About a week ago the Boston Red Sox signed second baseman and AL MVP Dustin Pedroia to a 6 year $40.5 million dollar deal. It’s been quite a year for Pedroia. An outstanding season, an MVP award and then he gets paid. For all of these reasons, Dustin Pedroia will be the single most overrated and overdrafted fantasy player on draft day 2009.
Don’t get me wrong, Pedroia will put up very good fantasy numbers in 2009, but what will it cost you to get those numbers? I’ve looked at three different mock drafts here, here and here and Pedroia has been selected twice in round 2 and once in round 3. Currently at mockdraftcentral.com, Pedroia has an ADP of 28.44 which puts him toward the top of round 3. While Pedroia was a five category stud last season, if we take a closer look, perhaps we find that Pedroia played a bit over his head. First off, he’s not a power hitter. He plays in a home ballpark that is extremely conducive to his swing, thus the 50+ 2B’s in back to back years, but one slight change in the wind and a few of those wall scrapers turn into doubles. Here are his distances from hittrackeronline.com. Also, Pedroia is not all that fast. In 2008 he was very smart about when to snag a base. Chances are he wont sneak up on teams in 2009.
The basis of drafting Pedroia high is about a couple things; 1) You’d be betting on the fact the he will stay the same or get better in 2009 to the tune of 20/20 or more. 2) Position scarcity at 2B. First off, as I have mentioned before, I don’t play the position scarcity game in rounds 1-3. I want the best player available. To the point about Pedroia getting even better I’ll say this; He sure seems to be turning into one heck of a consistent fantasy player, but he still does not have a full three year major league trend to look at. Which leads me to this…
I found an interesting comp in the scale of Pedroia’s career path. His name is Russell Martin. In Martin’s rookie year he it .282 with 10 HR’s and 10 SB’s. In Pedroia’s rookie year he hit .317 with 8 HR’s and 7 SB’s. In year two, Martin flourished to .293/19/21 as did Pedroia .326/17/20. In year three Martin regressed from his year two numbers to .280/13/18. Just a slight drop off, but significant in the fact that fantasy owners who drafted Martin high were expecting .295/20/20. Now Pedroia enters year three of his major league career. So what do we get? Does Pedroia produce .330/20/20? Or more along the lines of what happened to Martin which would lead to around .310/15/15? I will play this one on the conservative side and look more for .310/15/15 (still very, very good production) and I’ll wait one or two rounds later and get my potential .300/20/30 from Matt Kemp in round 4.
Just for fun, here’s the AL and NL MVP winners and the difference in their stats the following season:
Filed under: Looking to 09 | Tagged: Dustin Pedroia, Fantasy Baseball
I have to disagree with you here. First of all, I am biased since I live in New England and still watch Red Sox games as a fan first and fantasy player second. That being said here’s some of the differences in my opinion:
1. While Pedroia’s steal total was much higher than his rookie year, his success rate stealing was very high so perhaps he could get the green light even more in 2009.
2. Watch his at bats. I’m a big fan of Bill James, but Sparky Anderson was always someone who paid more attention to what he saw. When you watch Pedroia hit with two strikes or hit an A.J. Burnett high fastball out of the park that 99% of hitters would be happy to pop up you gain appreciation for the guy beyond stats.
3. He’s working out in Arizona and will always find motivation from doubters to put himself in great shape.
4. Russell Martin has to deal with the wear and tear of being a catcher. I definitely respect the research you did to find a player with similar stats, but overall there are too many variables at play.
5. Are you going to hold Tim Lincecum to that same 3 year body of work standard?
Let me preface this with disclosure that this will be a much debated topic going into 2009. I’ve read arguments both ways and both have merit. I’m simply stating where I stand on the matter and why I stand there. To your points:
1. His SB success rate was high because he was smart about when he attempted to steal. I use the example of Matt Holliday in 2008. He stole 28 bases and was only caught twice. Holliday has good speed, but not great speed. He only stole a base when he knew he could get one because he doesn’t have the speed of say a B.J. Upton who stole 44 bases, but was caught 16 times. A guy with the speed of Upton feels that they can steal a base no matter what. Pedroia just does not have that type of speed. I think he had the green light most of the time in 2008 and he chose when to go very smartly. He’s also smart enough to not go if the opportunities are not there in 2009. Pedroia’s SB totals at all levels through 2007 just don’t show the trend; 8 in 2005, 5 in 2006 and 7 in 2007.
2. I agree that Pedroia does a ton of stuff outside of just stats. He is a guy any team would love to have because of the way he always plays all out, but in this case I can’t look past the stats because that’s all fantasy baseball cares about. Though Pedroia’s stats are pretty damn nice.
