In a response to my post on Jeff Keppinger on Wednesday, reader “binqasim” said, “I am considering playing without a 3B given my options.” While extreme, and perhaps not advisable, this just made me rather sad. This is, after all, supposed to be fun. This is fantasy baseball. When the third basemen of your universe have become so completely useless that you would rather just punt the position than see them drag your batting average down without contributing anything in the remaining counting stats, the fantasy gods weep for you. I weep for you. And so, if you’ve found yourself in a similar position of desperation, maybe one of the following players can pitch in.

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I don’t know if anyone has told you people yet, but it’s only April and the data we are looking at right now comes from what is known around these parts as a very small sample size. What that means is that there are still five more months….yes, months….of baseball still and numerous players will receive anywhere from 400 to 500 more plate appearances between now and the end of the season. Take a moment. Drink that in. Think about it for a few seconds. And while you do, remember this: a bad trade reputation spreads a lot faster around your league than a good reputation. Unless your league is filled with complete idiots (and that may very well be the case for some of you), your testing of the waters with ludicrous trade offers that you yourself would never accept in a million years is going to potentially come back and bite you in the ass. Read the rest of this entry »

At long (long, looong) last, the time has come.

Here are the top 20 fantasy rookies for the 2013 season, from Aaron Hicks to, well…why spoil the fun?

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Intuitively, it would make some sense for velocities to be down to begin the year. Pitchers may still be building arm strength and finding their feel. But surfing around player pages early in the season, I noticed what seemed to be an abnormally high number of guys with velocity down from where it was last year. As it turns out, velocities are down a smidge. The average four seamer velocity last year was 90.66 and is only 90.48 so far this season. However, the average velocity in April last year was 90.39. So there’s probably some truth to the idea that velocities will rise as a season progresses.

However, there are still a few starters this year that have seen their average velocity come in way below where it was last year. I compiled a list of 70 pitchers who threw 150+ innings last year and all qualified pitchers so far this season. I then compared their average velocities. Below is a list of the guys who have seen a decrease in velocity that is one standard deviation or more above the mean. Read the rest of this entry »

In the couple weeks before Opening Day, hundreds of season prediction articles littered the baseball blogosphere. Naturally opinions varied, but almost nobody disagreed on one point: the Miami Marlins were expected to be terrible across the board and finish last in the NL East.

Well, more accurately, everything about the Marlins was expected to be putrid except Giancarlo Stanton.

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Looking at the pitching waiver wire this week, the top two most-added names are newly-minted closers Jose Valverde & Edward Mujica, which is unsurprising. The third, seeing a whopping +40.2% add rate in ESPN leagues and 24% raise in start rate in CBS leagues, is none other than Pittsburgh’s Wandy Rodriguez.

I get why, of course. You look at the surface-level stats and they seem impressive. 2-0 in four starts! 16/3 K/BB! 1.66 ERA! What’s not to like?
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The NFL draft took place last night, at least according to twitter. While that is all well and good, we are on to more important things than 22 year old football player. Things like 22 year old baseball players.

On today’s agenda:
1. Oswaldo Arcia to get more playing time
2. The return of John Lackey
3. Domonic Brown, heating up?
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– Brandon League seems to enjoy skating on thin ice. The Dodgers’ ninth-inning man blew a save in New York last night — and including tonight — has surrendered four earned runs in his last six outings. Tonight’s earned run came on a leadoff solo homer by Ike Davis of the Metropolitans. League managed to sneak his way out of the ninth without any further damage to earn his sixth save — and most importantly, a Dodgers victory — but some have to be wondering how long his leash is. League’s velocity appears to be down a few ticks and his stuff isn’t causing batters to swing-and-miss (5.3% SwStr%) as they’ve done in the past. Moreover, League has recorded just three strikeouts on the season (8.1% K%). Keep close tabs on Kenley Jansen — and even make the speculative add — if you’re as concerned as I am.

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Episode 4
Today’s episode of The Sleeper and the Bust stars yours truly and features RotoGraphs editor Eno Sarris. We debut yet another new segment and banter about bullpens.

Don’t hesitate to direct pod-related correspondence to @mikepodhorzer or @enosarris on Twitter.

You can subscribe to the podcast via the feed. iTunes coming soon.

Approximately 32 min of joyous analysis.

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Today, I am going to take a look at players returning from appendectomy surgery and the injury chances for a couple of struggling pitchers, Matt Cain and Gio Gonzalez.

• Jason Heyward is headed to the DL for having an appendectomy. A couple of years ago, I looked at how players performed after going on the DL for the surgery. I found Heyward owners “should expect him to miss around ~30 days … and his production should not suffer once he returns”.

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