Player Profile: Dan Uggla
January 29th, 2013 | by Ray Flowers |
Dan Uggla hit an unacceptable .220 last season for the Braves. Unfortunately for him, that seems to be the only number anyone ever looks at. Consider the following data points.
Were you aware that Uggla’s 19 homers were the 5th best in baseball for second baseman? That’s if we slot Ben Zobrist as a second baseman.
Were you aware that Uggla’s 78 RBIs were third at the second base position?
Were you aware that Uggla’s 86 runs scored were sixth at the second base position? He’d be fifth if we removed Zobrist.
Did you know that he was one of three second basemen with 19 homers, 75 RBIs and 85 runs scored? The others were Robinson Cano and Aaron Hill.
Were you aware that his .348 OBP was better than the marks of Dustin Pedroia (.347), Neil Walker (.342), Jason Kipnis (.335), Rickie Weeks (.328) and Brandon Phillips (.321)? Uggla also tied with Joey Votto for the NL lead with 94 walks.
Were you aware that Uggla is the only second baseman in the history of baseball, ever folks, to hit 19 homers with 78 RBIs and 84 runs scored in 7-straight seasons? Moreover, he’s only played seven seasons, and if he repeats those three numbers once again in 2013 he’ll tie the all-time career mark for second baseman with eight such seasons (Jeff Kent).
So after all of that are you really going to sit there and tell me that the reason you lost last season was because of Uggla? Are you really going to tell me he was a huge disappointment? Are you really? I’m not saying that Uggla wasn’t disappointing last season, but I’m trying to keep it “real” as the kids say. His overall season last year was still good, at least in the counting categories (he’s never been an SB threat and in three of the past four years he hasn’t hit .245). That said, his batting average, homer total and RBI marks were all career lows, so I understand the frustration, but let’s not take that to the degree that we blame him for a fantasy squads failures.
The good news is that Uggla walked 94 times, a career best number. He also posted a 0.56 BB/K ratio which was a three year best and above his 0.48 career mark. Yes he was struggling to produce hits, but at least he didn’t totally lose control of the strike zone. That gives me some hope that his batting average could rebound. That’s especially true when I see Uggla with a 20.1 percent line drive rate – a career best. Last year was actually the first time that his line drive mark was ever over 17.8 percent. Despite a career best line drive rate his BABIP of .283 was below his career .292 mark. That doesn’t make a lot of sense now does it? It also doesn’t make much sense that his homer total fell given that his 46.4 percent fly ball ratio was a three year high. The reason that mark fell was that, after 4-straight years of at least 16.0 percent in the HR/F column, the mark fell to a career worst 11.4 percent. Nothing in his track record suggests that 11.4 percent is his new level, so the odds would favor a slight uptick in homers in 2013 for Uggla.
Maybe this is a case of me favoring the old guy, but I don’t see as much downside with Uggla as others. The Braves are going to play him every day, an a worst case scenario in my mind is a repeat of last season. Let me ask you this. If Uggla were to go .245-25-85-85 in 2013 would you take that? I ask because his career average is even better than that at .253-30-89-96. He’s no spring chicken, he’ll be 33 in March, but I’m still seeing enough in this guys efforts, as frustrating as it was to watch last season, that leads me to think that he has a a good chance to once again be one of the better run producing second baseman in baseball.
By Ray Flowers
Tags: Aaron Hill, Ben Zobrist, Braves, Dan Uggla, Robinson Cano
By costaricanchata on Jan 29, 2013
don’t have the sabermetrics to support this observation , but he seemed to hit a bunch of infield pop-ups whenever i watched him .
maybe he’s making more weak contact on off-speed stuff .
i , for one , appreciate your writings and especially your point of view , Ray .
By Tim on Jan 29, 2013
Uggla is a guy I will be targeting this year, I think he can be a great value. I did a snake draft in a fairly shallow league 12-team (no MI) I got him extremely late as pretty much the last 2B taken.