3. Jeff Francoeur worked hard last offseason in an attempt to increase his power.
4. I understand where you are coming from with the point that Martin has to deal with the wear and tear of being a catcher, but he did put up his .293/19/21 season playing catcher full time. In 2008 he even started 11 games at 3B.
5. I am going to project Lincecum as I have because he showed the exact thing that he is doing right now in the major leagues all the way through the minors. Pedroia did not show 20/20 growth in the minors. There are a ton of players you could bring up that do not have a three year major league track record and when they don’t you have to look toward what they have done, even if it is the minors. Another example is Ryan Braun. He had been hitting bombs and stealing bases all the way back to his days at Miami so there is a track record that goes beyond his two full major league seasons that’s why I thought he was the real deal going into 2008.
I think what we have here is one of the reasons we love the fantasy baseball offseason. It’s essentially just big a debate. Outside of guys like A-Rod and Pujols and Wright, etc, there are a bunch of players that people have varying opinions on. I’m sure I can find a Yankees fan that would argue Robinson Cano will be better than Pedroia in 2008. It’s not like any of the points you make are wrong, I just am trying to clarify why I stand where I stand.
Haha great point with Francoer. Also a great point on Lincecum in the Minors.
If you don’t see Dustin being worth pick number 28 like he has been, where do you think he should be going? Who do you think is going after Pedroia that should be picked sooner?
That’s a good question Mark and just based on the mock drafts that I have done (not that these are the end all of draft info) Pedroia has been picked over Carlos Beltran, Matt Holliday, Carlos Lee types, guys who have proven mostly consistent over the course of their careers. I am not at all opposed to taking Pedroia high so to speak, but it goes along the lines of Josh Hamilton going in round one, which I’ve seen numerous times. You’re going to get people from both sides of the coin and both can make a good argument for or against taking him that early.
To me and ADP of 28 doesn’t really tell me that Pedroia will be taken exactly there and based on what I have personally seen, he’s not lasting that long. In my opinion, I’d be happy to get Pedroia in the same category of Matt Kemp, Curtis Granderson, Alex Rios and of course the last 2B I’d personally target before Pedroia, Brian Roberts. I guess perhaps saying he’ll be the most overrated and overdrafted was more of a shock line than anything else. It’s sort of like the argument I made against Kinsler in round one. Really when you look at the numbers, Pedroia actually had a higher AVG, scored more runs, and had more RBI (Granted Kinsler missed time with injury, but that says something about his durability compared to Pedroia).
Also part of the point of the article wasn’t so much to downgrade Pedroia, but to show how visual and verbal things like AL MVP and $40.5 million dollars can play tricks on people.
That hit tracker website you referenced in your post is an awesome resource — thanks for the link.
Exploring that website, I came across some interesting information on poor Mark Teahen. The guy is roundly criticized for his lack of power, and yet nearly 50% of his homers (7/15) were characterized as “lucky.” Not only is he not hitting with power, but of the little power he does show, most of it is characterized here as luck!*
* granted, I need to dig into how they define it, but I’m assuming it has something to do with short distance home runs and/or high velocity winds and/or presence of Livan Hernandez in 500 mile radius
This seems like a fun website to dig through though. It would be great to dig up the 2007 wallscraper/lucky/unlucky data and posthumously project 2008, then compare to actuals. I wonder if they have any projective value.
Ya gotta believe
some of us are big numbers guys, some of us believe what we see while watching games. Baseball has more stats starting with minors and going all the way to retirement; you can get dizzy comparing & sorting them all. Some of us put a great deal into those stats, who makes contack, who does what in certain situations; the numbers game is endless. We can twist and turn this years numbers vs career numbers & pick up on trends, look at age(another number), compare our projections vs experts projections on and on the numbers go. But even the biggest stat guys at some point tend to turn their backs on stats and end up feeling a certain way about players; they either believe or they don’t believe in certain players.
The 2008 numbers:
BJ Upton runs 85 HR 9 RBI 67 K 134 SB 44 AVG 273
Pedroia runs118 HR17 RBI 83 K 52 SB 20 AVG 326
To be fair BJ played hurt all year and we saw what he is capable of in the playoffs.Not even the biggest Pedroia believer expected those kinds of #’s from him & a small dropoff would still be a terrific season. Actually I think both players are going to have fine seasons, however taking either early in the 2nd round isn’t in my plans like so many of the mocks we’ve seen.Basically Charlie is warning against taking Pedroia so early(like so many other experts are as well) while saying BJ might be much better than the numbers indicate. Believe it or not!
Well said.
Dustin Pedroia is Rex Hudler on Steroids.
I really liked your blog with the Albert Pujols item. I think Pujols will be an instant hall-of-famer.
I try to follow as much MLB news as I can from Caracas, Venzuela.