Trading highly-touted top prospects is a dangerous game for GMs, even if the return is proven player, because the trade seldom ends up being a fair one. Either the prospect pans out and the receiving team now has a star under team control for the better part of the next decade, or the prospect doesn’t pan out and the sending team has managed to sell a player at the pinnacle of his theoretical value, a point he will never reach in reality, and gotten a major league star for as their prize. Read the rest of this entry »

After trying and failing to sign Carlos Pena earlier this offseason, the Indians satisfied their first base needs with another former Tampa Bay Ray last week: Casey Kotchman. They inked him to a one-year contract worth $3 million with a bunch of incentives, pushing Matt LaPorta aside for the time being.

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The Cubs have had just six regular first baseman since 1989, but they’ll make it seven in 2012. The new Theo Epstein-led regime hopes that the recently acquired Anthony Rizzo will stake a claim to the job for the foreseeable future, but he’s unlikely to be manning the position come Opening Day. That honor figures to go to Bryan LaHair, a 29-year-old journeyman-type with big minor league numbers and 219 big league plate appearances to his credit.

“I don’t believe in four-A players,” said Epstein in December. “Guys who can hit will hit when they’re given a chance. [LaHair] continued to rake in winter ball.”

Epstein wasn’t kidding. LaHair posted a .443 wOBA with 38 homers in Triple-A this year, then put together a .381 wOBA in 28 MLB games late in the season, and then went on to hit .272/.404/.592 with 15 homers in 47 winter ball games after the season. All told, the former 39th round pick of the Mariners hit .313/.403/.633 with 52 doubles and 55 homers in 196 total games in 2011, which is obviously huge production. That’s all well and good, but what does it mean for his fantasy value in 2012?

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The “Free Russ Canzler” movement can turn its attention toward the plight of some other minor league masher buried on the depth chart. Canzler, the 2011 International League MVP, figured to toil at Triple-A Durham again next year after the Tampa Bay Rays signed Luke Scott to DH and Carlos Pena to man first base. But the Cleveland Indians picked him up for cash after Tampa DFA’d Canzler, adding right-handed punch to a lefty-laden club that has tired of former CC Sabathia trade bauble Matt LaPorta‘s flailing at first base.

So, Canzler (26 in April) has the chance to free himself from the chains of the “Quad-A” label. Is he up to the task? Maybe. Canzler’s power is impressive, he may well be Cleveland’s best option at first and his versatility will help him make the squad this spring, but putting his minor league numbers in greater context removes some of the sheen from his award-winning slugging.

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What’s the smallest number of plate appearances a player can have before he becomes a bust? There’s no handy algorithm for busts, no simple test like 0-for-X where as long as X > 15, the player is a bust. It’s a pretty informal, gut level feeling based on everything from expectations to the level of competition the player has failed against. Mat Gamel hasn’t yet reached 200 PAs in the major leagues, but I’ve seen less support for him than for most prospects-on-the-precipice, even those who have an actual track record of failure, which strikes me as odd.  Read the rest of this entry »

The Mets are bringing the fences in at Citi Field and that sound you heard when the announcement was made several months ago was the champagne corks going off in the hitters’ households, as well as their keeper league fantasy owners. Ike Davis is certainly to be one of the primary beneficiaries of the change. With Prince Fielder and Albert Pujols‘ departure to the other league this off-season, the National League first base crop is looking mighty thing. That gives Davis the opportunity to actually be the second most valuable at the position, behind Joey Votto. Let’s see what he may do.

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For the past year-plus, Kendrys Morales has been an expert in worst case scenarios. Injure yourself in a walkoff celebration, miss a full year in the aftermath, and see your team promote a promising young stud and acquire the best player in the league — both at your position — and you can come to define the term.

Are things looking up now? Teammates like Peter Bourjos raved at the power Morales showed in his first live batting practice in over a year on Monday. What if he gets it together? What might a best-case scenario for the 28-year-old switch-hitting Cuban first baseman look like? How could things break just right for him?

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As Eno Sarris alluded to it yesterday, but the defections of Albert Pujols and Prince Fielder to the American League have left behind an ugly scene at first base in the Senior Circuit. Joey Votto is clearly the best player at the position in the National League now, and the gap between him and the second best first baseman might be bigger than the gap between the number one and two players at any other position. With Ryan Braun likely to miss the first third of the season, the decision for first overall pick in NL-only leagues is down to Votto and Matt Kemp.

The second best fantasy first baseman in the National League is up for debate, though I only see two realistic candidates: Lance Berkman and Mike Morse. Ryan Howard would certainly be in that mix if we knew he was going to be in the lineup on Opening Day (we don’t), and as much as I like Freddie Freeman and (particularly) Ike Davis, they’re a notch below those those guys at the moment. Paul Goldschmidt, Michael Cuddyer, Todd Helton, Yonder Alonso, and Lucas Duda are below those guys, and then it really starts to get ugly.

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Here at FanGraphs, we are doing our best to make sure we publish as many articles about Prince Fielder‘s move to the Motor City as possible. We want to ensure that there is absolutely no temptation to go anywhere else to find an angle that we missed (because we couldn’t have missed an angle, we covered them all!). So to continue on with the behind the scenes look at my projections, it is only fitting that Fielder is the next man in the spotlight.

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Prince Fielder. Dude is big and powerful and it’s not surprising that the Tigers’ signing of the younger Fielder made a large splash in the wading pool that is the American League Central right now. The splash actually covered much of the first round of next year’s fantasy drafts and impacted leagues in three key ways. Let’s enumerate.

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