What do you do with some downtime before a baseball game? Well, it’s almost football season, so naturally, you put on a helmet and run some routes with the boys.
That’s exactly what Texas Rangers first baseman Prince Fielder did Sunday morning. With the Rangers in Detroit to face the Tigers, Fielder strapped on a Michigan helmet and ran what appears to be his version of a slant.
Megatron has nothing on Prince.
[Twitter]
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The 2015 MLB season continues to roll along with less than two months before October. Most daily fantasy owners have likely gotten into a groove at this point, but the names at the top of lists are constantly changing.
Some players have risen to the task in August, while others have fallen off under the pressure of a playoff push. Ahead of Thursday’s slate of games, here’s a look at some studs and duds for August 13.
Studs
Jon Lester, Chicago Cubs ($10,800)
That massive investment by the Chicago Cubs in the offseason is finally starting to pay off. As October approaches, Lester is starting to turn it on with two runs or less allowed in his last four starts. Three of those happened to come at Wrigley Field, which is where the Cubs will play on Thursday.
Not to mention, Lester is facing off against the lowly Milwaukee Brewers. With an average of two runs scored over the last five games, it seems pretty obvious that Lester should put up similar results. At $1,400 less than Sonny Gray, Lester is an affordable ace for owners to target.
Prince Fielder, Texas Rangers ($4,500)
Prince Fielder’s comeback season just keeps on going with another hot stretch recently. Over his last 10 games, Fielder is averaging over 10 fantasy points with five extra-base hits, including two homers.
Oh, let’s also note that he has a perfect matchup on Thursday.
Ervin Santana has struggled in his last three starts, allowing 19 runs over that stretch with his last outing ending after 2.1 innings. Fielder holds a .444 on-base percentage against Santana with three home runs and a double. If you aren’t convinced by now, maybe this isn’t for you. Fielder is a lock.
Michael Cuddyer, New York Mets ($3,400)
In order to afford the Jon Lesters and Prince Fielders of the world, you’ll need a value pick. Look no further than Michael Cuddyer. The New York Mets outfielder is back to the torrid pace he was on before hitting the disabled list last month.
Cuddyer’s three hits, two runs, RBI and stolen base over the last two games prove he doesn’t have any lingering effects. He’s also facing Eddie Butler, who has been horrid at the MLB level this season. The stars are aligned for Cuddyer to go off, so don’t miss this opportunity before his price goes up again.
Duds
Mat Latos, Los Angeles Dodgers ($7,200)
Most of the pitchers at the top of DraftKings‘ price sheet on Thursday are worthy of their salary. However, when looking for a pitcher to pair them up with, Mat Latos is not a formidable option. Even at $7,200, Latos is coming at too high of a price for his recent performance.
In his last two starts, Latos hasn’t fooled anyone with just one strikeout—combined. While Latos would likely love to shut down his former team, the Cincinnati Reds are simply too patient at 22nd in the MLB in strikeouts (822). Wielding bats like Todd Frazier, Joey Votto and Brandon Phillips, the Reds stars will get the better of their former teammate.
Josh Reddick, Oakland Athletics ($4,100)
Josh Reddick is struggling. Like, getting the bat remotely close to the ball has been a tall task recently. Over his last 10 games, Reddick has barely averaged three fantasy points and has just one game where he reached double digits.
Reddick doesn’t have a difficult matchup with Mark Buehrle on the mound, but the Toronto Blue Jays pitcher has a habit of making batters uncomfortable. His fast approach to the plate combined with Reddick‘s recent struggles are a bad omen for DraftKings owners.
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A year ago, Prince Fielder looked finished. Finito. Spent. And any other synonym for the word “done.”
But as anybody who watched the Texas Rangers veteran first baseman in action on Friday night against the New York Yankees will tell you, rumors of Fielder’s demise were greatly exaggerated.
