Third base hasn’t necessarily been a complete black hole, what with the arrivals of Manny Machado, Josh Donaldson, and a resurgent Pedro Alvarez. But it’s not a plentiful field from which to choose from either. There have been many managers scrambling for answers at third base since guys like Mike Moustakas, Chase Headley, Brett Lawrie and a cast of others left us out in third base purgatory.

One of those answers seemed to be waiver wire darling Luis Valbuena, who through April and May was hitting .264/.372/.464 with six home runs and 17 RBI. He was a player that seemed to have decent enough success at high levels of the minor leagues that he should be able to produce at the major league level, and it appeared that his potential had finally made the conversion. And then there was June.

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Today we have the latest batch of American League outfield rankings. There are some prospects climbing in the ranks rapidly as well as some injured veterans plummeting in value.

Tier One
Mike Trout
Chris Davis

No change here, and no real surprise either. An argument could be made that Davis deserves the number one spot, but the steals tip the scale in Trout’s favor. At this point, no one would whine about having either of these guys on their fantasy team.
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Before everyone runs off for the weekend to enjoy the summer sun, the barbecues and the fireworks, it’s time to take a look at the updated catcher tiers for the the month of July. Not surprisingly there hasn’t been a whole lot of movement from tier to tier and there really hasn’t been much shuffling within either. Everyone seems to be doing what we expected. That’s right, they are who we thought they were. So let’s take a look. Read the rest of this entry »

Apologies for the belated and brief BR this evening morning.

• Mariano Rivera recorded a one-out save, his 27th of the year. In more interesting news, the Twins gave Mo a the “Chair of Broken Dreams” as he played his final game in Minnesota in his swan song year.

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I really wanted to recommend Max Scherzer right off the top today, but I can’t bring myself to do it. He costs $20,513 in DraftStreet budget, nearly 21% of your total budget, and I just can’t tell you, the reader, to invest a fifth of your purse on one player. Even if the Jays are possibly without Edwin Encarnacion and Adam Lind, and even if they did play Munenori Kawasaki at designated hitter yesterday. Can’t do it.

You can get away with a $15k pitcher if you’re frugal elsewhere. But when you get up to the $20k level, you’re basically forced to start, say, a P.J. Walters in the other SP slot just so you can employ actual batters in your line up.

And at 20% of your budget, a guy like Scherzer (or Matt Harvey, who comes in at $250 less against the Diamondbacks) would have to get at minimum eight fantasy points to just return 20% of your expected points (and that’s in a double-up format where your goal is 40 points, not maximizing necessarily).
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Excitement! Intrigue! Royalty! It’s a an all Royals edition of the deep league waiver wire which I am positive is the best thing you learned all day. A bad offense creates opportunities and has opened up playing time for two interesting names.

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Today’s Roto Riteup focuses on yesterday’s trade between the Orioles and Cubs, because the Cubs are something of an SEO colossus. Even though he was traded, this RR does not touch on Pedro Strop, though, since I don’t want to have to crush the Bullpen Report guys in what would have been the impending turf war. Because, I mean, we got ponies on our side.

On today’s agenda:
1. Scott Feldman to the Orioles
2. Jake Arrieta to the Cubs
3. John Lackey goes bananas
4. An Update from FG: The Game

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Episode 33
Today’s episode of The Sleeper and the Bust stars yours truly and features RotoGraphs editor Eno Sarris. We discuss a trade, some surprising average batted ball distances and a pair of DL returnees.

Don’t hesitate to direct pod-related correspondence to @mikepodhorzer or @enosarris on Twitter and tweet us any fantasy questions you have that we may answer on our next episode.

You can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes or via the feed.

Intro by DJ Sinton (no, contrary to popular belief, I do not moonlight as a rap star)

Approximately 38 min of joyous analysis.

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A couple months ago, I shared a piece that explained how I pro-rate standings in ottoneu leagues to figure out where I ACTUALLY stand and what I should be doing moving forward. Now that we are at the half-way mark, I wanted to revisit that piece, make a couple adjustments to my process, and update my plans.

If you haven’t read that piece, you can start with that and take a look at how I look at all stats on a per-game and per inning basis in roto leagues and the score I use in points leagues to see a more realistic look at what each team is doing.

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I’m taking over the shortstop beat around these parts. You’re welcome…like Staind said, it’s been a while since…there have been tiered rankings done for the position. So you’ve no doubt been running around the waiver wire aimlessly, not knowing your Seguras from your Espinosas.

That ends now, where we try to make heads or tails of the position that, according to Baseball Monster, has only provided four net-positive value players so far this year, two of whom are now injured.

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