AGRI Biz

In 41 games with the White Sox last season, Alex Rios had a line of 11/.199/3/9/5. Gross. In just 22 games this season, Rios has already reached his home run and RBI totals with the White Sox last season with 10 runs, nine steals, and a triple-slash line of .276/.326/.470. Rios hasn’t had a SLG that high since 2007, and his .294 BABIP (career .319) suggests all three of those numbers should improve ...

I didn't plan on writing an in-depth article today, but my unhealthy obsession with stats and patterns got the better of me. While my waffles were in the toaster this morning, I clicked over to the fantasy league that we at Baseball Professor had just drafted this past weekend. Yesterday, Chris Campanelli and I were discussing a trade that would involve me getting Wade Davis . I like Davis. I like his ...

All good things must come to an end— unless you're Mariano Rivera, it seems . Rivera once again enters 2010 as one of baseball’s elite closers, even after turning 40 last November. He’s had an ERA above 1.94 only once in the last seven years, and he’s finished with a WHIP under 1.00 in four of the last five seasons. In the last 13 years, he’s saved fewer than 30 ...

Up until this point, we at Baseball Professor have done a lot of talking about BABIP and its value in determining whether or not a player should maintain a certain level of performance. This is great when analyzing batters, but it's only part of the picture when looking at pitchers. Today, we’ll examine xFIP. Before we dive into the potentially overwhelming world of baseball sabermetrics, let’s see exactly what xFIP is. ...

Last season, Joe Nathan saved 47 of Minnesota’s 87 victories. The All-Star closer will be lucky to get one this year. Nathan was removed from Saturday’s pre-season contest against the Red Sox after just one batter, citing elbow tightness and soreness. It was originally thought that the discomfort was due to breaking up scar tissue from an October surgery to remove bone chips from the reliever’s elbow, but an MRI showed the ...

You’ve probably heard a lot about position scarcity—make sure you get elite middle infielders and feel free to wait on your first baseman—and that a great draft is all about finding a balance between filling thin positions while not waiting too long to fill deeper ones. It’s all true, but don’t forget about category scarcity. Using a little bit of foresight (and a few easy to read graphs), we can get an ...

DonÆt pay for saves. Now that I got that out of the way, we can turn our attention to the relievers. Amazingly, there are a lot of relatively stable bullpen situations across the league. Houston and Pittsburgh are the only teams that donÆt have a clear-cut closer, although there are other teams with guys on shorter leashes and a few teams with setup men waiting in the wings. This stability makes my opening ...

I don't know about you, but I feel more confident guessing Orlando "El Duque" Hernandez's age than I do projecting shortstop this season. It isn't that I don't know a lot about the positionùI like to think I doùbut there are just so many questions this year. Of the top 10 guys, you should have concerns about starting seven of them in your fantasy leagueùand the guys ranked seven through 17 could ...

The emergence of Aaron Hill , Ben Zobrist , and Jose Lopez transformed second base from a shallow position with few reliable options to one with deceptive depth. Overall, four players hit 30+ HR, six scored 100+ runs, seven drove in 85+ runs and eight stole 20+ bases. In short, 2009 was a good year for second basemen. As a result, second base will be an exciting position to watch come ...

Last season, Miguel Montero was the sixth ranked catcher at season’s end. Who saw that coming? From down seasons (Russell Martin) to injury woes (Ryan Doumit) to a combination of both (Geovany Soto), there were a lot of surprises at the catcher position last season. As a result, the 2010 preseason catcher rankings are a clutter of question marks outside the top three. The good news is you can use this to ...