The Keeper Corner #204-200

The review of the my pre2015 rankings continue today.  It was created by combining the information from a few projection systems.  Without further ado, we continue down the ranks.

#204 Yasmani Tomas, OF, ARI

$5.06, 61 R, 18 HR 77 RBI, 8 SB, .256 AVG, .731 OPS

Truthfully, I did not know what Tomas was like entering this season, I had no idea how to value him, and I basically only had a video of him hitting a long homer in Japan during the WBC to gauge his talent.  I thought he was going to hit for more power than he did, so his final line was a little disappointing.  Next season, I'd expect him to show off his power more, but also anticipate way fewer hits with his batted ball profile.  He was hitting only 21% line drives, and over 50% grounders.  Next season, I think he'll hit more in the thin air in Arizona ,and reach double digit homers, but suffer some babip regression.  He's still an uninteresting player to me in a Diamondbacks offense that is stacked.

#203 Wade Davis, RP, KC

$5.07, 98K, 5W, 3 SV, 2.4ERA, 1.093 WHIP, 3.769 K/BB

Davis was an absolute beast of a reliever.  He crushed his ERA and WHIP projections, as they were both well under 1, and he beat his lofty K/BB projections.  His 8 wins were not something that could be easily predicted, and the same with his 17 saves, but next season he is going into spring training as the Royals closer after Greg Holland went down with a torn UCL.  Next season I expect Wade Davis to be the third best closer behind Kimbrel and Chapman.  He was almost my highest ranking player at the end of this season.

#202 Jonathon Niese, SP, NYM

$5.10, 140K, 11W, 3.712 ERA, 1.235 WHIP, 3.053 K/BB

Niese continued his mediocre play, and once the Mets brought up their latest group of pitching prospects, he lost his spot in the starting rotation.  He is an uninteresting player going forward as he'll still be a Met next season, and I don't see him having a chance to pitch in the rotation unless they go back to the hated 6 starter rotation.  Niese is now striking out fewer than 6 per 9 innings, and doesn't have elite control, because of that I really can't see him being much more than a long reliever next season.

#201 Ian Kennedy, SP, SDP

$5.12, 202K, 10 W, 3.743 ERA, 1.292 WHIP, 2.845 K/BB

Kennedy improved his strikeout rate and walk rate, but saw his HR/9 more than double.  To have most of your balls in play be fly balls, and to also give up a huge amount of hard hit balls (35%) is a recipe for disaster.  I put a lot of weight into what a pitcher can control, so I find it very unusual that he would be controlling the zone better than last year, but have worse results when balls were put in play.  I'm going to have to check his brooks baseball page later this offseason to try and find what was going on and see if anything was yielding worse results than normal last season.

#200 Mike Leake, SP, CIN

$5.18, 146K, 12 W, 3.787 ERA, 1.277 WHIP, 3.106 K/BB

Leake was good this season, but time to put up all the red flags on this guy.  He is entering free agency, and it is almost guaranteed that he goes somewhere less comfy to pitch in than AT&T Park.  His strikeouts are below 6 per 9, his walks were the second worst of his career, behind his rookie year.  I see now reason for him to keep pitching with a babip that was 30 points below his career average.  His batted ball profile hasn't changed, and next season I can see him unraveling in a worse situation.  He had fewer K's than Betances and Chapman individually, when they had 40 fewer innings combined!

So this name hit a few wild cards, and tomorrow's group will include some very high ceiling young players, and former superstars who tried to keep the good old days alive.