Josh Beckett has hardly lived up to expectations this season. While it had become apparent that he had drawn the ire of Boston fans, Beckett was beginning to have the same effect on his fantasy owners. With the trade to the Los Angeles Dodgers, Beckett’s fortunes should be on the rise. As our own Eno Sarris pointed out, there are many reasons to think Beckett will improve out West. With the playoffs quickly approaching, Beckett could become a useful fantasy asset again.

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The Reds’ Billy Hamilton has been one of the biggest stories of the minor league season this year. You are probably well aware by now that the 21-year old broke Vince Coleman’s minor league stolen base record of 145 set in 1983. The Reds front office has obviously been paying attention and are considering calling him up when rosters expand on Saturday. Talking about Hamilton, GM Walt Jocketty said:

“We obviously are having very serious discussions about it. “I don’t think he’s ready to play at this level but he certainly could run the bases.”

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• Alfredo Aceves did not take kindly to Andrew Bailey getting a save on Friday, reportedly tearing off his jersey after the game before storming into Bobby Valentine’s office and demanding to talk with general manager Ben Cherington. The team responded by suspending him for three games (Saturday, Sunday, and Monday). As I talked about in yesterday’s Bullpen Report, Aceves has been skating on thin ice for a while, and may have finally snapped when the guy the BoSox acquired to pitch the ninth inning finally returned from the disabled list. The Sox have not announced that Bailey is the new ninth inning guy (3.42 career xFIP, 76 saves), but with Aceves’ 4.31 xFIP and an underwhelming career 2.6 SD/MD ratio, it seems the writing is on the wall. (Mark Melancon got the save on Sunday with Aceves and Bailey unavailable. He’s been scattered around between high- and low-leverage situations lately, so nothing important to see here.)

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Apologies to the dear reader; this will be a bit of an abbreviated Roto Riteup. It being the weekend and all, I’m sure you understand. People over the internet are always the most caring and compassionate, right? Don’t answer that.

• Even though Brandon Belt won’t be used very much in the outfield in the wake of the Melky Cabrera fallout, that doesn’t matter much. Belt already has outfield eligibility and perhaps more importantly has been hitting recently. Over the past two weeks Belt has hit a robust .366 in 41 plate appearances. With regular playing time secured at first base, Belt deserves to be picked up. He is owned in less than 20% of ESPN and Yahoo! formats. I’d go grab him.
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On Monday, I took a look at the hitter BABIP leaders and tried to determine how sustainable those marks were for 2013. Today, I will check in on the bottom dwellers in the metric. This could be your initial list of undervalued hitters in next year’s fantasy drafts.

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Holy potential trade action, batman! Obviously those you in NL-only leagues are probably panting over the chance to land Adrian Gonzalez while those of us in AL-only leagues who own A-Gon are dreading this trade. I don’t have any insider info about this potential blockbuster, but I do have today’s Roto Riteup. And that’s just a good. Right? Right. Let’s move on.

• Carlos Quentin is still hitting and people still haven’t noticed. Over the past week hit an even .300 with a homer, eight RBI’s and a trio of runs. His stats from last night’s game aren’t included because it is 11:30 at the time of writing and I am tired and old. His ZiPS rest-of-season isn’t particularly thrilling, but he is guaranteed playing time and hits cleanup. Regardless of the home park, that is worth owning. He is still free to grab in about 65% of both Yahoo! and ESPN leagues.
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Welcome to the first ever UK edition of the Bullpen Report! In honor of this momentous occasion (also known as “the column written while the rest of America sleeps”), bullpens were the opposite of boring last night. Full steam ahead!

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The trade, as it stands now, is Adrian Gonzalez, Carl Crawford, Josh Beckett and Nick Punto to the Dodgers for Jerry Sands, James Loney, Ivan DeJesus, Allen Webster and Rubby De La Rosa. We’ll have plenty of in-depth analysis over the coming days, but fantasy is often about speed, so let’s try to break down the “blink” style fantasy implications.

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This week’s two-start piece features a recently-dealt lefty, a young up-and-comer, a recent DL activee, and a deep sleeper who can get whiffs but thus far, not wins. Read the rest of this entry »

Brett Wallace was drafted in the first round of 2008, and he subsequently compiled an impressive minor league career line of .307/.381/.491 over 400 games. 315 of those games were at the AAA level for five different teams, and peppered in between was one short and disappointing debut and one long and mostly disappointing season. Brett Wallace could very well be the poster boy for the quad-A label. And yet he was very useful for a period of time in 2011 and his recent performance for the Houston Astros has me wondering if he’s going to make this an annual occurrence.

In his first 31 games in 2011, it looked like the Wallace that many fantasy enthusiasts were waiting for had finally arrived. He had a .353/.421/.500 triple slash with a pair of home runs to go with nine doubles and ten runs batted in. Small sample size mavens were quick to point out his over-.400 BABIP but even when it started to regress, Wallace continued to produce. Over his next 38 games, he hit .287/.396/.417 with another pair of home runs, nine more doubles, and 11 RBI.

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