For the greater good, I try not to recap every fantasy trade I make. First of all, most of you probably don’t care about every trade I make. Second, I really like making trades (seriously, tweet @ottoneu and ask about Chad’s trades, Niv will tell you all about it), and so I would end up writing nothing but trade recap posts.

But once in a while, a trade happens that I think is worthy of a recap. And in my first trade in the new ottoneu FanGraphs Staff League, I believe I have made one of those recap-worthy trades: Pablo Sandoval and Hong-Chih Kuo for Matt Thornton and Paul Goldschmidt.

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Location, location, location.

No, I’m not talking about real estate. I’m talking about the different park factors that players (and fantasy owners) have to deal with. Today’s Roto Riteup deals with players who may end up in a different uniform before the season is over.

– Mark Reynolds has apparently hit the trading block. Reynolds topped 30 homers for the third straight year, and is a known commodity as a relatively cheap power source. His home park last year certainly aided him, as Camden Yards had the third highest home run factor for right handed batters, 123 via StatCorner. Given that, almost anywhere else that Reynolds lands is likely to cause a dip in his power numbers. Mark Reynolds without the power? That isn’t exactly an ideal player to own.

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I have to confess, the Cubs’ decision to move Jeff Samardzija into the rotation puzzles me a little bit. I certainly understand that if a pitcher is equally effective in the rotation and in the bullpen, they have more value and a greater impact in the rotation, but the number of pitchers who can actually pitch equally well in both situations is relatively small and may or may not include the Shark.

It isn’t as though the Cubs are dying for a starter, quite the opposite in fact. Matt Garza and Ryan Dempster are locked in at the top and returning from an injury-shortened 2011 is Randy Wells. The departure of both Carlos Zambrano and Sean Marshall netted the team Chris Volstad and Travis Wood respectively, and Paul Maholm arrived after being thrown overboard by the Pirates. That gives the team six players with starting experience even before Samardzija is added to the mix. Read the rest of this entry »

Two weeks ago we rolled out or consensus first base rankings, and last week I picked them apart and wrote about some things I didn’t necessarily agree with. The tiers below are my personal rankings, dividing the players into groups based on their approximate fantasy value. These rankings will be updated every month throughout the season.

Tier One
Miguel Cabrera
Albert Pujols
Joey Votto
Adrian Gonzalez
Prince Fielder

These five are the very best of the best, all first round fantasy options expected to produce huge numbers. Miggy’s fractured orbital bone could delay the start of his season, in which case I’d bump him behind Pujols. Either way, you’re going to get massive production.

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Regular RotoGraphs readers may recall a couple weeks ago when I posted my then-in-progress Scoresheet team for all to belittle and besmirch.

Well, my roster has since filled out, and I’m now ready for further humiliation and shame. Let’s take a peek, with breakdowns where I feel are pertinent: Read the rest of this entry »

It takes a special kind of overly-obsessed fantasy player to worry deeply about what to do with marginal players over two games in late March before 28 teams have even played a real game. I mean, there are 2,430 games in a season. Two early season games account for a solid 0.08% of the MLB season.

So it should come as no surprise to anyone that this morning I found myself wondering, “What do I do with Mike Carp in Japan?!” And I figured if this is keeping me awake at night, I can’t be the only one.

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It’s been somewhat of a bittersweet spring for the Kansas City Royals.  On one hand, Eric Hosmer and Alex Gordon are off to great starts and look like they’re going to build on last year’s success while Lorenzo Cain has emerged as a strong force both with the glove and the bat.  On the other, you’ve got Salvador Perez down with knee surgery for 12 to 14 weeks and Joakim Soria likely headed for Tommy John surgery…again.  The first hand?  Music to fantasy owners ears.  The second?  Not so much.   The closer situation will be handled in-house so hopefully you handcuffed your Soria pick to the pair of Jonathan Broxton and Greg Holland.  The catching situation, though, forced the Royals to go outside.

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We have a segment on the Fantasy Baseball Roundtable show called “Are You Crazy?”. The idea is to throw out a bold prediction and then the rest of the panelists debate whether the forecaster is crazy or not. We assume 20% as the baseline, meaning if there is a 20% chance of the prediction coming true, it is not crazy. On last night’s show, I stepped up to the plate and boldly predicted that Francisco Liriano would be a top 8 pitcher. However, for this post, I will be slightly less ballsy and go top 10. Now let me explain why there is at least a 20% chance of such insanity happening.

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After releasing our consensus ranking of the 2B, I am going to put the 2B into tiers. My personal projections where close to the overall 2B rankings, so I don’t have a ton of disagreements.

Tier 1
Robinson Cano
Dustin Pedroia
Ian Kinsler

The same top 3. If, and it is a big if, Kinsler can stay healthy, he has the stats to be the top of this group.

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Keeping up with some of my colleagues here at Rotographs, here are three of the players I’m avoiding in drafts this season.

Delmon Young*

I know Young is a popular sleeper, and I know he’s absolutely setting Florida alight with his .485/.500/.970 line with 4 HR, but I am not buying in. If anything, his 33 great at bats enforce my concerns with Young, namely that while he’s entirely capable of having a burst of tremendous performance, he can’t sustain it over the course of a full season. He had one of those bursts as soon as he arrived in Detroit, hitting .324/.336/.481 with 4 HR in just over 100 PAs, but the other shoe dropped as he hit a 4-for-43 skid just before the end of the season. Read the rest of this entry »