I’ve seen it said that bullpens win championships, but I think it’s probably just the last piece of the puzzle for a contending team. That’d be hard to tease out in the numbers, but it certainly doesn’t make sense for a team like the Astros to spend resources on their bullpen. They’ve taken it to the extreme in some cases, by trading any and every reliever that had any interest on the market.

That’s how you get an Astros bullpen that was by far the worst in the league last year. By a large margin. At 5.09, their FIP was almost a full run worse than second-worst (Cubs, 4.23). And they ‘accrued’ -5.4 wins. The other four teams with below-replacement pens lost .2 wins or less to their relievers as a group. So, yeah, it was a really bad bullpen.

Two thoughts come to mind about a bad bullpen. The first is that there’s always opportunity in situations like those. Bad teams make for sleepers, since the traditional media focuses on better teams and those players get more name recognition. So don’t ignore the team. But! Bad teams — especially those that don’t score a lot of runs and have bad bullpens around the closer — bad teams do not provide a lot of save opportunities.

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The Oakland Athletics are one of the best teams in baseball at squeezing a platoon for all that it’s worth. This has opened up some opportunities for stingy fantasy owners over the years, and that should continue into 2014. The club will return three starters and they have brought in a defensive stalwart to serve as depth.

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Relevance in baseball and relevance in fantasy baseball are two completely different things. While the Houston Astros themselves haven’t been relevant to the real baseball world since the Biggio and Bagwell days, there have been a few players from Houston who have done right by the fantasy community. Just because their team sucks, doesn’t mean they do. You have to look at it like stripping down a car and selling off the parts. Collectively, they aren’t worth much, but separately, you’ve got some real nice value to be had. And so it is with the Astros outfield. On the whole, it’s not looking too good and there are numerous other outfields you’d rather see on your favorite team. But fantasy-wise, there’s still hope. Read the rest of this entry »

When the Angels acquired Ernesto Frieri from the Padres in May of 2012, they knew they were getting a strikeout machine, but were aware that those strikeouts came with a cost — namely, walks and lots and lots of fly balls. And at the time, he was just a middle reliever who had shown the overall skills to close, but had yet to be afforded such an opportunity. He then continued to dominate and eventually became the undisputed man at the end of the bullpen for the Halos.

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Welcome to today’s Ottoneu Fantasy Corner. Our topic applies to people in all leagues so by all means, settle in, grab yourself a mug of tepid tea, and prepare to be educated. While this post applies to any fantasy owner who makes trades or has a keeper decision looming over their head, I will focus on Ottoneu leagues. The keeper deadline for Ottoneu is the end of January 31, so there isn’t much time left to make up your mind about those marginal keepers. There’s no better time than now to learn about the endowment effect and how it can result in sub-optimal decisions.

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Equal parts infuriating to fantasy baseball players and exciting to forward-thinking baseball fans, this Rangers bullpen has it all. Instead of some boring free agent acquisition to fill the role, or a lucky prospect turned into dominant reliever, the Rangers have turned to a collection of quantity (all with quirks). And quantity is always the best option in the bullpen, where quality usually costs too much money. Deciding which guy saves the most games for the Rangers this year will be tough though.

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• With Masahiro Tanaka signing with the Yankees, some writers have been comparing his injury chances to Daisuke Matsuzaka and other Japanese-born pitchers. I decided to give a look at the numbers instead of making a guess.

Since 2001, any starting pitcher (min 120 IP) has a 39.2% chance of ending up on the DL the next season, missing 68 days on average. For Japanese born pitchers, 47% end up on the DL, missing 75 days on average.

It may seem like Japanese pitchers are a higher injury risk, but a couple of issues exist with this data. First, only 19 Japanese pitchers are in the sample. Second, the average age was 32.4 years-old for the Japanese pitchers going on the DL. For all other pitchers, the age was 29.7 years-old. If I change the overall sample to just players who would be 32 or 33, the DL chance jumps to 42% and the number of days goes to 74.3. The only reason Japanese pitcher may seem to be more injury prone is their advanced age. Otherwise there is little difference in their injury risk.

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In the tumultuous world of relief pitching, where closers seem to come and go day and night, the San Diego Padres have stood as a model of consistency. For 16 years, Trevor Hoffman closed the door on opponents to the tune of Hells Bells, before giving way to Heath Bell’s three-season reign, until current closer Huston Street took over the ninth inning duties in 2012.

Street will enter 2014 entrenched as the team’s ninth inning man again, but whether or not he remains in that position all year may be less of a sure thing than it seems. Let’s dive in.

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For a team that is in full on rebuilding mode, it’s a little strange that the Astros infield is likely to be populated by the same players that were there last year. It’s a good thing to some degree because it means they’ve found a few guys who can stick at their position. The only bad news is that the guys they hope will stick at the remaining positions aren’t quite ready for the show yet.

The strength of the current infield is most definitely up the middle. Jose Altuve and Jason Castro had the most fantasy value on the team last year according to both our valuations and ESPN’s player rater. Despite the infield being stagnant, the outfield is going to look a bit different with Dexter Fowler now on the squad and George Springer on the way. That’s going to help the fantasy value of Altuve and Castro. Steamer projects Altuve to score 21 more runs than he did last year and projects Castro for 13 more RBI. Steamer is actually the most conservative of the projection models on Castro’s RBI total. Oliver has him at 78 RBI, and the fan projections have him at 74.

Aside from the shared benefit that will be the improved lineup around them, Altuve and Castro could actually be headed in different directions this year. Read the rest of this entry »

The clock is ticking ever closer to the ottoneu keeper deadline and you now have less than a week to make your final cuts. By the end of the day (midnight ET) on January 31, your rosters need to be at or below 40 players and you have to have at least $1 in cap space for every open roster spot.

I know I am still making some hard choices – should I trade a $14 Jason Kipnis for a $32 Paul Goldschmidt? Which of my five $20+ pitchers and three $30+ OF should I keep? – and that is just in one league. So I thought I would take a look at those choices and hope that it can help you make your last cuts, as well.

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