Five key fantasy players from the Indians.

The Indians are a very intriguing team to me. I see a lot of downside with many of their star players and not as much upside as some either. In this article, I speculated that the Tribe could easily struggle this year, and I think this has a good chance of occurring. Aside from Asdrubal Cabrera, all of the players discussed below are key cogs to the team and all could easily struggle this year. yes, even Grady Sizemore, about whom I think I am a minority of one:

Asdrubal Cabrera He is a very nice solid player, but I think he is a bit overrated. That said the key here is that his defense is above average, so that it is very unlikely that he will lose the job. Two things that matter for young players of his skill set in “real” baseball are defense and the ability to hit for a decent average. He has the defense down pat, and with an 82% contact rate and a 10% walk rate, he should hit for a decent batting average, in the .270 range. I should note that power plays a role in projecting batting averages and a powerful hitter with the same contact rates and BB rates will have a higher xBA. The overall package here is very solid.

Travis Hafner This is the big question for the Indians and fantasy players. Despite his off year, PECOTA is very pessimistic, giving him a 4% breakout rate and a 37% collapse rate. I would stay clear of him unless it was a far later round than he has been generally taken. His GB rate jumped to 44% and his FB rate dropped to 37%, which is bad news for those expecting a 30 HR rebound. He got a late start and has old player’s skills and he may be taking the Mo Vaughn career path.

C.C. Sabathia and Fausto Carmona I mention them together because they have the same risk factor going forward this year, and that is the workload issue. One way to look at it is by Baseball Prospectus’ Pitcher Abuse Points, or PAP. Without getting into the methodology, Sabathia was 26th in PAP and Carmona was 59th, without counting the playoffs. So their usage last year was not the issue. Which brings us next to the increase from 2006.

Here is where the concern arises. Sabathia went from never having pitched 200 IP to 241 in the regular season, not including the playoffs. Carmona went from 74 in 2006 to 215 in 2007 due to the role change. Generally it is accepted that if there is a 50IP increase from year x to year x+1 there is a decided risk of performance diminution or injury. For any one pitcher it may not be a problem, but for a team that is in a tough division trying to dodge the risk with both of its best pitchers may be asking a bit too much.

Grady Sizemore I believe that I am the only person in the fantasy world is not optimistic about Sizemore. In 2007 he had a career high stolen base opportunity rate, so if they temper it back to his normal rate his SBs will go down. He is in the midst of a three year decline in contact rate, from a solid 79% to a current rate of 75%. He has increased his FB rate from 37% to 44% in the last four years, with a concomitant decline in ground ball rate from 47% to 32%. Since fly balls are far more likely to turn into outs than ground balls this is further evidence of a decline in batting average. His xBA in the last three years has declined from .292 to .270 to .252.

This is not meant to bad mouth him, he is a very solid player. But he should be getting better in these skills as he ages through his age 25 season, they shouldn’t be getting worse. He is a valuable fantasy player for sure but he is a far cry from the upper echelons of players, and may never get there. I am not predicting it, but would a .260 BA this year with 25 HR and less than 20 SB surprise anyone?