Top NL Centerfielders (one more time)

In my previous post, I set out to rank the starting centerfielders in the National League as based on their performances this season. Here is the semi-objective final list once more:

1. Carlos Beltran (NYM)
2. Aaron Rowand (PHI)
3. Andruw Jones (ATL)
4. Chris Young (ARI)
5. Jacque Jones (CHC)
6. Juan Pierre (LAD)
7. Hunter Pence (HOU)
8. Josh Hamilton (CIN)
9. Alfredo Amezaga (FLA)
10. Mike Cameron (SDG)
11. Bill Hall (MIL)
12. Nook Logan (WAS)
13. Nate McLouth (PIT)
14. Willy Taveras (COL)
15. Jim Edmonds (STL)
16. Dave Roberts (SFG)


The Top Eight

Despite missing 15 games due to injury, Carlos Beltran's production this year gives evidence that he is one of the better centerfielders in the league; his tools and talent give him the opportunity to be a dominant fantasy force, and year after year he is drafted as one. In truth, Beltran has had only a couple truly dominant seasons. Since his rookie year in 1999, he's batted over .300 twice -- his career average is .280 -- and hit more than 30 home runs twice. He had back to back seasons of 40 or more steals in 2003 and 2004, but since then he hasn't stolen more than 18, and as he enters his thirties, he will probably never steal over 30 again. His walks are down this year compared to last year, when he set a career high in home runs, but he's having a great August (1.376 OPS) since coming back from injury, and will probably have his third season of 30 or more home runs. Beltran is a terrific talent, whose upside justifies his annual first round draft status, but he is more likely to continue to be a 25HR-25SB type of player than a 35-35 talent.

Aaron Rowand is one of those players who's much more important to his team in real life than he is to any fantasy team. He's one of those players typically referred to as "hard-nosed", -- though as we can see here, his nose is not nearly hard enough -- which describes his aggressive style of play. Rowand doesn't excel in any one area, but he does most things well. He is headed for a career year this season and will set personal highs in almost every meaningful offensive category. It's hard to see him improve on these numbers next year, and he is most likely to provide value to fantasy owners as a mid-round, third outfielder. He'll probably end up with 30 home runs this year, but, with his reckless play in the outfield, the challenge will be for him to stay healthy enough to produce similar numbers year after year.

Andruw Jones has an outside chance this year at setting a new career high in strikeouts. He'll probably fall a few strikeouts short, but the fact remains that Jones, while never a strong source for batting average, is going to end the season with one of the worst batting averages for a player annually drafted in the top three rounds. Jones has been a decent option for power this year and will probably end up hitting more than 30 home runs for the eighth time in his career, but his slugging percentage remains a good seventy points below his career average. He's not been the slugger that people drafted him this year for -- and he'll never be more than a solid option for homeruns and RBI; he's stolen 32 bases in the last six seasons and he's not getting any quicker -- but it's hard to see him as a .219 hitter for the rest of his career. His defensive skills, though slowly eroding, and his RBI numbers are enough to keep him near the top of this list.

If anyone's going to pass Jones next year, it's the next guy on our list, Chris Young. Young is the first NL rookie to have more than 20 home runs and 20 stolen bases in a single season, and he has a good chance to go 25HR and 25SB or even better. The guy has talent. He's gone on a tear in the second half of August, hitting 9 home runs in his last 12 games. Right now, he's miscast as a leadoff hitter, with a .237 batting average and a .289 on base percentage, but he has the talent to improve those skills. He has the power to develop into a middle of the order type of hitter, and his speed makes him a tantalizing fantasy player. ESPN compared him to a young Mike Cameron in their 2007 fantasy forecast, but if he can raise his average thirty points or more, he could put up comparable numbers to Andruw Jones' best seasons.

Jacque Jones is a centerfielder who only holds value in the deepest of leagues. He won't provide you with double-digit steals, and his power has dropped off sharply from recent years, but he his true value can't be measured by the traditional 5 category format, i.e. runs, home runs, RBI, steals, batting average. He's on pace to set a career low in strikeouts for a full season by a wide margin, and he could set a new career high in doubles hit. His defense makes up for his shallow production at the plate; he's always shown good range in the outfield and he ranks second on our list of centerfielders in both range factor and zone ranking. At the age of 32, his skills are eroding, but his improved walk rate and decreased strikeout rate gives hope that he might rebound with a decent season next year.

Despite the fact that Juan Pierre could steal 60 bases this year for the second time in his career, I still wish the Dodgers had spent their $7,000,000 on Gary Matthews Jr. instead. Juan Pierre's speed on the basepaths is his only fantasy asset. He provides good batting average, but is subject to streakiness -- his batting average was at .277 until a 14-game hitting streak raised it thirteen points. He offers no power, has a weak throwing arm, and his range factor is the worst among the centerfielders on our list. He very rarely strikes out, but he's not very patient or selective, as evidenced by the fact that he averages 3.37 pitches per plate appearance, which ranks 164th among all qualified major leaguers. Pierre's fantasy value is inflated by his speed, but while it may be the only thing he provides well, he certainly provides a lot of it.