Fielder went into Texas’ tilt at Yankee Stadium in the midst of an outstanding comeback season, batting .340 with an .884 OPS and five home runs. He then made said comeback even more outstanding, leading the Rangers to a 10-9 victory with a pair of home runs and four RBI.
To the videos! This was Fielder’s first homer, a three-run, upper-deck shot off Michael Pineda in the third inning:
And this was his second, a long solo shot to center off Chasen Shreve in the seventh inning:
With these two home runs, Fielder now has 295 for his career. Five more, and he’ll become the 46th left-handed batter ever to reach the 300-home-run plateau.
He should have no trouble getting there. He’s now hitting .341 with a .918 OPS, and his seven homers give him a real shot at his first 30-homer season since back in 2012.
And after watching Fielder in 2013 and 2014, it’s hard to watch what he’s doing now without feeling at least a shred of disbelief.
In 2013, Fielder seemed to be sinking into a decline phase. His .819 OPS and 25 homers were the two worst full-season marks of his career, and he looked completely out of gas in the middle of the Detroit Tigers‘ playoff run.
The Tigers’ response was to get Fielder and as much of the money remaining on his nine-year, $214 million contract off their hands as they possibly could. The Rangers were the taker they found, and they didn’t exactly get a good return on their investment. Fielder OPS’d just .720 with three homers in 42 games for them in 2014, and then was lost for the season to neck surgery.
At that point, things looked bad. Fielder was a guy on the wrong side of 30 who already seemed to be declining and now had to come back from a serious operation. Any reasonable person could have guessed that his best days were squarely in the rearview mirror.
But now here we are in 2015, watching Fielder not only producing like his old self but looking like his old self, too.
How is Fielder looking like his old self? Well, it’s all right there in the two videos embedded above. Watch those, and you’ll see a classic Fielder swing: strong base, quick bat, explosive finish.
We didn’t get to see too many swings like that in 2013 and 2014. No doubt Fielder wanted to swing like that, but he couldn’t.
As in, he literally couldn’t. His health wouldn’t let him.
As Fielder told Bleacher Report’s Scott Miller this March, his bad neck would cause pain and numbness in his left arm. As a result, the light-tower power that made him one of the great young power hitters in MLB history during his time with the Milwaukee Brewers all but vanished.
“I couldn’t move,” Fielder told T.R. Sullivan of MLB.com. “I couldn’t move enough to get into any kind of habits. It wasn’t a bad swing. I just had no power. I got to the ball decently, there just wasn’t anything there. I wasn’t strong enough to complete my swing.”
Granted, there were times when Fielder seemed to find his old swing. Like that time he hit a second-decker at Globe Life Park in Arlington early last May. But for the most part, his swings looked like this:
There just wasn’t much there. Fielder’s bat speed was greatly diminished, and you can see him doing what Rangers hitting coach Dave Magadan calls “crashing into the ball.” That’s his way of saying Fielder was jumping on pitches rather than letting them travel.
Given the state of Fielder’s health, there wasn’t much else he could do. But he’s healthy now, and the difference doesn’t sneak by on the eye test. He once again has the goods to let the ball travel and to take good rips at it.
And it’s not hard to find where the return of his old swing is helping Fielder the most.
For one, he can hit fastballs again. As these figures from Baseball Savant can vouch, his average against the hard stuff was trending down for a while there, and now it’s back up:
That’s Fielder’s renewed bat speed at work, and his renewed ability to let the ball travel has granted him another gift: He can hit the ball with authority to the opposite field again.
That’s something he couldn’t do in 2013 and 2014, as FanGraphs put his Isolated Power (slugging percentage minus singles) to left field at .094 and .097. This year, he entered Friday’s contest with a .154 ISO to left field, which was backed up by his best opposite-field hard-hit rate (33.3) since 2007.
And overall, Fielder is making better contact than he has in years. Entering Friday, FanGraphs put his hard-hit rate at 36.4 percent. That’s his best mark since 2010. And as we noted recently, hard contact turns into hits about as often as you’d expect.
