• Joel Hanrahan had a night to forget in Boston. Coming on with a two run lead, he gave up a leadoff shot to the red-hot Chris Davis and things only went downhill after that. A few walks and a wild pitch later and the save was blown, and that was still before Manny Machado jacked a three-run moonshot over the Green Monster to put a five-spot on the Red Sox closer. Hanrahan was great in 2010 and 2011 but suffered major regression last season, seeing his velocity dip (97.1 mph to 95.9 mph) and his walk rate soar (5.8% BB% to 14.2%). He hasn’t been good this year, either, with an 11.69 FIP (6.63 xFIP) through 23 batters faced. Even though his velocity is back up over 97 mph, the control continues to trend downward with his F-Strike% down another few percentage points from 2012’s career low.

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Playing the waiver wire can be a tough thing this early in the season. For many, this first couple of weeks is about tweaking the roster, fine-tuning a few positions and keeping an eye out for anyone who may have been flying under the radar. For others, it’s about exhibiting patience and allowing your decisions to be based on more than just 30-odd at-bats. I tend to lean towards the latter, but obviously there are some instances where you need to make moves, whether it’s due to an injury or a sudden platoon situation developing. So if you’re going to be making moves, at least make sure you are picking someone up who will be there for the long haul. A guy off to a hot start is nice, but if he’s going to be riding the pine in two weeks, how helpful will he really be in the grand scheme of things? With that consideration in mind, here are two guys I was looking at recently… Read the rest of this entry »

The Rockies came to town, and with them they brought their enigmatic center fielder. Dexter Fowler is dripping with tools, but has averaged about seven homers and 16 steals per season to go along with his .272 career batting average to date. Ostensibly, I was asking Fowler about baseball. But I couldn’t help it. I ended up asking him about fantasy baseball, and his prospects of breaking out this year.

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It’s another week of recommending mediocre players who might just be less crappy than the rest of the fish in your free agent pool. Or, you could just stream any hitter facing Roy Halladay.

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Today is Wednesday, and this is the Roto Riteup.

On today’s agenda:
1. Jered Weaver to the DL, Garrett Richards to rotation
2. Hanley Ramirez still on track for mid-May
3. Reds’ Pitching Prospects dominate
4. Matt Harrison likely to miss tomorrow’s start

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• It wasn’t a save situation but Joaquin Benoit entered the game in the ninth today, giving up two hits and one run via a Colby Rasmus homer. The Tigers still haven’t officially announced a closer but it sure seems like the ninth inning, at least when not facing a tough lefty, belongs to Benoit. He hasn’t run away with the job only pitching to a 4.15/6.72/5.09 ERA/FIP/xFIP thus far but consider him the closer in Detroit until further notice.

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Kevin Youkilis has had himself quite a start to the 2013 season. After flirting with the abyss and then teasing us with a return to relevance in Chicago, Youkilis has been hitting the snot out of the ball for the New York Yankees, and it couldn’t be at a better time for the club. With injuries up and down the lineup, the Yankees are 3-4 and without Youkilis in the middle of that order, it could look a lot uglier.

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Jim Henderson (ESPN: 3 percent owned; Yahoo!: 41 percent owned)

The closer carousel is a fickle ride at the best of times, but it’s seldom worse than it is during the first few weeks of the season. Some closers are obviously safe, but even established closers can find themselves vulnerable with a single bad week…if the cries of “throw the bum out!” from the fans are to be believed.

Normally, closers don’t find themselves back in the general reliever pool this early in the season if they’ve had the job for more than a few months, even if a replacement is available. The Twins ran with Matt Capps until late June last season, even though Glen Perkins was a logical successor, and while Addison Reed recorded 29 saves last year, he didn’t get his first until May. Clubs generally have more patience than fans this time of year and with good reason. Read the rest of this entry »

A week into the season is a good time to check in on the states of platoons around the league. A strict platoon makes for easy lineup setting and under-rated value in deep leagues with deep benches, but for the mixed leaguers among us, we’re probably looking for a player to transcend their platoon splits and play every day. With that in mind, let’s check in on some situations that might be in flux.

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Forty man rosters make for a very different (fantasy) ballgame than many other (fantasy) ballgames. The other day, in a Roto Riteup, Zach Sanders passed along Jeff Zimmerman’s reminder that cold weather favors pitchers, and that April is cold (compared to July, anyway), and that therefore you can be a bit more liberal with your pitchers now than you can be in a few months.

Around the same time, I was giving ottoneu player Joe Pytleski seemingly contradictory advice on twitter. But I assure you, I agree with Jeff, and the discrepancy can be explained.

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