FanPost

The Freakishly Awesome Anthony Rendon

Mitchell Layton


Anthony Rendon is a well rounded, 5 tool fantasy machine. Coming into this year, many prospect evaluators, were big on him, but cited things like his previous ankle injuries, and how he fell to 6th in the draft because of them. Rankers for this year only had a 98 game sample size from 2013, in which he had a 265/329/398 slash line paired with 7 homers and 1 steal, which lead to a perfectly average 100 wRC+.

He was the 19th ranked 2B on ESPN, and FakeTeams gave him a far more favorable 13th ranking. With his lack of experience, all of our expectations had to be tempered, due to such a large unknown. I had him tentatively ranked as my 17th rounder in my draft prep. He was taken a few picks before me, and the when he was dropped before the season even started, I happily picked him up as my middle infielder.

Since reading about someone else's fantasy team is probably as exciting as watching paint dry, I'll just get into how Rendon crushed baseballs, and every one of his fantasy owner found true love. This year he hit 287/351/473 with 21 HR and 17 SB, and a very normal .314 Babip. He also hit second in 116 games and was able to pile up a league leading 111 runs, and 83 RBI. So while his power/speed was good, but not legendary, can we expect him to play this well again next year considering how fickle runs and RBI are? The answer is simple: Yes, Rendon fans, we can.

The root of his success is a well balanced approach that led to a healthy array of hits to all fields, and a 20.4% LD rate, 40% GB rate, and 39.6% FB rate. Essentially he's a saber oriented teams nightmare since he hits the ball to all fields, and equally balances his good line drive rate with an even blend of grounders and fly balls. He also rarely pops up, 6.9% IFFB rate, which also made me notice his fairly low 10.4% HR/RB rate. Basically, he's an unshiftable(not a real word, but rules can't contain my Rendon love) hitter. Now while hitting balls to all fields, and spraying them up and down makes him good, what made him great was the force he hit them with. Thankfully baseball heatmaps does the job of tracking the distance players hit their line drives and fly balls. Averaging 300+ feet puts you in the top 13, which contains names like Springer, Stanton, Goldschmidt, and Jose Abreu. Going down to 290ft, leaves you in the the top 61, with Anthony Rendon resting at 290.74 ft, where he is surrounded by names like Matt Holliday, Khris Davis, Mike Zunino, and Adam Jones, all players who are known to hit a ball far.

http://www.brooksbaseball.net/h_spray.php?player=543685&gFilt=&time=month&minmax=ci&s_type=15&startDate=03/30/2007&endDate=09/29/2014&balls=-1&strikes=-1&b_hand=-1

Q: So what should lead us to believe that his rate stat driven success should continue? A: Patience and contact ability my friends. In a day where 20% K%s are nothing, Rendon has a 15.2 K% down from 17.5% in his rookie year, and a BB% at 8.5% which is up from 7.9% in 2013. Those stats are good, but the fact that Rendon has managed to only swing at 23.7% of balls outside of the strike zone, MLB average 31.3, and at 61.8% in the zone, MLB average 65.6%, means pitchers are going to have to start throwing him more strikes, or expect him to start taking more walks. To only make him that much sweeter, when he does swing at those strikes he makes contact 93.3% of the time, MLB 87.3%. He doesn't swing and miss, and he takes strikes. This is the making of a fantasy monster.

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10101125251753530&set=a.10101070402422030.1073741828.26905598&type=1&theater

The last thing I really look into when trying to decide how to value you a player is the strength of the lineup around the player, their home park factors, and scouting reports. To go over every stat for the team would probably be a waste of a lot of time, but the National compiled a 714 OPS, good for 4th in the NL this year, Nationals park was the second worst venue for homers, but was above average for hits, doubles, walks, and runs. I honestly believe that with a healthy Harper, please god let us see a healthy Harper, the Nats will be an unreal offense with a lineup looking like this:

C Wilson Ramos

1B Ryan Zimmerman/ Laroche(2015 $15MM mutual option)

2B Espinosa (Rendon if Zimmerman stays at 3B next year)

SS Desmond

3B Anthony Rendon (potentially Zimmerman)

LF Bryce "the War Hammer" Harper

CF Denard Span

RF Jayson Werth

The last noted part was the scouting reports. I'll start with how Bret Sayre, a former FakeTeams writer, and now a fantasy writer for Baseball Prospectus finished his analysis on Rendon " In dynasty/keeper formats, he's well worth an add and a waiver claim everywhere (unless you're sitting on the no. 1 spot awaiting Jurickson Profar or Oscar Taveras). This is a future all-star, if he can stay healthy." Now as I said before, he has had ankle injuries, and people were concerned, but he has been virtually unscathed since he began his professional career, obviously a good sign. If you're more into numerical scouting grades, here are his grades from 2011, courtesy of Diamond Scape Scouting:

GRADING OUT:

Current

Future

Hit:

50/55

65/70

Power:

45/50

55/60

Arm:

60

60

Defense:

55/60

60/65

Speed:

55/60

55

Feel:

55

60/65

Overall Future Potential: 63

If you wanted to just go by the low end scores, he's a damn good player, but obviously people have seen star potential in Rendon, as a 70 hit, 60 power player would be something like a younger Matt Holliday. To make a long story, that you've already read at this point, short, draft Rendon with confidence. When you break down what a good player should do, swing at strikes, take balls, not whiff, hit the ball hard to all fields, on all planes, and run fairly well. I think this is an argument to consider Anthony Rendon a top 20 player, and this is based off of his bat alone before you take positional scarcity into account.

Works Cited

Fangraphs.com

Mlb.com

Baseballheatmaps.com

Brooksbaseball.com

ESPN.com

Faketeams.com

Baseballprospectus.com

http://diamondscapescouting.com/scoutingreports_2011_rendonan.html

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