Before missing a month due to injuring his wrist while sliding into second, Hunter Pence was a leading candidate for the National League Rookie of the Year Award. Ranked as the Astros' number one prospect by Baseball America, Pence began the year in AAA before being promoted to the major leagues in late April. He's shown a great combination of batting average and power, and he has the speed to steal 15-plus bases a year. He might not stick at centerfield due to the fact that his defense profiles better as a corner outfielder, but he has a strong arm and his speed makes up for his poor routes in the outfield.

Josh Hamilton is the feel-good story of the year. The number one draft pick in the 1999 amateur baseball draft, Hamilton's been out of baseball since 2003 due to off-the-field problems with drugs. Cincinatti made him a Rule V draft pick in 2006, and Hamilton responded by hitting .403 in spring training of 2007. Hamilton still has the tools to be a dynamic offensive player; what remains to be seen is if he can stay focused enough to have a productive career. Hamilton has shown that he can be productive -- he's hit 17 homeruns in 255 at bats with a .286 batting average -- but he has missed thirty-six games this year due to injuries. Hamilton is a solid player, and his high-ceiling makes him one to keep an eye on for the next couple of years.

Since it's taken me a while to get this far, I'm going to post the top eight and get to rest, hopefully by the end of the week. As always, I'd love to hear any agreement/disagreement you might have with anything I've said.

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Ranking NL Centerfielders

I had a discussion with John Brubaker the other day regarding who was the best centerfielder (CF) in the NL West; he contended that San Diego’s Mike Cameron’s defense and veteran experience made him the top candidate, while I countered that Arizona’s Chris Young’s speed and power made up for Cameron’s advantage in batting average and defense. (As you might be able to tell, our choice of options were not plentiful.)

We argued for a while, – I even brought the Dodgers’ Juan Pierre into the discussion, before conceding that his popgun arm and inability to make good reads on fly balls force him from contention – but no agreement could be reached.

This prompted me to wonder: who is the best centerfielder in the NL? (I expanded the question to encompass the entire National League in order to make the project more interesting. I also believe that looking at all of the centerfielders in the entire NL raises some other points of interest that will be addressed further on.)

Since this is ostensibly a blog about fantasy baseball, let’s see what my Yahoo fantasy league rankings have to say on the subject.

1. Aaron Rowand (PHI)
2. Carlos Beltran (NYM)
3. Juan Pierre (LAD)
4. Chris Young (ARI)
5. Mike Cameron (SDG)
6. Andruw Jones (ATL)
7. Hunter Pence (HOU)
8. Willy Taveras (COL)
9. Josh Hamiliton (CIN)
10. Bill Hall (MIL)
11. Dave Roberts (SFG)
12. Jacque Jones (CHC)
13. Nate McLouth (PIT)
14. Alfredo Amezaga (FLA)
15. Jim Edmonds (STL)
16. Nook Logan (WAS)

A few former all stars, some solid veterans, promising rookies, but not a very exciting group of players. Most of these guys could be found in the middle to late rounds of a standard 5X5 category, 12 team league. Not many could be called fantasy studs – only half of them are in the top 500 among all players -- except for Beltran, and his numbers are down from previous seasons.

But because my Yahoo league only measures players’ abilities to produce in five categories (batting average, runs, homeruns, RBI, and stolen bases), we cannot take these rankings as a true measure of our centerfielders’ abilities. We could point to this list and say that Aaron Rowand has had the best fantasy season of all NL centerfielders so far, but, for baseball purposes, that doesn’t help us.

In order to get a more accurate representation of these players’ “real-world” worth, I went to ESPN’s player rater webpage. In a nutshell, the player rater rates a player’s abilities in several different weighted categories, and based on these rankings, assigns them a number from 0-100. (For a more detailed explanation, go to http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=2897967.)

Here are ESPN’s rankings for the NL centerfielders, along with their ratings:

1. Rowand -46.0
2. A. Jones -24.5
3. Beltran -23.7
4. Young -19.9
5. Pierre -15.8
6. Cameron -14.6
7. Taveras -14.0
8. Pence -11.9
9. Roberts -7.5
10. Hall -5.5
11. Edmonds -5.0 (tied)
11. J. Jones -5.0 (tied)
12. Amezaga -4.5
13. Logan -1.7
14. McLouth -.08
(Note: Hamilton does not have a rating because he has not appeared in half his team’s games due to injuries.)

