David Wright (3B—Mets) Confession time. I'm a David Wright fan. I root for the guy because he seems like a good guy on and off the field. He plays hard, would run through a wall to catch a foul ball and he seems to play the game the “right way”--however you want to interpret that. So this being my last few blurbs of 2010, I wanted to mention Wright in one of them. In truth, I'm relieved that the guy found his power stroke this season hitting 18 more home runs than last year, giving him 28 on the year. He has 100 RBI which is right where you would expect him to be. His .284 average, while not bad, does represent the lowest of his career. Cause for concern? Yeah, maybe. What I don't like is the 160 strikeouts on the year which is an all-time Mets high for one season. Somewhere Dave Kingman and Tommie Agee are now sleeping restfully. The strikeouts continue to increase from year to year (140 in '09, 118 in '08, 115 in '07). And while that's worrisome enough, Wright only hit .248 that second part of the year with a .307 OBP. Take into consideration that his LD% of 18.8 is down by more than 4% from his career average and his EYE is 0.43 compared to a career EYE of 0.60, you may have some reason for concern—I do. He is still one of the better third baseman in the game, but his elite status may be in jeopardy unless he is able to find that stroke that had him as .300+ hitter year in and year out.
Jordan Zimmermann (SP—Nationals) Having missed most of the season rehabbing from TJ surgery, it's tough to get a true reading on Jordan Zimmermann. He has the potential to be a #2 starter behind Stephen Strasburg but with just 25 innings pitched this year, we haven't really seen anything that shows that kind of promise. Granted, The Nationals are not pushing him too hard, limiting his pitch count to around 85. He has just seven starts this year and is averaging just around four innings. With the exception of a couple of starts before Friday night and a good outing against the Mets, his outings have been shaky. His ERA going into Friday's game stands at 5.76 and his FIP is disturbingly high at 6.25. He was able to get the ERA down below 5.00 on Friday, pitching six innings and allowing one earned run. But his high FIP is largely due to the high home run rate of 2.52 per nine innings. On the more encouraging side, Zimmermann has been hitting around 92-93 mph on his fastball with regularity and his K/9 of 8.64 is nothing to sneeze at. He was pretty dominating in the minors during his rehab so I'm putting Zimmermann on the list of players who fantasy owners will want to monitor come spring training. Zimmermann is one of those high risk/high reward guys, and while he is still young and maturing, he could be a nice sleeper pick-up in 2011.
Pedro Alvarez (3B—Pirates) Going into Friday, Pedro Alvarez has been on a tear and he continued that tear going 2-for-4. He collected five RBI on Thursday and has 21 RBI in his last 11 games along with five home runs. He has a .467 batting average during that period along with an OPS of more than 1.343. His strikeout ratio for the season is unsightly at 34.5% but we have been seeing some improvement in that area where over the past 10 games it's down around 25%. Not great, but better. I particularly like Alvarez's home rate of a home run every 22.6 AB's which is around 13 at-bats less than the MLB average. This projects very nicely out to a 28 home run season given a full 162 games. Alvarez is still maturing and hopefully going forward the strikeouts will subside but if his current pace is an indication that he is getting accustomed to Major-League hitting, then Alvarez could be a great option at third base for 2011.
Jhoulys Chacin (SP—Rockies) In his rookie year, Jhoulys Chacin was impressive enough that he should be a draft day consideration for 2011. His record was not great at 9-11 but his ERA of 3.22 and his FIP of 3.55 are fairly in line as an indicator that he is no fluke. He suffers from a similar issue as teammate Jorge De La Rosa where he collects strikeouts (K/9 of 9.04) but also collects walks at much too high of a rate (BB/9 of 4.00). But what makes Chacin attractive as an option for your fantasy team is that he is pretty stingy on giving up the long ball. He has only given up ten on the year in 137.1 innings, eight of which have been at Coors Field and we know how it can be there with the home runs. In fact, Chacin has really excelled on the road with a 2.44 ERA. With opponents hitting just .227 for the year against him, he looks like he has the makings of a nice sleeper for 2011.
Jose Reyes (SS—Mets) Somewhat surprising is that we have done very little writing on Fantistics about Jose Reyes. Reyes has missed about 30 games this year, which is a vast improvement over the 36 games he played all of last season. His .285 batting average is right in line with his career average and his eleven home runs is about par for the course. He has 30 stolen bases on the year which for most players is pretty darn good but somehow for Reyes it falls short of normal expectations. Where he really slid this year was in his plate discipline with an EYE of just 0.49 and a walk rate of 5.2%. Not surprising, his OBP of .323 represents Reyes' lowest since 2006. Perhaps most troubling is that Reyes continues to hit far too many fly balls (39.6%) for a guy with his kind of speed. The fact that Reyes hasn't been mentioned much on our website signifies that he is starting to become forgettable. Decent performance but nothing noteworthy. He is slipping for his top tier status for sure and his injury prone body is really starting to take a hit on his overall fantasy value.
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