Fantasy Baseball: Reader Mailbag - Clint Barmes
If you read Baseball Prospectus, how can you possibly be excited about Clint "Can't Hit The Side Of A" Barmes?
Well Joshua, that's a good question. But I'm afraid I'm not quite sure what you're referring to - I don't believe I've expressed any excitement towards our favorite carcass carrier (other than the opportunity to write "carcass carrier"). If I were forced to get excited about Clint, I'd be excited about his potential draft value.
And other than coming straight back from an injury (when few players ever play immediately back at their previous level), when has Barmes not hit well? And by "well", I mean .275+ AVG with decent pop. He's not Young, he's not Jeter - he's certainly no Tejada. He's not even Peralta or Lopez. But he is just a notch below the latter, and you can have him for much much cheaper while you focus on other positions. He's being drafted after fantasy-lightweights Carlos Guillen and Aaron Harang - number 185 on my dandy Yahoo average draft position rankings posted a few weeks ago.
I will happily take Miquel Cabrera or Jason Bay at the end of round 1 when people are taking Michael Young and Miquel Tejada, knowing that no one has been touching Barmes until after Round 15. (I will note, however, that Barmes was taken a bit earlier in one of my more recent drafts, semi-sponsored by - wait for it... - Baseball Prospectus). (Of course, this is the same league I drafted Teixeira at #7, and got Ortiz back on the turn at #14.)
Addendum: Okay, it would seem that I did say "both [Barmes and Crosby] could produce very very good numbers." I will admit that I was a bit liberal with the "very"s there. However, the potential is still there for Barmes to produce a .300+ AVG and 15 HRs. Too bad he plays in such a horrid pitchers park, otherwise he'd have that going for him... Wait a second, he plays in Coors!
Thanks for writing in, Joshua - I will try to be a bit more careful with my incredibly unnecessary superfluous extra adjectives in the future.