Today’s Roto Riteup was written under the influence of awesome.

On today’s agenda:
1. Injury Notes galore!

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Holy May.

• While I was sleeping off illness, J.J. Putz was busy getting served at a late night Panda Express in Arizona last night. Pablo Sandoval’s two-run homer off Putz ruined a sparkling pitching performance from Trevor Cahill and caused more Arizona beat writers to question whether a change in the late innings is warranted. Putz’s fastball velocity is down a bit, although he’s historically been a slow starter who ramps up as the season goes along. More concerning is the number of free passes he’s granted since his current 12.5% BB% far surpasses his career 7.7% average. Read the rest of this entry »

There is still over 80% of the 2013 baseball season yet to be played. With that friendly reminder in hand, this is the 2013 AL OF rankings update. We’ll be ranking the outfielders in descending order in tiers, and to have some fun with it, we’ll be using Windows operating systems to separate the different tiers.

Windows XP
Mike Trout
Yoenis Cespedes
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Starling Marte is off to an incredible start, and nobody should be surprised about it. He does not have a great walk rate, his strikeout rate is a bit concerning given that fact, and he relies on a rather high BABIP to produce – so when he runs into tough luck at the plate he won’t be much use whatsoever. Regardless, his combination of power and speed make him a player who is in for the long haul and not just an early season streak.

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While you don’t normally put lofty expectations on your catchers to produce big-time fantasy numbers, the slow starts of players such as the Monteros, both Jesus and Miguel, as well as Salvador Perez, have been extremely frustrating for owners thus far. Knowing what they are capable of producing, no one wants to drop them from their roster, but there’s a definite need to pull them from the starting lineup and plug in a more productive option, even if just for a short time. If you have the bench space available to make such a move, then here are a couple of backstops who should be able to help you out. Don’t expect either to be your long term solution, but for right now, they’re worth a look. Read the rest of this entry »

While Ike Davis may not have been the super-trendy sleeper this year like he was going into 2012, he was still marketed as a nice buy-low candidate after a rough opening two months last year masked the significant improvements he made in the second half of the season. I (along with countless other owners) scooped him up for $5-8 in more than a couple drafts this year, and even went to $14 in our new Fangraphs Ottoneu staff league. But on the young season, “Vanilla Ike” has done nothing but disappoint to the tune of a .165/.265/.318 triple slash. After opening the year as the Mets cleanup hitter, he has been dropped a couple times in the lineup and there are even rumblings about a possible minor league demotion. Eek.

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Boy, how things can change after just one month. Due to the promotion of Tony Cingrani, emergence of Matt Harvey and struggles of Matt Cain, the National League starting pitching landscape has been altered quite a bit. Since this is actually my first time doing rankings at the site, I’m going to put my own spin on them. Inside of normal tiers, we’ll rank them according to best Radiohead albums. I figure opening myself up to criticism from two different sides should be…fun. I’m also going to use the album titles to link to a song from that album, because, why not? But, first, let’s get to the rankings.

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Today we take another stroll into the dangerous and deep waters of the free agent pool of mystery. During our treasure search, we find a pitcher with a new name and pitch mix and an outfielder that was just called up.

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It is no small secret that the present author is an Oakland Athletics fan. While not a baseball historian by any means — and too young to remember this event and subsequent speech live — on this date 22 year ago, Rickey Henderson became the “greatest of all time.”

On today’s agenda:
1. Andrelton Simmons is coming around
2. Musings on Marco Estrada
3. The Los Angeles Angels swap leadoff hitters
4. Tim Hudson earns win number 200
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