Here’s a look at training camp battles impacting the NL Central.
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Milwaukee Brewers
The story of the Milwaukee Brewers off-season has bled over into Maryvale – namely that they have too many outfielders. While it was once believed that the Brewers would deal a Keon Broxton or a Domingo Santana, the deals just never materialized. The problem as defined by fantasy baseball owners isn’t even a problem for the real-life squad which is too few plate appearances for too many players.
While Craig Counsel is known to vary his lineup configuration quite a bit during the regular season, when Braun has been in the lineup this spring there has been some combination of Yelich/Cain/Braun or Cain/Yelich/Braun to lead off the first. While this isn’t necessarily a camp battle, there is a battle for at-bats. Domingo Santana has appeared mostly in the cleanup spot while 2017 breakouts Travis Shaw and Eric Thames have spent time in the fifth and sixth spots in the lineup.
Surprisingly the Brewers have given Jesus Aguilar, the short side of the 2017 first base platoon, and Hernan Perez the most spring training at-bats. Perhaps this is their attempt to deal these players from a crowded 25-man roster.
As previously mentioned, Braun has only logged 21 at-bats this spring while also only appearing at first base in an attempt to become comfortable with the position. This does give some pause as to what’s going to happen during the regular season with Braun perhaps seeing time in left field, right field, and first base while cutting into some playing time of Thames, Santana, and Cain.
It’s easy to see a scenario where Braun (34), Cain (32), and Thames (31) only get four-to-five games per week while also spelling Santana once a week. In a six-game week, two players would potentially get four games with the other two getting five. And this is before factoring Aguilar into the mix at first base against lefties should the Brewers decide to retain his services.
St. Louis Cardinals
The Cardinals have a similar “problem” as the Brewers. They’ve got a couple of older breakout players in Jose Martinez and Tommy Pham to go with Dexter Fowler in the outfield. They also have free agent signing Marcel Ozuna and incumbent first baseman Matt Carpenter who need everyday at-bats. Due to injuries over the past couple seasons, I’m assuming the Cardinals would like to play Carpenter at first base as much as possible. However, that means Jose Martinez (1B/OF) is currently a man without a position.
The Cardinals could shift Carpenter to third base or second base where they are currently slated to give a majority of the at-bats to Jedd Gyorko and Kolten Wong. Gyorko can also play second base and steal some time from Wong. With Carpenter, Gyorko, and Martinez all likely in the same ballpark of wRC+ outcomes, it’s hard to imagine sitting any one player for any other player a majority of the time.
Wong is the one player you’d likely choose to sit frequently if you could from this lineup and perhaps that will be the outcome to keep these four bats in the lineup together. While you may want to discount what Jose Martinez did last year, he hasn’t stopped yet this spring posting a .310/.383/.643 with five walks against three strikeouts and has even chipped in two stolen bases. It may be time for fantasy owners to think about hitting the “I believe!” button on Martinez and consider buying in while he’s still low cost.
Chicago Cubs
This is starting to sound like a broken record throughout the NL Central, but the Cubs have too many quality options in the outfield corps as well with Schwarber, Happ, Almora Jr., Zobrist, and Heyward. Willson Contreras, Anthony Rizzo, Addison Russell, Javier Baez, and Kris Bryant are locked into the infield so there will need to be trade-offs to get all these bats into the lineup each week.
So far this spring, Happ, who is a Statcast darling, has looked much sharper in the batter’s box than Almora. Zobrist has looked all of his nearly 37 years old this spring according to the stats flowing out of Arizona, and we already know that for every fantastic defensive play Jason Heyward makes, he hurts the Cubs with every swing he takes. It seems safe to assume Schwarber, Happ, and Heyward will get a majority of the playing time in the outfield at this point, which starts to dampen the outlook on Zobrist getting to 500 ABs.
According to the FantasyPros ADP rankings, Zobrist is still going too high in ESPN leagues at #198 overall. Circling back to Happ, I can’t say enough glowing things about his bat. Therefore, I’ll leave you with some visual data.
Cincinnati Reds
Finally, a team where we can talk about something that’s not outfield related. The story of the Reds spring has been two of their young pitchers – Amir Garrett and Tyler Mahle.
Garrett was the Reds #2 prospect in 2016, and while some still view him as a potential bullpen arm, he’s been outstanding this spring. Mahle, the Reds #4 prospect, is probably the one to target of the two young arms.
His high groundball rate in 2017 combined with his track record for minimizing walks and homers throughout his minor league career makes him an attractive flier coming off a terrific spring. Mahle has only allowed nine baserunners over 14.2 spring innings while striking out nine against two walks. With Anthony DeSclafani succumbing once again to injury this year and Brandon Finnegan’s status up in the air to start the season, one or both of these arms will get a shot at the starting rotation.
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Jim Melichar is a correspondent at FantasyPros. For more from Jim, check out his archive and follow him @JimMelichar7.
