Player Profile: Zack Cozart

Some things confuse me. Take the following list of thoughts.

Why do we need an I.D. to buy a pack of cigarettes but I don’t need one to vote?

Why hasn’t a big league team asked me to work for them?

Why complain about $4 a gallon gas when you pay $4 for a 16 oz coffee?

Why don’t hot women love me? I mean, come one now, I’m The Oracle.

Why do people think that Zack Cozart is an impressive offensive player?

You’re probably only actually concerned with the last question.

Somehow people seem to think that Cozart is some sort of offensive dynamo, a notion which the data simply turns its nose up at. Strap in. Here we go.

During a five year run in the minors, 506 games worth of action, Cozart hit .270. Yippee. Cozart got on base at a .332 clip. Wowzahs. Cozart had a SLG of .421. Wow, I’m about to fall off my chair since that number is so impressive. Nothing, n-o-t-h-i-n-g, in that line should make anyone excited. The fact is the bat he flashed in the minors was the average man’s average. Yes he did bat .310 as a 25 year old at Triple-A over 77 games in 2011, but that was the first time he showed anything significant as a hitter.

How did Cozart perform last year with the Reds? Stop me if you’ve just read this, but he was average. In fact, a strong argument can be put forward that he wasn’t average – he was actually worse than that.

Cozart hit .246 in ’12 and owns a .251 career batting average. Last season baseball as a whole hit .255. He’s below “average” in the average category. He did post a league average line drive rate of 20 percent, and his BABIP was just a smidge below that league average at .282. He deserved that batting average, especially when you look over at the BB/K column and see a mark of 0.27, two tenths below the league average. Face it, he wasn’t, nor is he likely to be in 2013, a batting average booster.

Cozart hit 15 homers, and for a shortstop that is a solid total, one that was bettered by only seven shortstop eligible players (Ian Desmond led the way with 25). Still, I’m calling average here yet again. Cozart had a 38 percent fly ball rate and an 8.8 HR/F ratio. The big league averagesa are usually about 36 and nine. Cozart did hit 33 doubles, a solid total, but his SLG was still .399, a terrible number that was once again below the big league average of .405. Not much to see here again.

Cozart drove in 35 runs. Thirty-five. That’s one less than Yuniesky Betancourt who appeared in 57 games and two less than Josh Rutledge who took the field 73 times. To compare, Cozart appeared in 138 games, eight more than the total of the other two players combined. Cozart and Ben Revere were the only two players in baseball with 500 at-bats and 35 or fewer RBIs (Revere had 32 RBIs in 511 at-bats).

Cozart scored 72 times, a fairly impressive numbers for a guy with a pathetic .288 OBP (a number that a professional baseball player should be embarrassed to have on the back of his ball card. The major league average was .319 last season). The run total was 10th among shortstops qualifiers in the fantasy game. Blame the lack of RBIs on the fact that he appeared 102 times as a leadoff hitter and 27 times out of the #2 hole. Conversely, the reason he scored so many runs was merely because of his spot in the batting order. There are many reasons to be worried about Dusty Baker if you are a Reds fan, and this is one of the best examples. Your manager hit a guy with a .288 OBP first or second in your order 129 times. That’s unacceptable. It’s also embarrassing. How someone could rise to the level of manager and have no concept of how to put together a batting order is truly shocking. Best case Cozart should have been hitting 7th, but ideally he’d be the 8th place hitter with the effort he put up there last season. You can’t even defend the decision by saying Cozart’s speed causes problem for defenses. It doesn’t. He stole only four bags in 2012.

Nothing Cozart does stands out. Zack Cozart has only 149 games of big league experience, but he’s already 27 years old. He showed little with the bat in the minor leagues, and he continued to perform along those same lines last season. He was also exceedingly fortunate to have a manager with no understanding of how the game of baseball should be played. Barring Dusty Baker again being moronic and slotting Cozart at the top of the Reds’ order, there simply isn’t anything I can hang my hat on here as a reason that Cozart should be targeted on draft day 2013.

By Ray Flowers

Tuesday Tips

Whether your fantasy baseball league is an AL-only, NL-only, mixed league or keeper league, there’s something for you in today’s piece. Promise.