Throw in the fact that Fielder is once again living well below the league-average strikeout rate, and the only thing that’s missing is his old walk habit. He’s drawn only 11 walks all season. But given that pitchers can see what we can see, that could very well change as they realize it’s in their best interest to be more careful with how they pitch Fielder.
Really, nothing would be surprising at this point. Fielder has done enough over a large enough sample size to prove that he has plenty of good baseball left in him, and he’s looked good doing it.
Once again, it’s good to be the Prince.
Note: Stats courtesy of Baseball-Reference unless otherwise noted/linked.
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SURPRISE, Ariz. — It is early morning in the desert, and there is every reason to be half-asleep right now. Gray skies. Chilly rain. Dog days of spring training.
But inside the Texas Rangers clubhouse, Prince Fielder is wide awake. He rags Mitch Moreland about the day’s impending trip to Goodyear to face the Reds. Laughs. Checks on NCAA brackets. Smiles. Sits down to talk about his new lease on life. Smiles some more.
Big, big smiles.
The plate appearances don’t yet count. But Fielder, feeling like a new man, is again having fun on a baseball field. And those who know him best cannot wait to see him in action this summer.
“He’s going to have a big year this year, I promise,” says Colorado Rockies closer LaTroy Hawkins, a teammate of Fielder’s in Milwaukee in 2010 and 2011 and a friend ever since. “He’s in a good place.”
“The energy level he’s brought this spring has been infectious,” says first-year Rangers manager Jeff Banister. “He’s been fun.”
Before the hitting becomes for real next month, that’s the best barometer of all, perhaps, by which to judge Fielder as he prepares for the most pivotal season of his career.
Almost a year ago, Fielder’s prospects felt quite different.
Was he done? At the age of 30?
He pondered this as his milestone birthday approached last May 9. Seriously. Pondered it a lot, as a matter of fact. At the plate, he was deteriorating. With a bat, he wasn’t the same. In his head, he was scared.
Pain, like electric shocks, would shoot down his left arm. Then the arm would go numb.
“Yeah, it was getting pretty serious, man,” he says. “Obviously, I’ve played through injuries for a lot of years in a row. But I was like, ‘Aw, crap, I’ve got no power.’ I was weak in the hands.”
He underwent surgery to fuse the C-5 and C-6 disks in his neck, similar to the procedure that gave NFL quarterback Peyton Manning an athletic rebirth.
Though he played in only 42 games last summer before the surgery (hitting .247/.360/.360 with just three homers and 16 RBI in 178 plate appearances), the time away from the game allowed him to regroup in his personal life. His marriage to Chanel, on the rocks during his last season in Detroit in 2013, again is happy. He has reunited with his father, former major leaguer Cecil Fielder, after years of estrangement.
He declines to speak of any details regarding those two enormous and happy changes in his personal life, other than offering another jumbo smile and saying, “It’s cool.”
As for the baseball end of things, that’s cool again too.
“I really did think I lost my skills when I turned 30 last year,” he says of those dark days before doctors finally gave him a specific diagnosis and strategy for a way back.
“Granted, maybe I overreacted. But when you can’t do what you’re used to doing and what you want to do…. It wasn’t just the slump. When you can’t hit home runs in batting practice, and I was trying, I was worried.”
For a slugger with six consecutive seasons of 30 or more homers until his last summer in Detroit, home runs always had been the least of his worries.
Yet his total declined to 25 in 2013, the lowest count over a full season in his career.
And by last spring, he was frustrated and aching.
It was Sept. 27 when he was cleared to start swinging again after the surgery, and you bet the first steps back were tentative. All sorts of questions, concerns and worries were renting space in Fielder’s head.
“It was more my shoulder, because my neck obviously was hurting, but with that nerve causing sharp pain, I had started to hold my shoulder wrong,” Fielder says. “That was my fear, if I would get that electric shock feeling or if it would go numb again.
