the big- league spectrum, the Brewers sit at .345.

Jason Kendall leads the team with a .526 average, but bats ninth (behind the pitcher). The Cardinals are also batting the pitcher eighth. Why?

After all, the No. 8 hitter comes to bat more than No. 9 – about 18 times more in a normal season. Some of those times are going to be big, but, of course, that's when they will be removed for a pinch hitter.

Moving a more certain out (your pitcher) farther away from the better hitters at the top of your lineup provides a very slight boost to scoring: estimated to be somewhere between one-half run to three runs over the 162-game season. The discrepancy relates mostly to assumptions regarding the strength of your Nos. 2-4 hitters.

Now let's look at some individual performers to find the best buying and selling opportunities.

Buy

Rick Ankiel, OF, Cardinals: I'm pro "freak" with these next two guys. Ankiel has very little professional experience as a hitter and continues to excel in the majors. To me, that means the sky is the limit. Upside: .290 with 40 homers.

Josh Hamilton, OF, Rangers: Like Ankiel, Hamilton pretty much skipped the minors due to personal problems that limited him to 90 minor league at-bats between 2002 and his big-league call up last year. His upside might be higher than Ankiel's, but consider his longstanding substance abuse problems.

Edwin Encarnacion, 3B, Reds: Looking for a bright side: the .063 on balls in play is textbook bad luck. And his rate of 4.7 pitches per plate appearances is fourth-best in the Bigs – a sign of better things to come.

Miguel Cabrera, 3B, Tigers: He's hitting .071 on balls in play. Just flip over his baseball card and you can see that he's one of the two or three best hitters in the game, with his best days likely still ahead.

Andrew Miller, P, Marlins: The Marlins' defense is again atrocious (.632 on balls in play). So his ERA will remain inflated, but not to this extent. He striking out about a batter per inning and walking less than three per nine.

Hold

Kosuke Fukudome, OF, Cubs: Of course, his .556 on balls in play is unsustainable. But Japan's best player has a perfectly fundamentally sound game in all facets that certainly will not get Lost in Translation.

Andre Ethier, OF, Dodgers: One-trick pony Juan Pierre has been benched. It's Matt Kemp who sits when Joe Torre throws Pierre a bone. Ethier is third-best at 4.8 pitches per plate appearance and looks like a solid No. 3 hitter.

Johnny Cueto, SP, Reds: Most impressive is his fearlessness with a changeup that's nothing special but complements his gas well enough. He's giving up lots of fly balls, so there will be rough patches with the homers. But they won't be crippling given his good control (zero walks).

Sell

Mark Reynolds, 3B, Diamondbacks: The power (five homers) is real. And he's the most extreme fly-ball hitter in the league to date. However, he's still striking out too much, so he'll be prone to lengthy slumps. Chad Tracy (knee) will ultimately threaten playing time. Lock in profits.

Michael Bourn, OF, Astros: He will keep running because it's all he can do. He won't play versus lefties and might hit .270 with a .340 on-base percentage and no power if everything breaks right.

Todd Wellemeyer, P, Cardinals: Nothing in his lengthy big-league history suggests he can continue his solid pitching or his prodigious K-rates. Yes, he's sported decent K/9 in the past, but only as a reliever. Expect his rate of 12 Ks per nine innings to be cut in half and his ERA to double as a result.

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