Dylan Bundy, the Orioles uber-prospect who was chosen #4 overall in last years draft leading to him being named the #10 prospect in baseball according to Baseball America, has started out his professional career as if he has no intention of spending much time in the minors. Through five starts in A-Ball he’s walked two batters in 17 innings while he has allowed one hit. That’s three base runners in 17 innings leading to a 0.18 WHIP. He’s also fanned 25 batters and not allowed a run. Time to move him up a level already Orioles?

Zack Cozart is hitting a solid .271 for the season, but that’s likely a disappointment to his owners since he was hitting .342 ten games into the season. Like I said all preseason, and into the season when he was tearing it up, Cozart isn’t at a point in his development when he should be expected to perform at all-star levels. After his recent downturn in production at the dish Cozart is on pace to hit .271 with seven homers, 30 RBI and seven steals. Hate to tell you I told you so but…

Anyone out there realize that Adrian Gonzalez hit .271 with two homers an a .737 OPS in April? As I wrote three weeks ago in Panic In The Streets, AGone hit only one homer last April before finishing the year with 27 bombs so it’s certainly not panic time. However, he did hit .314 with a .836 OPS in a better first stanza to the season last year. For his career his April has led to a .288 batting average and .856 OPS with the OPS being the second lowest of any month from April through September. If you’ve read my stuff you know my thoughts on Gonzalez, but the guy has hit 29 homers in 181 games as a Red Sox. Are you ready to finally admit that I was right back in January of last year when I warned that Adrian may not produce huge homer totals playing half his games at Fenway Park? See ADP Riser: Adrian Gonzalez.

Billy Hamilton of the Reds might be the fastest man in the sport. Rated the 48th best prospect in the game coming into the 2012 season by Baseball America, Hamilton stole 103 bases last year as a 20 year old in Single-A ball. This season he’s off to a stupendous, and that isn’t a term I throw around lightly, pace with the bat as he’s hit .398 through 23 games at High-A ball. But what about the speed you say? Try this on for size. In those 23 games Hamilton has stolen 29 bases to give him 132 steals in his last 158 games. He isn’t likely to appear in the bigs this season, but dynasty leaguers you had better be aware of a guy who plays shortstop who owns the skills of Vince Coleman.

At this point, meaning when I wrote this piece, there are two greatly differing reports on the health of Evan Longoria. One report suggests he has a hamstring or knee situation that may or may not result in him being placed on the DL. The other reports suggests that it’s a hamstring issue that could keep him out for 6-8 weeks. As a Longoria owner I almost upchucked my breakfast this morning when I heard the 6-8 week line of though. Let’s hope that the report was premature and that Longoria will be back in a relatively short period of time cause losing Longo for two months would be a devastating blow to his fantasy squads.

Jed Lowrie is hitting .297 and here we go again. I’m getting questions about people in mixed leagues who really want to add him to the mix. I’ll repeat the same thing I’ve been saying for two years – he’s not that good. For his career his slash line is completely big league average at .256/.328/.409. He’s also stolen only four bases in his career and per 140 games he’s a 12 homer bat. Yippee doodle. It should also be noted that though Lowrie has hit .304 in the month of April in his career that his May-October batting average is .243.

Stephen Strasburg has been as dominating as any pitcher in baseball with a 1.13 ERA, 0.88 WHIP and 34 Ks in 32 innings to start the 2012 season. The most amazing part of his effort though may be this: Strasburg has allowed 22 hits in his 32 innings, and the breakdown is 20 singles, two doubles, zero triples and zero home runs. That’s two extra base hits in 32 innings folks. Wow.

By Ray Flowers

The Fantasy Beat: Week 1 & Beyond

Justin Fensterman and Trevor Ray discuss cheap draft day hitters that are off to a great start on the young season. They will tell you what which of these guys to believe in, and which guys to wait on.

J.D. Martinez, Raul Ibanez, Jordan Schafer, David Freese, Omar Infante, Zack Cozart and Brett Lawrie (who has stunk so far, though it’s still early of course).

Listen to the Audio.

Daily Joust – Wk 1: Did We Learn Anything?

There is finally a week of MLB games in the books. It might have two weeks for MLB to get all the teams on the field and playing, but how nice was it to see some action that actually counted? Did we learn anything in the first week of action? We learned that closers all over the place will have a hard time keeping their jobs if they keep this up. We learned how damaging losing one of your bullpen arms can be (see the Red Sox disastrous meltdown in the 9th with Andrew Bailey on the shelf after thumb surgery). We also learned that miracles can happen as the Mets started the year 3-0. What else did we learn that you might be able to apply to your Daily Joust fantasy baseball teams? So glad you asked.