“I definitely was worried at first.”
A few swings in, he no longer was quite so tense. Oh, no, it’s fine, he thought.
A few more swings. Oh, yeah, it’s fine.
So here he is this spring, neck good, shoulder sound. He worked out hard during the winter and looks as slim as he’s been in a long time. And he cut his hair. The flamboyant dreadlocks from Milwaukee and Detroit are history.
The other day, he even beat out an infield single and received a standing ovation.
Banister, who spent 29 years in the Pirates organization before the Rangers picked him to succeed Ron Washington over the winter, saw plenty of Fielder in the NL Central—especially in 2010 and 2011 from his vantage point as Pittsburgh’s bench coach before Fielder signed a nine-year, $214 million free-agent deal with Detroit before the 2012 season.
Sure, he says, everyone knows about Fielder’s ability to homer. But what he remembers most is 2009, when Fielder collected a career-high 141 RBI, and even 2011, when he produced 120 RBI.
“He’s an RBI master,” Banister says. “He’s hunted the RBI, and the home runs have showed up.”
That’s what the Rangers most want to see out of Fielder, who always was going to be under the spotlight as the son of Cecil and, even more so, with that gaudy price tag hanging from his uniform jersey.
Now, where the rubber meets the road, that part of the story will begin to play out the first time Fielder steps to the plate on Opening Night in Oakland on April 6. Both his on-base and slugging percentages have declined in each of the past four seasons.
Granted, the painful 42 games he played in last summer are not a fair comparison, but the trend line is there nevertheless. The neck surgery ultimately will wind up either as a mitigating factor for the previous couple of years or as another reason for further erosion in this five-time All-Star’s game.
“He clearly was dealing with this all of last year, and it’s a safe bet to say it probably started in 2013, if not before,” Rangers general manager Jon Daniels says. “With that in the back of my mind, my expectation was that I had full confidence he is going to get back to where he was—that’s what doctors have said—but given how long it had been, I thought it might take a little time.
“He’s probably even ahead of where I expected him to be at this point, how free he is swinging the bat.”
Fielder did not pay special attention to Manning during the football season despite knowing that the quarterback went through a similar procedure. Though he quips, “I did realize if he was hit by a 260-pound linebacker after that, the neck can take playing baseball.”
And so he is, like a guy making up for lost time.
“He’s a grown-up man playing with a kid’s heart,” Banister says.
“He’s in good spirits, he looks healthy and he’s having fun,” third baseman Adrian Beltre says. “He looks like the Prince we saw playing in Milwaukee and Detroit.”
“He and Beltre are going to be the best one-two punch in the league,” shortstop Elvis Andrus says.
Even the fact that’s in play on this rainy spring morning is cause for celebration. Done at 30? Who knows, maybe Fielder is just getting started.
“Everything is healthy, and I get to play baseball with no worries,” says Fielder, who had a consecutive-games-played streak of 547 at the time he went down last May. “You just like playing the game. Results don’t matter. They’ll come if you’re out there.
“Just the fact that you can come out here again and do this for your job, and be in the clubhouse with your second family. That’s the part I missed the most.”
Scott Miller covers Major League Baseball as a national columnist for Bleacher Report.
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In late 2013, shortly after the Detroit Tigers were eliminated from the playoffs in the ALCS, they traded Prince Fielder to the Rangers in exchange for Ian Kinsler.
It was a huge blockbuster at the time, and analysts immediately started predicting how potent the Rangers lineup would be with Fielder and powerful third baseman Adrian Beltre hitting in the middle of the order.
Beltre was so confident that Fielder would thrive in his new environment that he told the media that Fielder would be the 2014 AL MVP. It seemed good at the time; Fielder would bat third in the order, meaning he would finally have a chance to be protected in the order as opposed to doing the protecting, as he did with Ryan Braun in Milwaukee and Miguel Cabrera in Detroit.
