Collette Calls: Ignoring the Noise of Spring Training

It feels like we say this every year, but Spring Training stats are mostly useless. Regardless of well they performed in Florida or Arizona, a player's spring stats have practically no bearing on how they'll do in the regular season. Using Spring Training statistics to predict future performance would be akin to predicting the stock market based on the change in your pocket or judging rush-hour traffic by the first two minutes of your drive. Simply put, there are many better indicators of future performance than 10-20 innings or 50 at-bats in March. After all, what happened to the 26:1 strikeout to walk ratio that Trevor Bauer had last spring?

There are many factors that come into play during February and March that determine a player's production in those months, such as:

• Pitcher working on a new pitch, arm slot or starting spot on the rubber
• Hitter working on a new approach or using a new bat
• Player thinking about a 5pm tee time
• Player recovering from a 5am arrival time back home
• Pitcher throwing only one type of pitch
• Player recovering from offseason surgery
• Hitter enjoying the friendly run environment of the Cactus League
• Pitcher suffering from the friendly run environment of the Cactus League

This week, we'll focus on 12 players that either had horrendous/great springs and look at how they've done one month into the 2016 season.

Hitters

Christian Yelich: .173/.218/.231 (52 spring ABs) versus .341/.466/.476 (81 regular ABs)

Getting on base has never been an issue for Yelich, as he has a career .372 OBP in over 1500 plate appearances. He still doesn't hit many home runs because he hits far too many balls into the ground (60 percent yet again this season), but he's been a nice three-category player out of the gate even though he has as many homers (one) as steals (one) in 2016.

Neil Walker: .192/.250/.327 (52 spring ABs) versus .305/.340/.600 (101 regular ABs)

The OBP is in line with career rates and his batting average is slightly higher than normal, but look at that slugging percentage! Walker already has nine homers in 201, putting him on pace for over 50 this year. That won't happen, but he's hitting 27 percent of his fly balls out of the yard which is nearly double his previous career best. Sure, he's hitting a lot more fly balls this season (50 percent) than he has in the past (36 percent), but the extra power is coming at the cost of a career-low walk rate and a career-worst strikeout rate. His power spike happens to coincidence with his pending free agency after this season – how convenient.

Michael Conforto: .200/.268/.340 (50 spring ABs) versus .337/.411/.614 (89 regular ABs)

For Conforto, we didn't have the track record to work from as we did with the others, but looking back at his minor league work and his work in college told us this guy could rake. He leads all of baseball in hard contact in 2016 and watching him hit validates those numbers. Perhaps the pressure of coming to camp with the job for the first time rather than fighting for it got to him in Port St. Lucie, but this young man is off to quite an awesome start.

Joey Votto: .455/.529/.636 (55 spring ABs) versus .231/.327/.341 (97 regular ABs)

This is one of the more perplexing starts to the 2016 season. It's been so bad that Votto has even said that he'd rather retire and leave money on the table rather than struggle like this all season. Perhaps it's the realization that he's playing for a terrible team and that his big contract on the wrong side of 30 is going to make it difficult for the Reds to move him. He's gotten pull-happy at the plate and is hitting ground balls at a career-high rate right now rather than driving the ball. Add to that the fact he's striking out 24 percent of the time – a career worst -- and now walking "just" 12 percent of the time and you have a proven elite fantasy commodity in a statistical tailspin.

Michael Taylor: .453/.491/.849 (53 spring ABs) versus .184/.226/.310 (98 regular ABs)

Taylor is picking up where he left off in 2015, which isn't exactly a good thing. He had a tremendous spring in Florida, so when Ben Revere went down, nobody panicked. As it turns out, he still isn't ready for prime-time given the large holes in his swing and his lack of power. Taylor remains an immensely talented player, but under a veteran-loving skipper like Dusty Baker, he could find himself buried in the minors once Revere returns.

Pitchers

Taijuan Walker: 1-3, 6.55 ERA, .337 average against, 1.59 WHIP in spring versus 2-1, 1.80 ERA, .239 average against, 1.03 WHIP in the regular season

Walker is no longer looking like Edwin Jackson 2.0 and has looked fantastic out of the gate. Walker tinkered with three new pitches during the offseason and is throwing them for strikes and generating ground balls like never before. Also, his BABIP is in line with career levels, but his stranding nearly 80 percent of baserunners will hinge upon not reverting back to the gopheritis he had in 2015. If Walker can keep the ball on the ground as he has thus far, that will help.

