I asked. You answered. Who knew the most commented on post with my byline would be a poll about OBP leagues? Over 1,000 of you play in leagues that count OBP in some way or another. So that means I will be publishing articles specifically focusing on players in this scoring format. Today I will identify a couple of hitters who may be available in your league and gain value when OBP, rather than AVG, is a category.
I suppose National Championships are nice, but I prefer fantasy championships. You know, when I finally actually *win* a league. Yes, my deep dark secret is that I have never actually won a fantasy league that wasn’t a public league (which I don’t consider real leagues, or at least I didn’t think that particular public league qualified).
On today’s agenda:
1. Roy Halladay gets torched, again
2. A perennial fantasy stud finally shows up this season
3. Ervin Santana bounces back
4. The new Atlanta Braves cleanup hitter?
We are only in the second week of the season and already there is much to talk about at the Bullpen Report, all aboard the closer carousel of 2013!
• Aaron Crow received the save today for Kansas City but Royals manager Ned Yost insisted that “Holland is our closer.” Greg Holland and Kelvin Herrera had pitched in the previous two games and Yost wanted to give them a day off. Ervin Santana did his part today to give the pen some rest, pitching eight innings before handing the game off to Crow in the ninth. Aaron Crow is a solid reliever and any fantasy team looking to help their ratios or just particularly desperate for saves could look his way. His career 9.16 K/9 and 3.05 ERA will help but at the moment it’s still Holland’s job to lose.
Today’s MASH report is the first a couple players, Hughes and Tillman, returning from the disabled list. I will give pitcher velocities right after they come back and then re-examine then after a few games.
Recent injury data
• Aramis Ramirez is out at least 2 weeks with a knee injury worse than the one he had in spring training.
There’s a lot of Jose Fernandez talk going around. And he looks to be a legit young starting pitcher — his gas sat above 95 mph, his slurve/slider thing got plenty of whiffs, and he lived in the zone. But curves and sliders have platoon splits — to different extents — and it’s always good for a pitcher to have at third pitch when he’s encountering the lineup for a third time.
This is Jose Fernandez‘ third pitch.
A week into the regular season, fantasy baseball owners already have much to analyze and discuss. From the unexpected struggles of R.A. Dickey to the scorching-hot start of Chris Davis, early performances often leave lasting impressions. Early-season struggles can poison the well and cause owners to overlook quality midseason production, and vice versa.
With that said, owners should certainly monitor early-season trends to help determine if they should buy low or sell high on various players. Here are some performances this week that stood out at second base:
After getting off to a red hot start last week with four home runs, a .370 average and a stolen base to boot, Dexter Fowler is a player getting and deserving of a lot of fantasy love. The question is whether the slender center fielder can keep the offense up after hitting only 29 home runs in four seasons before his hot first week.
Read the rest of this entry »
If you’re looking for pitchers to stream or if you’re looking for potentially cheap options in daily, salary-cap formats, here are a few options for week two that are widely available and almost certain to be fairly cheap.
Joe Blanton | Los Angeles Angels | Home to Oakland on Wednesday
We all know exactly what Joe Blanton is. He’s a guy with slightly above average strikeout skills and a great walk rate. Unfortunately, he lives in the zone too much and has a problem with home runs as a result. But in the right ballparks Blanton is capable of being a good fantasy spot starter. Despite the fact that he moved to the AL this offseason, it was nice to see him sign with the Angels because his new home ballpark suppresses home runs at an above average rate.
R.A. Dickey came into the season with more concerns than the typical reigning Cy Young. He did not have the long track record of elite success in the majors, and was moving to a more difficult league. Though age is not as important with knuckle-ball pitchers, there is always some reason for caution investing in a 38-year-old. Through two games, those worries have looked justified. At the same time, it’s foolish to overreact after 10.2 innings. While Dickey has struggled, things are not as bad as they seem.
Every April, we worry about starting pitchers who have been showing diminished velocity. Most of the time it turns out to be nothing, as the pitcher either enjoys a rebound over the remainder of the year or he is able to succeed just as well without as good a fastball. But we sometimes ignore those starters showing increased velocity. Since fastball speed generally rises throughout the season, a starter already showing better velocity than his average for all of last season is quite intriguing. We know that velocity correlates highly with strikeout rate, so some of these names could be your early strikeout rate surgers, and perhaps breakout candidates (well, this was typed before actually checking the names, and now after identifying them, breakout might not be the most appropriate term!). Through Saturday’s games, these are some of the surgers according to the PITCHf/x data.