Fantasy Baseball Fix: 2012 Alberto Callaspo Projections

Spring is in the air, and that can only mean one thing: Fantasy Baseball is right around the corner. It’s that magical time of year where you obsess over every report coming out of Spring Training, formulating the perfect draft strategy to build your dream team, only to have it fall apart in the first two weeks with a tweaked hamstring and you get sent into panic mode, throwing all your confidence and strategies out the window so you can stress and scramble to beat the guy in your league who forgot his log-in and hasn’t changed the lineup for his team in a month. Oh, the things we do for fun…

To get you prepared for your draft day, Halo Hangout will count down the 15 most fantasy relevant Angels for the upcoming season. Leading us off at number 15: the displaced Alberto Callaspo. Callaspo came on last season and held down the hot corner for the Halos, leading the team in on-base percentage (.366), while batting a respectable .288. He scored 54 runs and had 46 RBIs to go with 6 home runs and a .740 OPS. He drew 58 walks and struck out 48 times, showing off patience at the plate and a knack for making contact, whiffing only 7.9% of the time. He was a consistent contributor if you had him in your lineup, but wasn’t going to give you many outstanding point totals.  His solid fielding and great contact made him a staple for the Angels offense in 2011, but he may find it more difficult to find a home with the team in 2012.

Coming out of the spring, it looks like there are only three scenarios that would put Collaspo into the Opening Day lineup: One, Kendrys Morales isn’t ready to play, moving Mark Trumbo to the DH and opening up a spot at third for Callaspo and/or Maicer Izturis. Two, the Trumbo-experiment at third is deemed a failure during the spring, with the big hitting of Trumbo not being enough to overcome the defensive liability of having him in the field, opening Callaspo’s old job back up to him. Third, Callaspo gets traded during the spring and is playing for a different team in 2012.

As you can see, all those scenarios are highly conditional, which takes a lot of control away from Callaspo on how his season is going to go. Callaspo is a “quantity” guy, where his value comes in how many times he gets on base. Hitting only part-time will put a huge dent in his production and in turn, his value in fantasy. His limited power and limited speed makes it unlikely that he would be able to make much of an impact if only given a limited role which would also hurt the value of his ability to get on base. Without some help, Callaspo looks to be a role player for the Angles this season, coming off the bench to pinch hit along with spot starts during the season. Most of the projections, however, see Callaspo seeing the field quite a bit more than that.

• ZiPS: .276/.334/.380, 61 R, 8 HR, 54 RBI, 5 SB, 565 PA
• Fans: .282/.336/.376, 56 R, 7 HR, 62 RBI, 5 SB, 519 PA
• Bill James: .279/.342/.386, 61 R, 7 HR, 51 RBI, 6 SB, 552 PA

Personally, I don’t think Callaspo will see the plate this many times during the season without a serious injury or a change of scenery. Callaspo is a nice player to have on your team if you need some consistent production, but only when he gets the playing time to accumulate base hits and walks. Callaspo could make a good waiver wire addition to store on your bench to fill that “just in case” role for your team. The Angels seem committed to getting Trumbo onto the field and into the lineup with Morales, which makes Callaspo the one who gets pushed from the hot corner.

The Hangout View: Callaspo probably isn’t worth a draft pick at this point unless something drastic happens during the spring between now and your draft day. He’ll get his spot starts, and in the event of an injury to Morales, Trumbo, or Albert Pujols, will get back into the every-day starting lineup, but will be available on the waiver wire in case you need someone to slap a few singles and take a couple of walks on a consistent basis. Our projected line:

• .290/.340/.380, 30 R, 3 HR, 21 RBI, 2 SB, 250 PA