Today’s Roto Riteup looks forward to the author’s customary three day weekend, as well as the start of a bunch of new baseball series.
On today’s agenda
1. The Corey Kluber Society mourns
2. Jameson Taillon’s elbow
3. Fun with arbitrary endpoints
4. The Daily Five
-Reds’ Manager Bryan Price indicated that Jonathan Broxton could be activated from the 15-day disabled list sometime next week, potentially during the St. Louis series. Broxton has been on the disabled list since last August when the veteran needed surgery on his right forearm to repair a torn flexor mass. Broxton, in the second year of a three-year, $21 million contract, could hold down ninth-inning duties until Aroldis Chapman is cleared to return to the bump. The veteran right-hander is the owner of 111 saves in 153 career chances with a 3.16 ERA (2.88 FIP) and a 28.5% K%. Chapman suffered fractures above his eye, nose and sustained a concussion after being struck in the head by a line drive off the bat of Salvador Perez. Initial report suggested that Chapman would be sidelined up to six-to-eight weeks, but reports today suggest he may be able to start throwing next week. In the meantime, those speculating for saves should snag Jonathan Broxton (9% owned in Yahoo!) off the waiver wire until Chapman’s return.
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I don’t really like tiers, but it probably has something to do with the neatness of placing a player in a designated strata. I’ve never used tiers in fantasy baseball drafts because I think it tends to blind you to the nuances of each player and the specific needs your team might have. But now that the season has started, you should be all drafted up and it’s time to brand your cattle.
Welcome back to another year of ranking the American league outfielders! Prepare yourselves for awkwardly shoehorned pop culture references from years past and hopefully a bit of baseball analysis. To kick off the year in style, rather than “tier one, tier two” and boring things like that, I’ll present the tiers in order of my favorite fictional TV/film Presidents of the United States. If it weren’t for that fictional part, Daniel Day Lewis would run away with it for his performance in “Lincoln.”
President Josiah “Jed” Bartlet – “The West Wing“
You were expecting maybe, uhh, the Addams family? I don’t think I can add much on top of what has already been said, re-hashed, repeated and summarized already. Just know Trout is pretty okay at that baseball thing.
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When I did four drafts in three days this past weekend, I did them assuming Bobby Parnell, Jim Henderson, Casey Janssen and Nate Jones would be pitching in the ninth inning when their teams had a lead. Less than a week later, all of those guys aren’t pitching in the ninth for various reasons. Yesterday, Mike Podhorzer looked at what to with Henderson and Jones (short answer: hold them), and Eno Sarris looked at whether age has become predictive of closer changes (short answer: no).
Enumerated Items
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It’s a tough time of year to start making waiver wire suggestions as these first few days of the season are all about managers tweaking their lineups to see what works best while fantasy owners are adding and dropping at a fairly rapid rate as they jockey for position within their leagues. Still, we like to try and steer you in the right direction as many of us who do these waiver articles are thinking more about the long-term. The deep-league waiver wire pieces are covering the players who ownership percentages are usually under 10-percent while the regular waiver pieces cover many of the rest. Figure the regular waiver articles are geared more towards leagues with 14 teams or fewer. So with that, here’s who I think is worth grabbing and holding onto for the year. Read the rest of this entry »
On the third day of the season, we’re graced with some fantastic matchups. After two days filled with pitching studs, we’re making our first pass into pitchers that we can expect to give up runs at a higher clip. So long, Justin Verlander. Hello, Aaron Harang.
Who’s ready for some tiers? National league pitchers have been hit particularly hard in the lead-up to the season, creating some interesting situations within the tiers. Where should you value Mike Minor now? What about Cole Hamels? A couple notes about tiers before we begin. You’ll notice this is the NL post, so you won’t see Justin Verlander ranked. Despite this, someone in the comments will say “where’s Justin Verlander, you idiot?” Don’t do this, don’t even do it ironically. The tiers should be viewed as tiers, not straight rankings. If I have Minor and Hamels in the same tier, but Minor is ranked higher in his tier, that doesn’t matter. Being in a tier means I perceive those players to have similar value. Finally, I’m going to rank players according to my favorite Game of Thrones characters (topical!). There will be no spoilers, I promise. On a final note, don’t even try to argue with the rankings of Game of Thrones characters. You will be wrong! Off we go.
It’s hard to believe that it’s that time of year again — the start of a new baseball season and the return of the deep league waiver wire. Ownership rates are sometimes dramatically different depending on the league site, so it’s always a little difficult to determine what pool of players to choose from for recommending. Just like in previous years, I will only consider players owned in 10% or less of leagues on CBS.