Second Opinion Player-Profile Game: Question #1

by
February 1, 2012

Play the player-profile game again on Thursday and Friday of this week at 11:30am ET. Each day, we’re giving away a free copy of the 2012 Second Opinion to the first reader who guesses correctly the identity of that day’s mystery player. (Limit one copy per customer).

Next Monday (or so says my colleague Eno Sarris), FanGraphs will release the third annual edition its very useful and even more affordable fantasy companion, The Second Opinion. Thanks to the vision of Mr. Sarris, along with the hard work of many of FanGraphs’ own contributors, this year’s edition promises to build upon last season’s sophomore effort, while still maintaining the white-hot analysis that is FanGraphs’ trademark.

We will have more details on the guide very shortly. In the meantime, however, it makes sense to offer some previews of what readers can expect from this year’s Second Opinion. These peeks promise to be especially sneaky as they’ll come in the form of the player-profile game I intoduced in these pages not so long ago.

The game is easy: one person (me, in this case) offers the text of single player profile, being careful to omit any proper names that might reveal the identity of the player in question. The other person (you, the reader) attempts to identify the player using only the details provided in the profile.

For the first reader who guesses correctly (in the comments section below), we offer you, if you can even believe it, a free copy of this year’s Second Opinion — approximately a $1000 value!

Today’s entry comes to us courtesy the unbearably handsome Mike Axisa.

You Aren't a FanGraphs Member
It looks like you aren't yet a FanGraphs Member (or aren't logged in). We aren't mad, just disappointed.
We get it. You want to read this article. But before we let you get back to it, we'd like to point out a few of the good reasons why you should become a Member.
1. Ad Free viewing! We won't bug you with this ad, or any other.
2. Unlimited articles! Non-Members only get to read 10 free articles a month. Members never get cut off.
3. Dark mode and Classic mode!
4. Custom player page dashboards! Choose the player cards you want, in the order you want them.
5. One-click data exports! Export our projections and leaderboards for your personal projects.
6. Remove the photos on the home page! (Honestly, this doesn't sound so great to us, but some people wanted it, and we like to give our Members what they want.)
7. Even more Steamer projections! We have handedness, percentile, and context neutral projections available for Members only.
8. Get FanGraphs Walk-Off, a customized year end review! Find out exactly how you used FanGraphs this year, and how that compares to other Members. Don't be a victim of FOMO.
9. A weekly mailbag column, exclusively for Members.
10. Help support FanGraphs and our entire staff! Our Members provide us with critical resources to improve the site and deliver new features!
We hope you'll consider a Membership today, for yourself or as a gift! And we realize this has been an awfully long sales pitch, so we've also removed all the other ads in this article. We didn't want to overdo it.

Who is it?

Arguably the best non-closing reliever in baseball over the last three or four seasons, [BLANK] somewhat predictably saw his home-run rate spike (from 0.38 HR/9 to 1.05 HR/9) following his trade from the [BLANKs] to the [BLANKs]. He remains a dominant high-strikeout (9.00 per nine in four straight years), low-WHIP (sub-1.10 in four straight years), low-ERA (sub-1.80 in three straight years) setup man that’s a must-own in holds leagues, and it won’t take much for him to see some save opportunities with [BLANK] moving to the rotation and the aging [BLANK] set for ninth-inning duties. The homers could push his ERA closer to 2.00 than we’re used to seeing, but it’s a small price to pay for an elite holds reliever.





 

Carson Cistulli has published a book of aphorisms called Spirited Ejaculations of a New Enthusiast.

18 Comments
Oldest
Newest Most Voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
Mike
13 years ago

Mike Adams

1
Carson CistulliMember
13 years ago
Reply to  Mike

You are correct, sir… and the winner of today’s edition of the game.

Please expect to find free access to this year’s Second Opinion, when it becomes available.

If you’re unable to access it at that time, don’t hesitate to contact us: http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/index.php/contact/.

0