Tristan H. Cockcroft 8y

Why we loved Prince Fielder in fantasy baseball

Fantasy MLB, MLB, Texas Rangers

If this is indeed the end for Prince Fielder -- and all indications are that it is -- it'd be a shame if he's remembered more for the neck surgeries that prematurely ended his career than his fantasy prowess spanning the better part of a decade.

Fielder possessed prodigious power, but more importantly (and somewhat forgotten in recent years), he was one of the game's most durable players.

On three occasions -- 2007, 2009 and 2011 -- Fielder finished ranked among the 20 best players in fantasy baseball per our Player Rater. Not coincidentally, those were his three best individual seasons in terms of home runs (50 in 2007, 46 in 2009 and 38 in 2011), RBIs (141 in 2009, 120 in 2011 and 119 in 2007), runs scored (109 in 2007, 103 in 2009 and 95 in 2011) and OPS (1.014 in 2009, 1.013 in 2007 and .981 in 2011).

On five occasions -- 2006, 2007, 2009, 2011 and 2015 -- Fielder turned his fantasy owners a profit; for these purposes we'll define that as his Player Rater finish being of better rank than his preseason average draft position. In each of those campaigns, he improved his home run total by at least six, his RBIs by at least 37 and his OPS by at least 67 points compared to the season before it.

Even more than Fielder's Player Rater accomplishments, or his performance relative to draft cost, however, during the first eight full seasons of his career he was lauded for his durability. From 2006-13, Fielder appeared in a major league-leading 1,283 games, nine more than Adrian Gonzalez, and his 10,994 innings played at first base topped the position, by 126 1/3 over Gonzalez. Fielder's 5,500 trips to the plate during that span trailed only Ichiro Suzuki's 5,586.

In four different seasons, Fielder played all 162 of his team's scheduled games, and in each of those years he started all 162. During the divisional era (since 1969), Cal Ripken (10) is the only player to have more seasons making 162-plus starts.

His iron-man nature helped make Fielder one of the most reliable sources of counting numbers, which largely explains how he was able to be a top-25 overall draft pick in ESPN leagues for seven consecutive years (2008-14).

From 2006-13, Fielder hit the fourth-most home runs (283, eight behind Albert Pujols), drove in the fourth-most runs (860) and had the 12th-best slugging percentage among players with at least 2,500 plate appearances (.528); he had the second-most walks (724, 60 behind Adam Dunn), the fourth-most times hit by pitch (104) and he had the 11th-best on-base percentage (.390). Fielder also did so with a better-than-league-average strikeout rate of 17.4 percent (the league's average was 18.3 percent). He could do it all, and his combination of patience, power and contact-hitting ability made him especially valuable in points-based and sabermetrically angled scoring formats.

Unfortunately, many fantasy owners -- especially Fielders' in 2014 or 2016 -- might be more apt to remember him for his disappointments. Cervical fusion surgeries prematurely ended both of those campaigns, one on the C5-C6 disks in his neck on May 27, 2014, and most recently on the C4-C5 disks in his neck on July 29, resulting in Player Rater finishes that almost assuredly will be more than 600 spots beneath his ADPs in either year.

Still, even if Fielder's Texas Rangers career wasn't as promising as initially anticipated, his tenures with the Milwaukee Brewers and Detroit Tigers were something to celebrate in retrospect.

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