LOSER OF THE WEEK

Anyone who rostered Clayton Kershaw ($319,000 DJ Salary) on their DailyJoust club.

Kershaw, suffering from the flu, managed to toss just three scoreless innings before he had to remove himself from his Opening Day start. You pat him on the back for giving it the old college try, but he simply killed everyone who had him active, and that was a large amount of folks given that Kershaw was coming off a season in which he led NL hurlers in wins (21 – tied with Ian Kennedy), ERA (2.28) and strikeouts (248). Kershaw should be ready to take his turn in the rotation Tuesday in the Dodgers homer opener and the expectation is that he will be able to pitch as long as his performance dictates.

ALREADY MASHING

Yoenis Cespedes ($90K): His opening series, highlighted by that 462 foot bomb he blasted to dead center field, showed just what type of hitter Cespedes can be. However, pitchers will find his weaknesses. They will exploit his weaknesses. His swing is still very long and has holes. He’s never faced this level of competition on a daily basis. Speaking of that, he’s never played a season with 162 games. Cespedes has produced a nice prologue, but this book still has 25 chapters to go.

Zack Cozart ($76K): The Reds’ shortstop killed it in Week 1 going 6-for-11 with a homer and four RBI. That’s as good as it’s going to get. Expectations are very high for Cozart heading into his first full season. The good news is that his recovery from Tommy John surgery on his non-throwing arm is complete. The bad news is that he isn’t as good a hitter as some think. Just look at his minor league numbers that include a .270 batting average, .332 OBP and .421 SLG. In 506 career games he hit 50 homers, stole 55 bases and produced that blah slash line. He’s simply not a prime time performer with a bat in his hand.

Rafael Furcal ($87K): After four games and 19 at-bats Furcal is hitting .526. As recently as 2010 he hit .300 with 22 steals, but he also appeared in 97 games that season, one of three years in the past four campaigns in which he didn’t appear in 100 games. That’s the key for the 34 year old – health. When he’s out there he can still produce, but the battle to drag his body out onto the field continues to be one that he often loses. Ride the hot hand, but realize that it’s all downhill from here.

Nick Markakis ($98K): Worries about his recovery from offseason abdominal surgery have been put to rest. It’s just three games, but Markakis has a triple, two homers an is hitting .556. One of the more stable commodities in the game, Markakis has produced at least 182 hits in each of the past five years. He plays everyday which helps to lead to the production, but he’s also failed to hit more than 18 homers the past three years, has seen his RBI total fail to hit 75 the past two years, and the last time he scored 80 runs was 2009. He’s consolid, but he’s unlikely to become a megastar in 2012.

ORIOLES PITCHERS

Through three games the Orioles are the best staff in baseball with a 1.00 ERA and a 0.85 WHIP as they led the club to a 3-0 start against the Twins. The real question though is – are the Orioles arms that good or are the Twins bats that bad? Go with the second choice. The Twins just didn’t hit the ball – at all – in the opening series of games. Here’s a quick run down of each of the Orioles hurlers who started those three games.

* Note: All three hurlers were/are great values given that the elite arms can approach or surpass $300,000.

Jake Arrieta ($151K): Win, 7 IP, 2 H, 0 ER, 2 BBs, 4 Ks
Jason Hammel ($144K): Win, 8 IP, 1 H, 2 ER, 3 BBs, 5 Ks
Tommy Hunter ($150K): Win, 7 IP, 6 H, 0 ER, 1 BB, 3 Ks

All three dominated the Twins and cost virtually nothing. If you were crazy enough to start any of them, the payoff was massive. Alas, none profile as strong long term options.

Arrieta is the best arm on this list. However, he struggled mightily at times during his first two seasons, an eventually had to have elbow surgery. He throw hard but still only struck out batters at a league average rate last season. He also walked batters like he was Jonathan Sanchez with a 4.45 per nine mark. Through 226.2 big league innings he has a 4.73 ERA, 1.46 WHIP, 5.14 K/9 and 2.00 K/BB. It doesn’t get more bland than that.

Hammel is slightly intriguing. Freed from Colorado, perhaps he will live up to expectations with the Orioles (though pitching in the AL East isn’t exactly going to be easy). Unfortunately he’s coming off a putrid season that resulted in career worsts in K/9 (he lost nearly two batters off the mark he posted in 2009-10), while his BB/9 rate climbed by more than a batter per nine innings. He does a decent job in limiting the fly balls, but nothing in this skill set raises the flag up the pole at the moment.

