• As Ben alluded to last night, the Mets seemed to be on the verge of making a change in the ninth inning. This morning, Terry Collins made it official. Kyle (Professor) Farnsworth is the newest closer in New York. Now that you are done racing to the wire to try and grab him, let’s chat. Farnsworth turned 38 last week, which aside from making me feel old, doesn’t portend good things for his career arc. His fastball velocity has fallen every year since 2009. It used to be a blistering 96 mph, now it barely broaches 91. Last season was the first his SwStr% had been below 10% since 2007, and it was only the second time in his career he didn’t make it into double digits.

Read the rest of this entry »

Episode 109

The latest episode of The Sleeper and the Bust is now live! Jason Collette and Nick Minnix discuss players on the mend, players breaking down, changes in starting rotation, 2-start pitchers, and of course, closer craziness.

As usual, don’t hesitate to 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.

Thanks to Ian Miller aka Teen Archer, for the new intro music. Approximately 54 min of joyous analysis.  

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

Agenda

1. A couple observations
2. DFS time
3. For Monday
4. Table

Read the rest of this entry »

It’s Sunday, which means a couple of things: 15 baseball games, wonderfully staggered throughout the day; weekly lineup decisions; and that you’ve probably killed a few brain cells over the past few days, so maybe you’ve forgotten some things you learned this week.

Because of that, I’m going to trial the Sunday daily beat being home to a “week in review” for the tips, charts and research our daily fantasy team does throughout the week.

Read the rest of this entry »

• Jose Valverde’s days as closer might be numbered. Valverde entered the ninth inning tonight and gave up a three run homer to Justin Upton. Although none of Valverde’s runs were “earned” it’s the fourth home run he’s allowed in his last three outings. Papa Grande’s been able to miss more bats this year (13.5 SwStr%) but his gopheritis and control issues may have come to an end, at least as the closer. Via David Lennon Collins is going to “have to talk about Valverde as closer“, which means teams should look to add Kyle Farnsworth immediately. As of this writing a change has not been made but I’d expect Kyle Farnsworth to get the next save opp for the Mets.

Read the rest of this entry »

Can we take a moment to talk about Chase Utley? I briefly mentioned Scott Kazmir’s come back the other day. Utley’s isn’t very similar because he hasn’t actually gone anywhere the past few years, even if it felt as if he had at times. Utley’s stayed productive despite his body’s seemingly ill wishes. From 2005 – 2009, it’s hard to put into words how good he was. He was second in WAR over that time period with a 37.4 mark, second only to King Albert’s staggering 41.

Obviously his prime was fantastic, even if, as a Braves fan, it was tough to watch. But damn, if it wasn’t fun, too. Over the past few years, injuries have been a bother, but he’s still remained remarkably productive at the plate. Since 2010, his wRC+ marks are as follows: 128, 111, 113, 126, and 252 (’14; small sample, etc.). Utley’s revert back to otherworldly excellence so far has been marvelous to watch, and to read about it, which you can do here. Hopefully he continues his tear for a little while longer, because it’s been fun.

Read the rest of this entry »

Agenda

1. How to make good chile
2. DFS stacks
3. Sunday picks
4. TableTimeTM

Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday we looked at some sell high hitters. At the outset, I noted that selling high is mostly a thing of past – everybody knows it’s good to buy low and sell high. And everyone is a lot smarter about their player evaluation too. These days, the cool kids are buying high. To buy high, one need only identify which top, breakout performers are likely to remain among the top players. Sometimes, owners will sell these players at a relative bargain in their haste to sell high.

Read the rest of this entry »

Since 2009 when I started this whole “blogging” thing, I’ve had aspirations to write for FanGraphs. Now that I’m finally here, I don’t know what to say, so I’ll ramble for a bit and hopefully make some kind of point worth reading.

This is how LBJ must have felt when he finally became president: All those years of striving for something that seemed terribly elusive and just when you’re about quit on the whole endeavor, an opportunity arises. You are surrounded by “Harvards” and “Yales”—or in my case brilliant baseball minds—and you went to Southwest Texas State Teacher’s College—or in my case Dominican University of California—and you can’t help but imagine you are horribly inadequate and under-qualified. The good news is that, to the best of my knowledge, no one had to get assassinated for me to get here.

Read the rest of this entry »

Halfway through week two, here we are:

4-1
2.67 ERA
9.5 K/9
3.2 K/BB
1.13 WHIP

I think that’s about the best one could expect so far. Regression is coming though, right? I wanted badly to recommend Garrett Richards for this week (@WAS, @NYY), but his ownership rates in CBS leagues (76 percent) are far too high for me to appeal to my unwritten rule that at least two of the three leagues have to be under 50 percent (between Yahoo!/ESPN/CBS Sports).

So here’s who you get this week:

RHP Zach McAllister – 2.6% ESPN/9% Yahoo!/43% CBS – v. KC, @SF Read the rest of this entry »