Rick Porcello: 0-2, 9.77 ERA, .408 average against, 2.11 WHIP in spring versus 5-0, 2.76 ERA, .200 average against, 0.92 WHIP in the regular season

Did you know Porcello is Italian for "staff ace"? Yeah, me neither. Porcello looked worse than his spring numbers indicate as his "stinkerball" was in full effect when I watched him pitch against Tampa Bay in mid-March. He and David Price have combined to go 9-0 this season, but Porcello has done all of the heavy-lifting while striking out batters at a career-best rate. The increased strikeouts began in September last year as the Red Sox got him to use his fastball more and locate it better. He's already halfway to his win projections for this season and is still younger than a guy like Chris Archer, showing why the Red Sox threw $105 million at him.

Rich Hill: 0-2, 11.25 ERA, .293 average against, 2.25 WHIP in spring versus 3-3, 2.53 ERA, .222 average against, 1.22 WHIP in the regular season

To steal a phrase from the Fantasy Focus podcast, this is the "ultimate fantasy zombie." The last time Hill was fantasy relevant, the Mitchell Report was all the rage, the final Harry Potter book was just being published, and Two and a Half Men was actually funny. Since Hill came back from the Independent League last September, he is 5-4 with a 2.07 ERA, has struck out 32 percent batters and has held the opposition to a .185 batting average while earning a 0.95 WHIP. Apparently, Hill ate the fantasy brains of David Price as that's who he's been pitching like – at a 75-percent discount.

Mat Latos: 10.38 ERA, .404 average against, 2.23 WHIP in spring versus 4-0, 1.84 ERA, .218 average against, 1.09 WHIP in the regular season

Latos isn't the same type of zombie that Hill currently is, as he has been fantasy relevant within the past couple of years, but this is still quite the start. He has already won as many games this season in five appearances as he did in 24 games last season. Don Cooper is good at reclamation projects (John Danks aside) and he may have another one here in Latos. However, he isn't striking anyone out and that .228 BABIP and 94-percent LOB rate are shiny objects that will dull in the very near future. The one thing White Sox pitchers not named Danks are doing this year is winning games, so ride Latos for wins or swap him out before the ratios begin to take a dive.

Johnny Cueto: 1-2, 9.58 ERA, .347 average against, 1.84 WHIP in spring versus 4-1, 3.61 ERA, .253 average against, 1.13 WHIP in the regular season.

When healthy, Cueto has been a lock for double-digit wins with good-to-great ratios and strikeout totals. Therefore, as long as the bad March numbers weren't related to an injury, it was safe to assume Cueto was going to straighten things out because he has done it every single year he has remained healthy. He has been a four-plus WAR pitcher in three of the past four seasons and is on pace for another. At this point, Cueto is no staff ace, but when a pitcher's worst full season involved an ERA of 3.53 and they haven't had a WHIP over 1.20 in six seasons, they're pretty darn good. Anyone who jumped ship based on his early struggles should be publicly scorned.

Patrick Corbin: 2-0, 1.71 ERA, .222 average against, 1.00 WHIP in spring versus 1-3, 4.88 ERA, .276 average against, 1.40 WHIP in the regular season

After Corbin shut down everyone in March, he drove 10 minutes west of camp and began pitching in Chase Field where he has been unable to keep the ball in the yard. Twice this season, he has allowed three homers in a game there. Corbin struck out six Rockies on Opening Day and seven Padres two starts later, but has otherwise had difficulty earning K's. In addition, he hasn't been able to miss bats like last year, and despite the highest ground-ball rate of his career, the homers are hurting him.

When all is said and done, let these examples serve as a reminder to ignore Spring Training stats and focus on the health and big-picture outlooks when assessing players heading into the season. Teams don't care what these guys do over 50 ABs or 20 innings pitched during camp so neither should you. As an example, Albert Pujols is hitting under .200 this season, but the Angels are still rolling him out there in the cleanup spot heading into May because he's a proven hitter that will eventually turn it around. Big league teams can afford to be more patient than fantasy owners, but ignoring the noise of Spring Training stats is essential to a successful draft day and is almost as important as exercising patience with proven studs off to slow starts to the regular season.