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Can one day make any difference in fantasy baseball? I had a post written that came to me after watching the Angels-Rockies tilt on Tuesday night stating that Vladimir Guerrero was done and that I am pleased to not own him on any of my four teams. Vladdy has numbers that are Eckstein-esque this year. If you have him on your team, you definitely paid way too much for him after he missed over a month with torn pectoral muscles. I learned from Rex Hudler during Tuesday's broadcast that 30 of Vlad's 36 hits for the year were singles. His body doesn't look significantly different than it has in the past, so what gives? Is it just the injury or is someting else going on? A closer look is in order.
Looking at batted ball data, a few things jump out at me. First, the most obvious is the ridiculously low 2.4 HR/FB rate, down from 16.1 last year. To give you some perspective, Eckstein's career HR/FB is 2.7. Like Geovany Soto, this rate is due to rise and come back to the norm. His line drive rate is down a bit and his fly ball rate up a bit, but nothing to explain a dropoff of this magnitude. The only pitch he seems to be hitting with any success is a slider and even fastballs have consistently been effective against him. In past years, the numbers suggest he has feasted on spilt fingered fastballs while this year that pitch has been the most successful against him. His plate discipline has been the worst in his career. In his prime, 30-35% of everything he swung at was out of the strike zone, this year sees that number rise to 51%.
So he is swinging at every other pitch and 65% of everything thrown to him. Considering he was injured earlier this season and may not be fully healed, could he be pressing and stepping up an already aggressive approach? Could be.
Yesterday, I was going to suggest running away from this hot mess as quickly as possible. Tonight, he had a double, home run, and three RBI. If you are inclined to sell him, tonight was a great opportunity for you to shop him and hope another owner is willing to offer something more in line with the numbers generated in his past. However, some of those numbers say 'buy low'. How low is up to you, but it is certainly something to consider. If those numbers do revert back to the mean, you want to be there for it. Would I trade Adam Lind or Adam Jones for him? No way. Would I trade Corey Hart or Jay Bruce for him? I certainly wouldn't rule it out.
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