Fantasy Baseball Index

March 23, 2016

Eight hitters who may be over- or under-priced in 2016

One of the problems you can run into when trying to figure out who you may want to draft in your league is recency bias. Simply put, what a player did last year is generally the driving force in his price. While the player's most recent performance is the most important information we have when valuing him, it is not the only information we should use.

This is where a projection can be useful. A good projection will weigh the player's most recent performance most heavily but will also account for anomalies in their performance that may not necessarily be repeatable. Because of this, I thought it might be useful to try and pick out a few players that CAIRO has projected to perform somewhat differently in 2016 than they did in 2015.

(Editor's note: "CAIRO" is the forecasting system used to create the player values in our Fantasy Baseball Index Cheat Sheet Update newsletters.)

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Let's start with the player CAIRO expect to fall off the most in 2016 by OPS (On Base Percentage plus Slugging Percentage). That would be the 23-year-old 2015 National League MVP Bryce Harper.

Bryce Harper
Line	AB	R	H	2B	3B	HR	RBI	BB	K	SB	avg	obp	slg	ops
Proj	533	96	163	31	2	35	80	90	135	8	.306	.408	.567	.975
2015	521	118	172	38	1	42	99	124	131	6	.330	.460	.649	1.109

It's not that CAIRO doesn't like Harper. In fact, no one projects to have a higher OPS in 2016 than him. But he came into 2015 with a career OPS of .816 and exited it with a career OPS of .902 and CAIRO needs to see more before assuming he can carry a 1.100 OPS going forward. Harper has youth on his side, but if the bidding for him gets too high you may want to sit him out.

On the opposite side, the regular player who is projected to most exceed his 2015 production is a risky one. That would be 37-year-old Victor Martinez.

Victor Martinez
Line	AB	R	H	2B	3B	HR	RBI	BB	K	SB	avg	obp	slg	ops
Proj	428	51	121	22	0	14	66	41	49	1	.281	.347	.434	.781
2015	440	39	108	20	0	11	64	31	52	0	.245	.301	.366	.667

The projection doesn't know that Martinez had injury issues in 2015 and while it does incorporate aging, it can't necessarily tell if Martinez has fallen off a cliff. Then again, there are a few DHs that have managed to remain productive well past the age Martrinez is now and he is only a season removed from a line of .335/.409/.565. He offers no positional value, but in a DH league he could be worth a flier if his price drops low enough.

Speaking of older DHs, 40-year-old Alex Rodriguez exceeded just about any reasonable expectations in 2015, belting 33 homers. Rodriguez carried a .905 OPS as late as August 9 before fading down the stretch. CAIRO is not expecting a repeat in 2016.

Alex Rodriguez
Line	AB	R	H	2B	3B	HR	RBI	BB	K	SB	avg	obp	slg	ops
Proj	401	60	99	16	1	19	60	55	106	4	.247	.340	.434	.774
2015	523	83	131	22	1	33	86	84	145	4	.250	.356	.486	.842

Even if Rodriguez can hit, he remains a risk to stay on the field. Although he saw a handful of games in the field last year, it sounds like that's not going to happen so he's a pure DH at this point and not one likely to come close to what he did last year.

After a very strong 2014 season, 26-year-old Anthony Rendon had a very disappointing 2015. He projects to rebound in both his rate stats and his playing time in 2016, and could edge his way up from the middle of the pack at second or third base.

Anthony Rendon
Line	AB	R	H	2B	3B	HR	RBI	BB	K	SB	avg	obp	slg	ops
Proj	483	71	134	29	2	13	53	50	96	7	.278	.350	.429	.779
2015	311	43	82	16	0	5	25	36	70	1	.264	.344	.363	.707

Arizona LF David Peralta had a career year at 28, fueled by batting average on balls in play (BABIP) of .368. While there's a skill component to BABIP, it's also subject to fluctuation from season to season and the league average is much lower. CAIRO is regressing that a bit in his 2016 forecast and does not like his chances of a repeat of 2015.

David Peralta
Line	AB	R	H	2B	3B	HR	RBI	BB	K	SB	avg	obp	slg	ops
Proj	454	56	128	25	7	13	66	35	92	7	.281	.334	.455	.789
2015	462	61	144	26	10	17	78	44	107	9	.312	.371	.522	.893

I was a bit surprised when 31-year-old Troy Tulowitzki popped up on my list of players who are projected to improve in 2016. Generally, taking a player out of Colorado is not going to help his batting line.

Troy Tulowitzki
Line	AB	R	H	2B	3B	HR	RBI	BB	K	SB	avg	obp	slg	ops
Proj	438	74	128	24	1	19	66	46	93	2	.292	.364	.484	.848
2015	486	77	136	27	0	17	70	38	114	1	.280	.337	.440	.777

It's never easy to assess how a park affects any individual player, but we've seen Matt Holliday thrive when he left Colorado. Tulowitzki is a good hitter, and Toronto is a good hitters' park, even if it's not as good of a hitters' park as Coors Field. If you think Tulowitzki can stay healthy to get 450 AB on artificial turf, he's worth considering.

36-year-old Mark Teixeira enters the last year of his contract with the Yankees coming off a very good season. Much like teammate Alex Rodriguez, Teixeira s not expected to come close to that level of production.

Mark Teixeira
Line	AB	R	H	2B	3B	HR	RBI	BB	K	SB	avg	obp	slg	ops
Proj	377	51	90	18	0	22	63	50	86	2	.238	.332	.463	.795
2015	392	57	100	22	0	31	79	59	85	2	.255	.357	.548	.906

Teixeira could out-hit that projection, but he's not a good bet to stay healthy and is probably not someone worth drafting based on his 31 homers in 2015.

Fairly or not, 32-year-old Hanley Ramirez's first season in Boston is viewed as a disaster. His defense in LF was abysmal, although that only affects his fantasy value in terms of position and playing time. However, it's easy to forget that he had a very strong April and was hitting .283/.340/.609 on May 4 when he ran into the wall in left field and missed a week or so. From that point to the end of the season he hit .239/.275/.372 and you wonder if he was ever healthy.

Hanley Ramirez
Line	AB	R	H	2B	3B	HR	RBI	BB	K	SB	avg	obp	slg	ops
Proj	477	70	129	27	1	18	69	41	90	11	.271	.333	.445	.777
2015	401	59	100	12	1	19	53	21	71	6	.249	.291	.426	.717

If Ramirez can take to his new position of first base and if he's healthy, I think he can exceed that projection pretty easily, especially in a park that is very good for right-handed hitters.

As with any projections, these are limited. They use data to make estimates of how good a player currently is. But hopefully, you can use them with other information that you may be aware of to get a little advantage in your draft.

-Sherif Geleil

Sherif Geleil's CAIRO projection system is the foundation upon which the Fantasy Index projections and rankings are built. We sometimes change CAIRO's playing time assessments to match our own expectations, and on rare occasions we override its projections for some statistics (saves, primarily).

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