Early Season Sink or Swim

 Does the captain always have to go down with his ship? We're seven weeks into the fantasy baseball season and players that we're drafted to be your teams’ anchors are pulling the rest of your team into the depths of fantasy peril. By now you're already frustrated with these players and if you haven't already cut bait on these guys in trades you have to wonder when is the right time to jump ship or just stay the course.

Albert Pujols

By now every publication has beat down the dreadful start of the season the Angels new $240 million dollar man has put together so far. It was thought that the now 32 year old Pujols started slow when he hit .267 with 9 HR 31 RBI through May last season but owners and Mickey Hatcher would’ve loved to have that start now. Things won't be that severely poor going forward (he's still not Daric Barton)but there were several signs that pointed to Pujols not performing up to the top 3 pick he was likely selected with.

Last season Pujols posted the worst ground ball percentage (44.7%) of his career while the amount of his fly balls (38.3%) decreased from (44.5%) in 2010. This is a trend that has continued as evidence by his 3 hit (all infield singles) game on Tuesday night, his best fantasy night of the 2012 campaign until his 3 run HR last night. So far he has posted a 43% GB rate while his fly balls are down all the way to 33.6%. Couple that with already decreasing slugging % and ISO power numbers from the past two seasons and you are looking at a power hitter that isn't going to come close to the numbers you thought you were getting.

Another huge problem for Pujols is he has begun to make himself an easier out. He currently has walked only 7 times in 153 plate appearances this season. Last season he walked only 61 times in 651 PA (4.8% BB rate) down from the 103 walks he had in 2010. Before last season his career low for walks was 69 and it was in his rookie season. The cause of this is his deterioted plate discipline. This season he is swinging at 38.6% of pitches outside of the strike zone and last season he was at 31.8%. In perspective his career percentage for chasing pitches is 21.9%.

Now Pujols won't be as horrible going forward. This isn't a repeat case of 2011 Carl Crawford or Adam Dunn. Career .325 hitters just don't forget how to hit totally. Even of the past week he's hitting .292 with 1 HR 8 RBI.

He won't hit for this poor of an average the rest of the way and some of his fly balls will begin to leave the yard. But he would have to have a huge rest of the season even for his standards to come close to his run, HR, and RBI averages.

2012 Final Line:  .274 AVG 75 R 27 HR  85 RBI 5 SB

Jose Bautista

In 2010, the now 32 year old Joey Bats changed his hitting approach and in turn changed his entire career. This season owners are down on his start even after his 3 home run weekend at Target Field. So far Bautista has just run into terrible luck. All of Bautista's underlying stats are nearly identical to his past 2 seasons. His FB%, LD %, GB %, and K rate are all where they were last season except in 2011 he posted a .309 average on balls in play (BABIP). That number was flukier than his career norm (.271) but this season he has only produced a putrid .171 average on balls in play. Even if he meets somewhere near his .233 BABIP in '10 you can expect a nice turnaround in run producing categories.

2012 Final Line .243 AVG 95 R 41 HR 105 RBI 8 SB

Tim Lincecum

Lincecum wasn't drafted as a top 3 overall pitcher but most of his owners drafted him to be their number one starting pitcher. "The Freak" has done nothing of the sort so far with a 5.77 ERA and 1.35 WHIP thus far. What’s worse is he has been unable to go deep in games pitching into the 7th inning just twice in 8 starts. Already backed by a below average offense and poor defense,  he has been a bit unlucky thus far as hitters have a .346 BABIP against him and he's only stranded 60.4% of base runners but hitters are also hitting him well. 24.8% of balls hit off of Lincecum have been line drives and he's walking 4.53 guys per 9 innings. His walk rate has been increasing for 4 straight seasons while his K/9 has dropped slightly the past 2. Not all bad though, he has 48 K's in 43 innings. Odds are you are not going to get any great value for him but if you can move him to an owner who loves those strikeouts and doesn’t mind what could continue to come along with them go ahead and pull the trigger. He's only had ERA higher than 3.00 once since his rookie season but that is long out the window as a possibility at this point.

2012 Final Line  205 INN 13 W 12 L   4.25 ERA   1.35 WHIP 207 K

Adrian Gonzalez

Since the All Star break last season Gonzalez has just 12 home runs in his last 432 at bats covering 106 games (with 5 of those HR coming in a 3 game series in Texas last August). He's admitted that last season he played with an injured right shoulder  but claims he's as healthy as ever. Last season he started slowly as well , hitting 1 HR in April before ripping through May ( 9HR 31 RBI ) but there are no signs of that so far this season (0 HR 5 RBI this May). Fenway may be playing a part as he only hit 10 of his 27 HR last year at home while seeing his doubles increase from 33 to 45  but oddly enough he even hit more doubles on the road as well (only 19 of the 45 came at Fenway).  Gonzalez still is really useful as he is on pace for 90 runs and 90 runs batted in while still posting a nice average just don’t anticipate the 30-40 HR power to return.

                  

2012 Final Line   .296 AVG   93 R    23 HR   108 RBI 1 SB

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