Our two lists are fairly similar; both Yahoo and ESPN agree that Rowand is having the best season for an NL centerfielder this year. The biggest discrepancy occurs with ESPN’s placement of Andruw Jones at number two, four points higher than Yahoo’s ranking. I find it odd that Jones would rank so high on this list, mostly because of his horribly dismal numbers in batting average, on-base percentage and slugging percentage, all of which are at least 40 points lower than his career numbers. Some might point to Jones’ defensive prowess as his saving grace on this list, but the ESPN player rater does not account for defense, which means, as a full measure of a player’s skill and talent, it is not as comprehensive of a ranking as we would like.

To try and gauge these players’ defensive talents, I looked at two stats found on ESPN’s website: range factor (RF) and zone rating (ZR). Range factor is determined by (putouts + assists)/innings played. We can use this stat to determine how many total outs a player has participated in. Zone Rating is a stat that tracks the percentage of balls fielded by a player in his “defensive zone”, as measured by STATS, Inc. I’m not entirely certain what the term “defensive zone” denotes, but STATS, Inc. is a well known company devoted to statistical analysis in sports, and they seem to know their stuff. I’m willing to give them the benefit of the doubt, since both Yahoo and Fox Sports are listed as clients on their website.

Using these stats, I ranked the players accordingly:

________________RF___ZR
1. Beltran......2.95 .919
2. J. Jones.....3.00 .912
3. Amezaga......3.09 .888
4. Logan........2.83 .899
5. Rowand.......2.73 .900
6. A. Jones.....2.77 .882
7. McLouth......2.75 .891
8. Hamilton.....2.76 .875
9. Pence........2.77 .855
10. Young.......2.56 .877
11. Pierre......2.36 .886
12. Hall........2.71 .843
13. Cameron.....2.46 .871
14. Edmonds.....2.61 .855
15. Roberts.....2.64 .846
16. Taveras.....2.71 .815

One caveat: Six of the players on this list had almost twice as many innings played at the CF position as the rest. They are Rowand, Beltran, Young, Pierre, A. Jones, Cameron and Hall. Because they had logged more numbers at their position, I gave their stats a little more weight when making this list. For example, A. Jones and McLouth are fairly similar in RF, but McLouth’s ZR is .09 better than Jones’. I ranked Jones higher than McLouth because he has had more opportunities to make mistakes than McLouth has had.

In looking at this list, we can see why teams continue to start certain players despite their lack of offensive production. Amezaga, J. Jones and Logan all ranked near the bottom on our offensively-based lists, but while they might not draw crowds with they’re hitting ability, they do have value out on the field.

Also revealing is that a few players’ once touted for their defensive abilities in past season, find themselves out of the top five on our list. Again this is only based on two different statistics, but it is telling that both Cameron and Edmonds are below their career numbers in RF and ZR. Cameron has career marks of 2.79 in RF and .901 in ZR, while Edmonds has marks of 2.72 and .893. Andruw Jones appears to be merely average according to our lists; both his RF and ZR rank 5th and 8th on our list respectively. For comparison, the average RF among qualified CF’s is 2.58; the average ZR is .892.

Both Cameron and Edmonds are in the later stages of their career, while all of the innings Jones has logged since he entered the majors at the age of 19 have surely taken a toll on his body. I am not prepared to call Andruw Jones overrated defensively, but it is something to look into for another time. It might be time to call Jones overrated as a player, at least from a fantasy standpoint. He’s a career .263 hitter who’s only hit above .300 once, and he hasn’t reached double digits in steals since 2001. We could forgive these faults if he hit for power, but he needs to show that he can consistently hit more than 40 homeruns in a season.

So, after taking into account our many lists and rankings, here is how I would rank the NL centerfielders, based on this season:

1. Beltran
2. Rowand
3. A. Jones
4. Young
5. J. Jones
6. Pierre
7. Pence
8. Hamilton
9. Amezaga
10. Cameron
11. Hall
12. Logan
13. McLouth
14. Taveras
15. Edmonds
16. Roberts

(Again, this list is two parts objective, one part subjective, and I’m willing to listen to any disagreements and arguments against what I’ve put down.)

Apparently even after all my talk of overrating Andruw Jones, I still put him second on the list. Well, part of that is the level of talent he is facing in the NL, and the other part is the fact that he is still fairly good, crappy batting average and all.

Well, this has gotten pretty long. I’ll get back to this list at a later time with thoughts on each player on the list, – such as “Is Edmonds the worst starting CF in the NL?” – and I’ll compare the level of outfield talent in the NL to the AL. Or maybe I’ll do something completely different, who knows?

I’d love to hear thoughts and comments on this list, suggestions on where I went wrong, or, if you vehemently disagree and are predisposed towards crude and demeaning language, directions on where I might forcibly and violently put my opinions. All comments and criticisms are equally welcome.

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