Order Now The Hardball Times Baseball Annual 2010 features articles by THT's staff as well as Bill James, Tom Tango and Craig Wright. Please support THT and use this link to purchase the Annual.  Derek Ambrosino
John Burnson Derek Carty Marco Fujimoto Eriq Gardner Matt Hagen Jonathan Halket Rob McQuown Troy Patterson Mike Silver Paul Singman Michael Street And here's the full roster. Got a question for our fantasy baseball experts? Email us:
Heater MagazineAdd 10 MPH to your fantasy team — see for yourself
HEATER MAGAZINE Winner, 2008 CBS Sportsline Fantasy League of Experts  Plus our Statistical Definitions Most Recent Comments
The stats we target (4)
Clone Wars: Clay Buchholz and Felix Hernandez (2) This isn’t fantasy baseball, Joe (5) Top 10 prospects for 2010: Los Angeles Dodgers and San Francisco Giants (12) Waiver Wire Offseason: AL (10) Monthly Archives
February, 2010
January, 2010 December, 2009 November, 2009 October, 2009 September, 2009 August, 2009 July, 2009 June, 2009 May, 2009 April, 2009 March, 2009 February, 2009 January, 2009 December, 2008 November, 2008 October, 2008 September, 2008 August, 2008 July, 2008 June, 2008 May, 2008 April, 2008 March, 2008 February, 2008 January, 2008 December, 2007 November, 2007 October, 2007 September, 2007 August, 2007 July, 2007 June, 2007 May, 2007 Gear up for baseball season with Chicago White Sox tickets and New York Yankees tickets. LA Angels tickets, Houston Astros tickets, and Atlanta Braves tickets are hot sellers! You can get Boston Red Sox tickets, San Diego Padres tickets or Chicago Cubs tickets for your favorite baseball fan. Coast to Coast Tickets has the best MLB tickets like Minnesota Twins tickets, LA Dodgers tickets, Milwaukee Brewers tickets, New York Met tickets and St. Louis Cardinals tickets. Find premium Chicago Cubs tickets and other Chicago tickets at JustGreatTickets.com. Chicago Cubs Tickets Chicago Tickets  All content on this site (including text, graphs, and any other original works), unless otherwise noted, is licensed under a Creative Commons License. |
Most Recent Posts
Monday, June 29, 2009Clone Wars: Jacoby Ellsbury and Juan PierrePosted by Troy Patterson at 1:49amJacoby Ellsbury had a huge 33 games in a 2007 call up and even made a great showing in the 2007 playoffs, but has yet to match those numbers since. He has been given many comparisons to other players, including Fred Lynn, Johnny Damon and Ichiro Suzuki. So far though he has fallen short in different ways, like batting eye or power. This leaves him in a dangerous position and looking dangerously more like Juan Pierre. Name GP AB R HR RBI SB CS K% BB% BABIP HR/FB P/PA Jacoby Ellsbury 69 282 37 3 24 31 6 9.9% 6.6% 0.327 3.6% 3.8 Juan Pierre 67 229 37 0 24 18 6 7.9% 6.9% 0.357 0% 3.5  Jacoby Ellsbury This season Ellsbury has shown improvement in his contact rate. His career strikeout rate is 12.9 percent, but he has been at or below 10 percent almost all season. Looking at his career he has a 13 percent strikeout rate in the lead off spot in 764 at-bats, but a 10 percent rate in any other spot in the order with 183 at-bats. This is still a small sample size, but may be a sign for the Red Sox to keep him at the bottom of the order. However, the problem hasn't been strikeouts so much for Ellsbury, but the lack of walks. He has been extremely consistent with his walk rate, which is at only 6.8 percent in his career. This has always been a problem, and contributed to his OBP dropping to .336 last year. A reduction of his strikeout rate this year has pushed his OBP back up to .354. That isn't great, but for a bottom of the order guy with speed it doesn't hurt. Unfortunately, the power has disappeared this season for Ellsbury as he has seen his HR/FB go from 10.9 percent in 2007 to 7.3 percent in 2008 and now 3.6 percent through 278 at-bats this year. This used to help differentiate him from Pierre. If he can't reach 10 homers, he starts to look like a one or two category guy and his value drops. Ellsbury also hasn't been able to keep his BABIP as high as Ichiro's. While Ellsbury had a BABIP of .388 in limited time in 2007 year, his career BABIP is just .327. Ichiro's career BABIP is .358, resulting in better averages and OBPs. Juan Pierre Pierre is a well known entity at this point. He holds value in fantasy leagues for his batting average and steals, but in real baseball his value is limited. Now that teams are catching on, he has come to be a bench outfielder unless injuries strike. With Manny Ramirez out for a drug suspension he has seen plenty of at-bats and produced as we have come to expect. In every season since 2001 Pierre has stolen 40 bases, scored 87 runs (except last year) and his career batting average is .301. He is as consistent as the come, but so is his walk rate. His career rate is 5.8 percent and this year's 6.9 percent is his highest since 2003 with the Marlins. Power is the category where Pierre falls behind Ellsbury. Pierre has never topped three homers in a season, while Ellsbury hit nine in 2008 and has three so far in 2009. Pierre should be able to find full time at-bats as long as Willy Tavaras and Michael Bourn can get starting jobs. Unfortunately, that won't happen on the Dodgers now that Manny is back, and according to this LA Times report there is no interest in moving Pierre, so he will be dead weight to your team for the remainder of the year. ConclusionSo being compared to Pierre doesn't make Ellsbury a bad fantasy option, but it certainly won't help him with the Red Sox. They are almost the same player, with a slight boost in SLG (about 30 points) for Ellsbury. Pierre's value will continue to fluctuate with his playing time, and his situation in Los Angeles, where he is behind both Ramirez and Andre Ethier, doesn't look good for now. Ellsbury has a firm grip on a starting gig, and is on pace for 60 steals this year, and should provide solid fantasy value going forward. If he could ever gain a few points in his walk rate he could head back to the top of the order and be an elite lead off man, but for now he's relegated to Pierre comparisons. Check out more work from Troy at RotoSavants and Fire Brand of the AL. You can contact him with questions or recommendations email me
Troy Patterson said...
And the .377 BABIP. Yes that one. With his career BABIP at .323 I will wait until the season is over to say he has fixed his problems. I will give him a slight increase in walk rate this year, but still expect his OBP to finish below .350. Posted 06/29 at 12:45 PM
Derek Carty said...
Aarcraft, Posted 06/29 at 03:13 PM
Page 1 of 1
Commenting is not available in this weblog entry.
Next Post: How to handle league-switchers in AL and NL-only leagues>> <<Previous Post: Waiver Wire: AL |
Do you mean the Michael Bourn who is currently sporting a .377 OBP and a 113 OPS+?