Unfortunately, Fielder was never able to put it together in his new home park. Instead of taking advantage of hitter-friendly Globe Life Park, Fielder had a hard time hitting the ball in the air. His 50.4 percent ground-ball rate, via Fangraphs, was a career high, and he hit only .247 with three home runs and 16 RBI in 42 games before having season-ending neck surgery.
However, 2015 is a new season, and Fielder has drastically changed his personal life in a way that should yield positive results on the diamond. In a very insightful article by Evan Grant of The Dallas Morning News, one can see that Fielder is making a genuine effort to have more fun playing baseball as he did when he was mashing home runs at a high rate early in his career.
If he goes back to hitting like the Prince of old, he could easily return to being one of baseball’s premier power hitters. He averaged more than 36 homers and 111 RBI from 2007-2013, and last year was the first time he played fewer than 157 games.
And this offseason, Fielder got surgery on his neck very similar to the surgery Peyton Manning received during the 2011 NFL season. It is anybody’s guess if Fielder will return to being his former stellar self, but he has already been cleared to participate in spring training and says he feels great.
He was especially optimistic at the team’s award dinner on January 23.
“I’ll play a pickup game right now, I’m ready to go,” Fielder said, via the Associated Press (h/t ESPN.com). “I’m good, I’m 100 percent, whatever it was before is back.”
So all in all, if he says he is completely healthy, his doctor says he’s healthy and he is transforming his attitude on the field, then that’s good enough for me.
Fangraphs‘ The Steamer predicts Fielder to hit .279 with 23 home runs, 83 RBI and a .847 OPS. I think those projections are a bit conservative, and if you have a chance to get Fielder in your fantasy draft, I would recommend pulling the trigger.
I’m going to go out on a limb and say Fielder hits at least 30 home runs. The fact that he is changing his attitude toward baseball cannot be overstated, and if he is fully healthy, he should be able to feast on American League pitching all season long.
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The Texas Rangers weren’t bit by injuries in 2014—they were ruthlessly mauled.
On Sept. 2, the day the Rangers were officially eliminated from playoff contention, nine players expected to be a part of the club’s Opening Day lineup and starting rotation had missed 20 or more games to injury, according to Sports Illustrated‘s Cliff Corcoran.
Free-agent signee Shin-Soo Choo—inked to a seven-year, $130 million deal—suffered a bone spur in his elbow. Ace Yu Darvish was shelved with elbow inflammation.
One loss, though, loomed especially large, as marquee trade acquisition Prince Fielder managed just a .247 average with three home runs and 16 RBI in 42 games before succumbing to a herniated disc in his neck.
The ailment interrupted a string of 547 games played for Fielder, per MLB.com‘s Tracy Ringolsby. Overall, the rotund-yet-durable swinger logged at least 157 games every year from 2006 to 2013.
“It was real difficult because I wasn’t used to missing games,” Fielder told CBSSports.com’s Brandon Wise of his truncated ’14 campaign. “So to miss a lot of the season, it was difficult at first, but I had to be an adult about it, kind of try to just get back healthy to be ready this year. I’m good, I’m 100 percent—whatever it was before is back.”
Now, the slugging first baseman, who missed exactly one contest over a four-year span and who made three All-Star teams during the same stretch, will look to return strong and propel Texas into contention in the American League West.
“It means we can get the guy we are accustomed to seeing,” third baseman Adrian Beltre told Fox Sports Southwest’s Anthony Andro. “We all know what he can do. If he can get back to his form of being healthy it’s a real plus. When you have a guy like that that plays every day, plays hard and produces it will give us more balance.”
FanGraphs projects Rangers first basemen to post a 2.7 WAR next season, good for 14th in MLB. As SBNation‘s Adam J. Morris notes, Texas is “expecting—or, perhaps, hoping—that Prince starts mashing again, and is a 4-5 win player in 2015. What he does is going to be one of the biggest factors for Texas in 2015.”