Hunter is as average as you get when you look at his skills – worse than that actually. His K/9 rate is 4.96 for his career, more than two batters below the league average. At least he doesn’t beat himself with the walk so the result is a rather impressive 3.00 K/BB ratio. Still, he doesn’t miss any bats, is slightly below the league average with a 1.00 GB/FB mark (1.10 is the league mark), and he was never able to convince the Rangers to given him more than 128 innings of work in a season which should tell you something.

DAILY CONTEST

Today you can sign up for the King Arthur’s $50 Free Roll on DailyJoust. No entry free is required to get a chance to play the game and earn your free chance to take home part of the $50 prize pool. All games that start at 7:05 PM EDT or later are open to add players to your daily fantasy baseball squad. So get over to DailyJoust, put together your one day lineup, and get ready to win some free $.

By Ray Flowers

The Fantasy Beat: Diamonds in the Rough

Justin Fensterman and Trevor Ray discuss some hitters you can get in the very late rounds of your snake drafts or guys you can get for real cheap prices that will still be a great value for your fantasy baseball team.

Listen to the Audio.

Player Profile: Marco Scutaro

Some players get little respect. You know, they are the “glue” type players that you roster in the middle to late rounds that end up filling up the stat sheet rather nicely by the time that October rolls around even if no one really batted an eye when you called out their name at the draft table. One of those guys is Marco Scutaro. He’s never someone you target, and most of the time when you call out his name it’s merely because there really aren’t any better options out there, but there are certainly worse guys to target late as a middle infield option than the Rockies new second baseman.

Let me begin right where I just left off. Scutaro, who played just two games at second last season but has played regularly there during his big league career, will be the Rockies’ starting second baseman in 2012 (thanks Troy Tulowitzki). This is great news for Scutaro because he will be able to add second base to his shortstop qualification. When you’re thinking about grabbing a guy in the later rounds having positional flexibility like this is just another level of added value. You don’t have to take two players as a backup to your second baseman and shortstop, you can simply add a guy Scutaro to give you some depth.

Second, one of the keys with Scutaro is that he will be the Rockies new second baseman. Coors Field doesn’t play like it once did now that they humidor the hell out of the baseballs up there (some conspiracy theorists still maintain that the Rockies use a different set of “dead” baseball’s when the visiting team is at-bat), but at the same time it’s still a great place for a hitter to call home. Scutaro isn’t a home run hitter, his two best seasons are 11 and 12, but that misses the point. Scutaro is a strong extra base hitter who has rapped out 30 doubles in three seasons in his career while averaging 33 the past three years. The last three years Coors has been the best park in the NL for doubles, 22 percent greater than the league average park according to Park Indices. Scutaro should be hitting plenty of two baggers this season.

Scutaro has hit .270 for his career, an over his last three years he has hit at least .275 each time. He’s a good bet to keep that up in 2012, not just because of his home yard, but because of his approach. For his career Scutaro owns a 0.80 BB/K mark, well above the big league average of about 0.50, and the last time that number dipped below 0.75 for Scutaro was when George Bush Jr. was president (2004). He won’t damage your teams’ batting average and he has at least an even shot of actually helping in the category.

Since he became an every day player in 2008, Scutaro has been a solid performer. Even including his effort last season in which he was only able to accrue 395 at-bats, here is what an average 5×5 season has looked like for Scutaro since 2008: .280-9-58-82-8. Again, that’s nothing special, but those are replacement level stuff that you can get on the cheap at the draft table. Would you rather roster guys like Zack Cozart or Jason Bartlett late? I know I wouldn’t.

Scutaro doesn’t do anything that stands out, but I wouldn’t be drafting Scutaro to win me a league. I’d be drafting Scutaro as a player who, given 500 at-bats, is going to be a great return on my investment. He’ll qualify at both middle infield spots, likely hit at least .280, score a bunch of runs, and knock in enough to be worthy of strong consideration in deep mixed leagues as a middle infielder. Don’t forget about the little fella when your draft moves into the 20′s – Scutaro is someone you can fill your roster out with on the cheap who will end up providing you more than passable numbers if he can stay healthy.

Click here to get your copy of the 2012 BBGuys Fantasy Baseball Draft Guide.

By Ray Flowers