Player Profile #134: Erick Aybar | SS | LAA

Few people benefitted more from this offseason (indirectly) than Erick Aybar. Assuming he holds down the second spot in the Angels stacked lineup like MLBDepthCharts.com projects, it’s virtually impossible for him to score fewer than the 85 runs we project. Josh Hamilton and Albert Pujols might be baseball’s best 3-4 duo, and if they’re not it’s only because Detroit has the reigning Triple Crown winner and a 28-year-old slugger who’s already hit 45+ homers twice in his career. Aybar makes good contact, steals bases, and looks like your prototypical number two hitter. Surprisingly, he’s ranked inside the top 125 in each of the last two years, so an argument could be made that ranking him 134 before the 2013 season is a bit too conservative, but for what it’s worth we project his overall PSR Rating to be a hair better than last year. At a Glance Strengths: R, SB, net SB, CS Neutral: BA, OBP, OPS Weaknesses: HR, RBI, SLG Player Comparisons Best-case scenario: Jose Altuve (HOU) Like...