Meanwhile, elsewhere in the division, the defending champion Los Angeles Angels are positioning themselves for a repeat, and they’re hoping for a lot more from outfielder Josh Hamilton.
The 33-year-old logged just 338 at-bats for the Halos last year, hitting .268 with 10 home runs in the second season of his five-year, $125 million deal.
This season, Hamilton told Alden Gonzalez of MLB.com (h/t CBSSports.com’s Chris Cwik) he plans to hit .300 while cracking 30 home runs and driving in 100, the type of production he routinely put up in his days with Texas.
None of those annual milestones are out of reach for the 2010 AL MVP winner, but it’d require a big bounce-back at an age when many players’ skills begin to erode.
For what it’s worth, Baseball Prospectus is projecting Hamilton to produce a 3.6 WAR, his best mark since 2012.
“The last couple of years have not been good at all,” Hamilton said, per Mike DiGiovanna of the Los Angeles Times. “You’re always looking to improve, and I’m looking to improve a lot more.”
Yet there are still doubts—deep, lingering ones—about whether he and Fielder can recapture the magic that made them top-shelf sluggers in the not-so-distant past.
It seems unlikely the Rangers will be mauled as hard by injuries as they were in 2014. And the Angels can reasonably hold out hope that Hamilton will rejoin the ranks of MLB’s elite.
Still, as the 2015 season approaches, it’s worth wondering if two of 2014’s most injury-bit superstars and their respective squads are on the ascent—or careening toward a crash.
All statistics courtesy of Baseball-Reference.
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For the first time since 2010, Prince Fielder is going to miss a game.
The hard-hitting first baseman has played in 162 contests the previous three regular seasons—and four of the last five—but a herniated disc in his neck will keep him out for at least the remainder of the Texas Rangers‘ weekend series against the Toronto Blue Jays.
Jeff Wilson of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram has the news:
“It’s part of what we deal with every day,” Rangers general manager Jon Daniels said, via The Dallas Morning News‘ Evan Grant. “It’s been to the extreme this year, but it’s something every club has to deal with.”
Fielder, who has played 547 consecutive games, has reportedly complained about a lack of strength in his left arm for the last two weeks, which would explain his slow start at the plate.
Coming over from Detroit in the trade for Ian Kinsler this winter, the left-handed slugger is hitting just .247/.360/.360 with three home runs in 178 plate appearances.
FanGraphs’ Jeff Sullivan noted a bizarre comparison between Fielder and noted speedster Billy Hamilton of the Cincinnati Reds:
Mitch Moreland, who is hitting .286/.330/.407 and slugged 23 home runs last year, will likely spend most of the time at first base in Fielder’s stead. Saturday’s lineup, via Sportsnet‘s Barry Davis, has Moreland at first, Alex Rios at DH and Michael Choice stepping in at right field.
While the Rangers clearly aren’t short on hitters, they will be hoping a DL trip isn’t necessary for Fielder as they attempt to keep pace in the suddenly crowded AL West.
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Prince Fielder is out of the Texas Rangers‘ starting lineup on Saturday with a herniated disk in his neck, Evan Grant of The Dallas Morning News reports. The loss of Fielder is just another blow to a Rangers team who have already seen the likes of Derek Holland, Jurickson Profar, Matt Harrison and others hit the shelf this season.
Grant reports that Fielder received an injection Saturday to help combat the neck issue, and the severity of the injury remains unclear at this point. We’ve seen players miss a week with similar injuries (as Baltimore‘s Nick Markakis did in spring training of 2013), while others have undergone surgery (as New York’s Bobby Parnell did in September of 2013).
From an on-field standpoint, the loss isn’t a drastic one for the Rangers, as Fielder was hitting just .247 with three home runs and 16 RBIs to this point. However, he did have three multi-hit days in his last four games, so seeing him miss time right as he was starting to get hot is certainly a letdown for Texas.
