10 fantasy baseball thoughts from the first week of June

This week, I’m speaking about a few streaks that are currently going.

1.) For starters, here are the five active MLB players with the most games under their belt:

• Albert Pujols (2,823)
• Miguel Cabrera (2,400)
• Robinson Cano (2,185)
• Nick Markakis (2,117)
• Yadier Molina (1,983)

First – how crazy is it that Nick Markakis is one of the top five? I was thinking Nelson Cruz or Joey Votto or Ian Kinsler as a top five player, Markakis was nowhere near the top five in my mind. Second, how amazing is it to have a catcher (Molina) crack the top five. Talk about a position that takes it’s toll on your knees.

2.) Consecutive games played. It took Cal Ripken Jr. over 13 years to accumulate his 2,131 consecutive games played. Last year, five players played in all 162 games, all are also pushing their late 20s at this point. It becomes increasingly tricky to find out the active list, what you can ascertain is that none of the five who played all games in 2019 played all in 2018 as well.

• Jorge Soler (played 61 in 2018)
• Whit Merrifield (played 158 in 2018)
• Starlin Castro (played 154 in 2018)
• Jonathan Villar (played 141 in 2018)
• Marcus Semien (played 159 in 2018)
• 3.) Going further down the rabbit hole, a trend over the last 10 years...the first number are players who played all 162 games, the number in parentheses are the number of players who played at least 161 games.
• 2019 – 5 (9)
• 2018 – 7 (9)
• 2017 – 5 (5)
• 2016 – 3 (5)
• 2015 – 1 (1)
• 2014 – 4 (5)
• 2013 – 4 (8)
• 2012 – 4 (9)
• 2011 – 1 (6)
• 2010 – 2 (7)

I was surprised to see it trending up, with more players playing the full season over the last two years than the previous eight seasons. I had assumed we would see fewer players making it that deep into a season between injuries and precautionary measure by managers.

4.) Think you know old timey rosters real well? Take a quiz…

5.) SB Nation’s Texas Rangers site takes a look at a potential option for the 15^th overall pick Garrett Mitchell.

6.) Kevin Long, the hitting coach for the Washington Nationals, was on XM radio discussing bridging the gap that Anthony Rendon leaves. It sounds like this will not be easy, even a combination of Trea Turner, Carter Kieboom, Starlin Castro and Asdrubal Cabrera in some combination will still leave a lofty gap.

7.) IF this season is lost, it’s a bad hit to the Reds who traded away prospects like Taylor Trammel to go ‘all in’ on this season with Trevor Bauer, Mike Moustakas and Shogo Akiyama, not to mention Joey Votto not having a lot of years left.

8.) Whoever drafts Mick Abel will be playing a long game in the 2020 draft, but I feel bullish Mick is going to emerge as a top two arm in this year’s draft. I think this guy has the talent, character and ability to be an elite pitcher—however, I think he will take longer than most to make his way to the professional level.

9.) Very interesting metric - creating a system to describe teams who are taking to heart their issued statements as opposed to a generic one.

10.) Ryan Rolison was the 22^nd overall pick in the 2018 draft by the Colorado Rockies. He has shown a stronger curveball and fastball which can hit low 90s with good accuracy. I have picked him up in most dynasty leagues driven largely by my belief that the Rockies support system for their pitchers is among the best in the league. He had a rough step up to A+ last year, but he is showing the right tools. As a lefty, he might have a slight edge there as well.