Ray, this is one of those situations (like most auctions) where I think when Uggla is called out is going to be vital to his value. You figure at least 23-25 2B will come off the board and most of the value guys will be keepers.
In auction leagues, with undervalued guys or sleepers, my thought is always to wait, but if you wait too long his numbers compared to guys 15-25 at 2B, even in a down year will be enough to get guys spending.
I learned from DMC in my football auction, if you are going for a larger name as your “Plan A” on somewhat of a bounceback or undervalue, you better call him out earlier than later while there are still plenty of options out there because people will get to the point there is nobody left and they have money to spend and your plans B,C,D are all gone.
By Nathan on Jan 29, 2013
What’s the story on Aroldis Chapman and the Reds plans for him this season? Is he closing, starting, set up? Is he healthy? He was so dominant last year and now I don’t hear much about him as far as his ADP going into this year.
Thanks!
By Joe M on Jan 29, 2013
No one can blame Uggla for losing their league, but he was a huge dissapoinment for his ADP. Maybe those numbers would have been fine if his ADP was a few rounds later than it was. But anyone blaming their loss on Uggla is just crying, and theres no crying in baseball. Fyi, I had Uggla and I won my 12 team league.
By Joe M on Jan 29, 2013
Off topic question. This past season I implemented a keeper rule where we can keep up to 3 players from the 4th round and on. They can be kept for up to 3 seasons (including the season drafted) The player would be kept in the round he was originally drafted.
The question is our league is with ESPN, but ESPN doesn’t have any options for the draft for keepers in this format. They allow keepers but they just get added to the teams automatically with no setting to add what round.
Is there a website that you know of that we can use just for an online draft that has settings I can predefine? I would then import the results into our ESPN league manually.
Thanks
Joe
By Ray Flowers on Jan 29, 2013
costaricanchata – thanks for your support.
Uggla – you are correct. His infield fly ball rate went up nearly 70 percent in 2012 compared to his career rate.
http://www.fangraphs.com/statss.aspx?playerid=3442&position=2B
By Ray Flowers on Jan 29, 2013
Tim – If Uggla is the 12th 2B off the board, you’re in good shape.
As for auction strategy, can go both ways. You can call him out early and people can pass cause they aren’t interested with bigger names still out there. You could wait and the bidding could be fierce if a couple of people targeted him. You could also wait and see there be no bidding if people have already spent their money. Just how it goes…
By Dennis on Jan 30, 2013
Joe M,
I am in a keeper league on CBS and we can set the draft up to have the keepers in assigned drat spots. Might not be worth it for you since you would have to pay for the customs settings league even though you would be playing on ESPN. For what its worth, I play in leagues on both sites and much prefer CBS for ease of use. CBS also allows player lists to be exported to Excel which I find to be a huge benefit. Good luck!
And thanks to Ray for all the great work!
Regards,
Dennis
By Pascual Perez on Jan 30, 2013
Great stuff Ray, as usual. Some interesting points I hadn’t considered.
Big question – will there be baseballguys.com t shirts available for purchase this year?
By Ray Flowers on Jan 30, 2013
Pascual Perez – Draft Guide on Feb 1st, Friday.
I do have BaseballGuys bracelets, not sure how I’m going to get those out to people, but alas no shirts.
By Joe M on Jan 30, 2013
@Dennis
Been on espn, yahoo, and cbs for years. No one in this espn league wants to switch from espn for the league itself. Cbs is an good option to Draft. Waiting for yahoo to add it’s fantasy baseball so I can create a league there just for the Draft since I think it would be free there. Cbs definitely has the most commissioner tools of the 3 and downloading the Draft results to a spreadsheet is definitely nice.
Thank you
Joe
By Dave on Feb 2, 2013
Very interesting points on Uggla. I’m not afraid to say I didn’t realize how solid his season really was regardless of his BA. Seems like he’d make a great late 2B this year, or MI guy if you strike early.