Fielder has been a disappointment with the Rangers so far, as many thought that moving his power to Rangers Ballpark in Arlington could make him an MVP candidate. The Rangers acquired Fielder last offseason in a one-for-one swap with the Tigers that sent Ian Kinsler to Detroit. Kinsler has thrived with the Tigers thus far, hitting .301 with four home runs and 19 RBIs, so if Fielder misses significant time, Detroit will be walking away as the early winners of the trade.
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It’s not often that you get a guy who’s a massive free-agent bust and a massive trade bust. Guys tend to belong to one club or the other, not both.
Which brings us to Prince Fielder. Early in 2014, he’s put himself on a path to become one of the rare exceptions.
You should be familiar with the general Fielder timeline. He signed a nine-year, $214 million contract with the Detroit Tigers in January of 2012 and had one very good year in 2012 followed by a so-so 2013. The Tigers then abandoned ship, dealing Fielder to the Texas Rangers for Ian Kinsler last November.
The deal wasn’t without upside for Texas. Fielder was getting a fresh start, and one at a much more offense-friendly home park to boot. With the Tigers also agreeing to eat $30 million of the $168 million remaining on Fielder’s deal, the odds of him giving good return on investment increased even more.
But so far? Hoo boy.
Fielder went 0-for-4 in a third straight game at Fenway Park against the defending champion Boston Red Sox on Monday night, dropping his overall slash line to .143/.200/.179. He also had a defensive gaffe on a bunt by Jackie Bradley Jr. that contributed to a three-run Boston eighth.
All right, it’s time I acknowledged in big, bold letters that it’s SUPER-DUPER EARLY. This is the time of small sample sizes and of players still transitioning from spring training mode to regular-season mode.
For what it’s worth, Fielder’s not worried, telling T.R. Sullivan of MLB.com after Monday’s game: “I’m right on track. I’m right where I should be. You just have to go up there and do your best and see what you can do.”
Still, I feel the same way Adam J. Morris of SB Nation’s Lone Star Ball blog feels:
You shouldn’t need me to tell you that Fielder’s numbers are going to get better. At the least, I feel comfortable guessing that he’s not going to have a .160 batting average on balls in play all season.
However, there is one thing going on with Fielder’s hitting in the early goings this season that’s not a good sign at all.
You might be able to guess at what it is if you consider how Fielder made outs in his three at-bats against Boston right-hander John Lackey on Monday night (the links will take you to Brooks Baseball):
Yup, that’s three outs on fastballs, which unfortunately fits with a trend that’s not new.
Justin Haven of ESPN Stats & Info first noticed last August that Fielder was suddenly struggling to hit the hard stuff:
“Regardless of righty or lefty, Fielder is getting beat by fastballs this season. He’s slugging only .404 (115th in the majors) against those pitches. Just two seasons ago, Fielder feasted on heaters, slugging .607 against them, 16th among all players.”
Truth be told, this is a trend that didn’t begin in 2013. The warning signs were there in 2012, as we can see by considering this data from Brooks Baseball:
FYI: “ISO” is Isolated Power, which is essentially slugging percentage minus singles for a more accurate measure of power.
Illustrated here is a man who went from being one of MLB‘s best fastball hitters to being less of an elite fastball hitter in 2012 to a decidedly average fastball hitter in 2013.
Most concerning of all is the decline in power, as it certainly becomes a lot harder for a slugger like Fielder to hit for power if he’s forced into doing his damage on off-speed pitches. That stuff is harder to get in the air, and there’s the added difficulty of pitchers not supplying as much power as they do with fastballs.
This may be academic where Fielder’s concerned, though, as these numbers from FanGraphs show that pitchers haven’t been doing him the courtesy of additional off-speed stuff early on in 2014:
The scouting report on Fielder may be getting around. As his performance against the hard stuff has declined, the amount of hard stuff he’s been seeing has increased. Where pitchers were very shy about challenging Fielder as recently as 2011, now they’re shrugging their shoulders and going right after him.
