Welcome to another week of the Roto Riteup. Today, I out David Wiers for the dark wizard he truly is.

On today’s agenda:
1. Aces digging holes
2. Jose Fernandez debuts
3. Freddie Freeman surprisingly hits DL
4. Random Week 1 observations

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• It looks like it is over (again) for Carlos Marmol. For the second year in a row, he’s lost the ninth inning job in the Windy City after opening the season as closer, although it only took six games in 2013. Since 2010, Marmol has only trailed Craig Kimbrel, Kenley Jansen, and Aroldis Chapman in K% among big league relievers — certainly not bad company. Unfortunately, the fact that I do a better job hitting a target while playing darts after, let’s say, a few beers, is extraordinarily problematic for him. On the short season, Marmol’s K%-BB% is zero. Yup, he’s walking exactly as many batters as he’s whiffing, and you don’t need advanced metrics to tell you that’s bad.

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Apparently there were some basketball games on last night. I guess I was too busy watching baseball. I’d say I made the right call.

On today’s agenda:
1. The John Lackey roller coaster continues
2. Trevor Bauer could use a GPS to find the zone
3. Is Carl Crawford back?
4. Another Milwaukee Brewer bat goes down
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–Addison Reed notched his third save of the season — tying him for the early league lead after the first week with Sergio Romo — dishing a perfect ninth-inning as the White Sox clipped the Mariners, 4-3. The 24-year-old Reed induced a Dustin Ackley groundout to first, then fanned pinch-hitters Franklin Gutierrez and Jesus Montero to seal the deal. The prescription was a steady diet of sliders to both Gutierrez and Montero, each of whom ended their at-bats with swings-and-misses on Reed’s preferred offering.

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As the noted lyricist and singer R Kelly famously said, “it’s the freakin’ weekend, I’m bout to have me some fun.” That’s right, the weekend is upon us! For a lucky few, there are minor league home openers to go to as well. Living here in the Midwest does have a sole privilege: I am just over an hour away from three Midwest League teams.

On today’s agenda:
1. Justin Ruggiano starts to run
2. The Houston Astros get their daily Straily vitamin K
3. Zack Cozart flashes more power
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Today marks the return of the two-start starter pieces. With the help of Joe Tarring this week, I’ve tried to get some very low usage pitchers for you to consider for this go-round. This year, I’m going to make a concerted effort to track the stats of the pitchers I choose, so you know whether to go with my advice, or run in the other direction.

Also: I fully understand that rotations are subject to change. I pull my data on Friday mornings from ESPN.com’s ‘probables’, so with this in mind please realize I look at Monday starters (guaranteed 2x considering five-man rotation and one or fewer off days the rest of the week) as well as Tuesday’s (if no off day later in the week). Lots of things can change over the weekend, but we’re just trying to be preemptive here.

This week will also be necessarily brief. We don’t have much of a statistical basis here yet for this season, and a lot of teams are drastically different than last year. It would be disingenuous for me to suggest otherwise. Read the rest of this entry »

Come on, people. Take a moment here. Take a breath. Take a Xanax for all I care. You need to relax. We’re not even a week into the season and I’ve already seen more panic here than I did when Phish announced they were breaking up and the dirty, spun hippies woke up and  realized they had no place to go. I’ve seen roster moves galore, bad impulse trades, people giving up on some players already and far too much faith being put into others who are undeserving. I truly wish this was just some strawman I decided to make up and treat like a punching bag for a while, but this is truth I’m speaking here and those of you who are guilty of this early obsession with the panic button need to pay attention. Read the rest of this entry »

The daily salary cap format has become much more prevalent in the past few years. I would imagine a large part of that has to do with the fact that daily fantasy sites have figured out a good way to monetize fantasy sports. But those sites couldn’t make money if we didn’t like playing the format.

If you’re thinking of trying the format out, or if you play and are looking for thoughts on strategy, allow me to describe the strategy I employ.

Let me start by noting that I’m not a huge fan of risk, so I generally play low-risk, low-reward games like double ups, which pay out roughly the top half of the entrants each day. You get the same payout as a head-to-head matchup, but you don’t have to take on the risk of having just one opponent. As a result, my strategy might not be best suited for those who like to play the “lottery ticket” type games where you risk a small amount of money to win a big pot against a lot of other players. You need upside and luck to win those pools.

My strategy begins with the idea that you should save on pitchers when possible. There are quite a few guys I’m higher on than most, so I target them because they’re usually underpriced in my opinion. If I can’t find two bargain pitchers, I’ll just pick a stud with a good matchup to go along with a bargain. Depending on how much money I can save on pitching, I prefer to grab as many high priced hitters as possible. Hitting is just so variable day-to-day, so I’m willing to pay for the guys who go oh-fer less often.

When choosing hitters, the number one thing I look at is platoon splits. I want to pick guys who are really good against pitchers of a certain handedness and who happen to be facing such a pitcher on that day. Other factors like the park and the skill of the opposing pitcher come in to play, but platoon splits are the biggest consideration.

When you can’t find bargain pitching and don’t have much money to spend on hitters, splits can help you find undervalued players. And when you have a lot of money to spend on hitting, it’s important that you be careful not to pick good hitters who struggle against pitchers of a certain handedness.

To help me pick players each day, I created a spreadsheet with a tab listing all players who had 100 or more plate appearances against lefties last year and a tab with all players who had 240 or more plate appearances against righties. I used a different number of plate appearances because there are more plate appearances to be had against righties. I wanted to look at players who got a fair number of plate appearances against pitchers of a certain handedness.

I listed each player’s wRC+ alongside their name. I chose wRC+ because it easily allows you to see how far above average that player is against pitchers of a certain handedness. The league average wRC+ is 100, so if a guy has a wRC+ of 140 against LHP, that means he’s 40% better than average against lefties.

Below are four lists. The purpose of each list is:

• Identifying potentially underpriced options against LHP
• Identifying good hitters to avoid when they are facing LHP
• Identifying potentially underpriced options against RHP
• Identifying good hitters to avoid when they are facing RHP

For the potentially underpriced options, I listed guys with who aren’t owned in all leagues (with one exception) on the assumption that guys with lower ownership percentages will usually have lower prices on daily sites. I also tried to list at least a guy or two from each position. For good guys to avoid, I listed big name guys with high ownership percentages. Enjoy!

Out of my various fantasy leagues, only one is auction-style. Near the end of our draft last week, I picked up Brian Roberts for $1, grumbling the entire time that the software was forcing me to pick a second baseman despite already having Matt Carpenter & Josh Rutledge, who I’d planned to use at the position when they gained eligibility.

For a dollar, it seemed, it was worth the gamble, even through years of injury trouble. No one expected Roberts to be anything like the elite star he was between 2005-09, when he was collecting doubles, steals, and homers, but he finally seemed healthy and had a productive spring. You figured maybe he’d manage to give us a decent batting average and perhaps a steal here or there, and for a lone dollar, that’d be fine. After four hits in his first two games, I even dropped Luis Cruz to pick him up in another league of mine this afternoon… Read the rest of this entry »

The last day of the standard work week is upon us! Help power through to the weekend with today’s Roto Riteup.

On today’s agenda:
1. Mr. Arencibia has a big day
2. Andy Pettitte throws an efficient eight innings
3. Gerardo Parra earns his keep

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