It’s not just the data that says it’s a good idea. To the naked eye, his bat speed just doesn’t seem as explosive as it once was.
Just in case you need a reminder…
It’s been a while since we last saw Fielder swing it like that. And given his age (29) and the general degree to which he hasn’t looked like his old self at the plate recently, I figure it’s fair to wonder if we’ll ever see another like it.
Now, I’ll grant that David Ortiz looked like he had lost all of his explosive bat speed when he struggled his way through 2009. I’ll also agree with anyone who says he still hasn’t regained it.
That hasn’t stopped Big Papi from being one of MLB’s elite hitters, though. He’s been able to adjust. Perhaps Fielder can do the same.
The Rangers had better hope he can, because goodness knows he won’t be much good to them if he’s not hitting.
Fielder’s baserunning is still as atrocious as it’s ever been, and there’s no point betting on him turning into a Gold Glove first baseman. Not while he’s sitting on minus-93 career defensive runs saved, anyway.
The best course for the Rangers at this point is to play Mitch Moreland at first base and Fielder at designated hitter, which would allow him to focus strictly on hitting. If nothing else, it would be addition by subtraction, as Moreland‘s defense certainly isn’t worse than Fielder’s.
If neither good, old-fashioned hard work nor a permanent move to DH can fix what’s ailing Fielder’s bat, the Rangers are going to have quite the dilemma on their hands. They’ll owe quite a bit of money to a DH-type player with a questionable bat, and it’s hard to imagine them finding a team willing to make an upside play like the one the Rangers chose to make.
That there’s plenty of time left in the season means there’s plenty of room for optimism. But right now, Fielder is the same limited player he’s always been, and his bat looks like it’s still on the decline rather than on the upswing.
As far as reasons for pessimism go, these are good ones.
Note: Stats courtesy of Baseball-Reference.com unless otherwise noted.
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Texas Rangers first baseman Prince Fielder had a down year with the Detroit Tigers in 2013. Regardless, he was still one of the most productive first basemen in baseball. Many players would settle for a .279/25/106 slash line, .362 on-base percentage and .457 slugging.
If batting average, home runs, runs batted in, OBP and SLG are a fantasy baseball team’s five major offensive categories, Fielder is a solid choice at first base.
Some might be hesitant to draft Fielder due to his underwhelming (by his standards) 2013. He hit .313/30/108 with a monster .412 OBP and .528 SLG the year prior.
According to ESPN Fantasy Baseball, Fielder will post a .300/35/113 slash line this season. The projection considers 2013 to be a bump in the road rather than the beginning of a decline.
Fielder will play half of his games at the hitter-friendly Rangers Ballpark in Arlington, TX. He raked in Miller Park throughout his six full seasons with the Milwaukee Brewers from 2006 to 2011, including a 50-home run season in 2007. Expect Fielder’s power numbers to improve dramatically in Texas.
He has a career .286 batting average, .389 OBP and .527 SLG. Even if he under performs, he is still a productive first baseman.
Spring training does not count towards the regular season, but he flexed on February 27 with a long home run.
There was also nothing cheap about Fielder’s last homer in a Tigers uniform on September 22, 2013.
Or this three-run jack on July 24, 2013.
Fielder can be relied upon to play a full season. Since 2006, he has never played less than 157 games per year.
With Shin-Soo Choo and Elvis Andrus hitting in front of him, Fielder is almost guaranteed to drive in at least 100 runs. Choo is coming off a .423 OBP season with the Cincinnati Reds and Andrus has a career .339 OBP. The Rangers will eat if they can set the table for Fielder.
Turning 30 this season, Fielder is highly capable of another monster year. Miguel Cabrera—undisputedly the best choice at first base and arguably overall—and Paul Goldschmidt are sure to be high picks. But don’t sleep on Fielder.
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