I’ve written about Scott Kazmir a little in my daily columns before. Mike Podhorzer wrote about him – selling him high, specifically – this week. I’m a little bit more of a believer than Mike, I believe, but I can definitely see his side of it. If someone is willing to give you an ace/# 2 like package, I might have a hard time turning it down. I’m less worried about his ability to get whiffs than Mike is, though. Nearly all of my concerns are based on his ability to last 180 or more innings.

Kazmir has currently thrown 68.2 innings – tied for the 29th most among starters (at this moment). He made it through 158 last year. In 2010, his last season in the bigs before his epic comeback, he threw 150 innings. Kazmir’s body hasn’t allowed him to throw more than 160 innings since 2007. In other words, Scott Kazmir hasn’t thrown more than 160 innings since Kanye West released Graduation – which is a great album. There is a song called Barry Bonds on it, after all.

It may seem like I’m being harsh on Kazmir, but I’m not trying to be. It’s just…2007, man! I want and need Kazmir to throw 200 innings this year. It doesn’t feel like his comeback has gotten enough attention despite the fact that it is an absolutely remarkable feat. I understand selling high on him, but as for me – someone who only owns him in one league, at a good price,  with a team with no glaring holes, and receiving light offers – I’m just going to ride him until he throws me off and leaves me in a ditch somewhere.

P.S. on The Show, my created pitcher has Kazmir’s mechanics, so I’m very dedicated in my devotion.

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Agenda

1. Another Month in the Books
2. Daily DFS
3. Sunday Picks
4. Table

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Before you get down to watching some baseball today, how about doing some spring cleaning? To help aid the process, here is a lovely spring cleaning themed song from “Rocko’s Modern Life.”

On today’s agenda:
1. Welcome to the big leagues, Oscar Taveras
2. Good news for Andrew Cashner
3. A.J. Pollock continues to rake
4. Josh Willingham hits another dinger
4. The Daily Five

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I don’t really know why I’ve entitled my series of columns here “Fantasy Baseball Existentialism.” I think it was because I knew I wouldn’t really say much about fantasy baseball even though it’s a fantasy baseball column in theory, and so I added the word existentialism to like try to tip people off that this would ultimately be about, well, not fantasy baseball really. I don’t know. I’ve read two books by Camus so I don’t really know much about existentialism yet either.

So today we’re going to talk about Josh Donaldson. If you didn’t draft him in fantasy, you probably made a mistake. You should trade for him, I’d say. Swing a deal for him or keep him if you’ve got him; dude is legit.

I took Evan Longoria early and never even thought about drafting Donaldson because last year was obviously not sustainable. I figured the A’s would regress some this  year and fall behind Texas in the AL West. I assumed Donaldson would fall off in a big way from his near-8-win season in 2013. That had to have been a fluke, right? A guy who hits .232/.280/.386 over his first 328 big league plate appearances without having dominated in the upper minors isn’t going to sustain a .301/.384/.499 slash line. That absolutely had to be his age-27 peak season, and the rest of his career would be a downhill slide from that epoch.

On July 8, 2008, with the A’s five games back of the Angels despite possessing a much better run differential (+63 to +24), Billy Beane flipped Rich Harden and Chad Gaudin to the first-place Cubs for Donaldson, Sean Gallagher, Matt Murton, and Eric Patterson. Nine days later, Beane traded Joe Blanton to Philadelphia for prospects Adrian Cardenas, Matt Spencer, and Josh Outman. Six years later, the fruit of those reloading efforts have paid off in a big way via J-Don. Do they actually call him that? Probably not. And so but you trade for a bunch of guys and maybe most of them don’t work out as you hoped but that’s okay if you can get a gamer like Donaldson to build a championship baseball team around.

On Wednesday night at whatever it is they’re calling the Oakland Coliseum these days (O.co Coliseum) with the A’s trailing Detroit 1-0, Donaldson jumped on a first pitch changeup from Joe Nathan and unloaded it down the left-field line for a game-winning three-run homer. After a slow start, Donaldson’s slash line is up to .276/.370/.529. He’s already been worth three wins. Since the start of last season, only Mike Trout has been more valuable than Donaldson.

Rather than regressing, Donaldson is flourishing. Rather than regressing, the A’s just keep on winning. They have the second-best record in baseball one year after winning 96 games. The year before that, they won 94 games. They’re on pace for 96 wins this season. Their +100 run differential is by far the best in the game.

Maybe it’s time to stop waiting for a fall that’s never coming with these guys. Maybe it’s time to stop doubting Donaldson, who has now sustained a star-level performance for a season and two months. Maybe it’s time to stop doubting Billy Beane, who has managed to build a roster that appears well on its way to a third straight AL West crown despite one of the game’s smallest payrolls. Jarrod Parker and A.J. Griffin go down for the season with elbow injuries and Dan Straily gets demoted due to ineffectiveness, and yet the A’s 6th, 7th, and 8th starters slide right in there and pitch effectively.

I mean who in the world does Jesse Chavez think he is? Why is a 30-year-old journeyman with a career 5.48 ERA suddenly pitching like a top-of-the-rotation starter?

Back to Donaldson, I happened to be at last night’s game, though I didn’t show up until the sixth inning. My co-workers and I were going to the game to celebrate the departure of a guy who quit. If you’ve ever had a job you hated, you know what I’m talking about when I use the word “celebrate.” I mean I guess compared to war, slavery, abject poverty, violence, and other miseries in life, having a middle class office job you don’t like isn’t so bad. If you can afford to go to an A’s game, you probably shouldn’t complain too much even if all you actually do is petulantly whine all the time.

And so but when I showed up to a baseball game in the sixth inning I knew right then and there that somehow my life really had gotten off track. I mean not even a lowly Dodgers fan would show up that late. But again, if you’ve ever had a job that was pretty miserable, you can relate to over-indulging on the honey mead and losing track of time and the truly important things in life like baseball. I don’t know why baseball matters, but intuitively I know it really does, and to feel the game slipping away from me is truly frightening. If I no longer love baseball, am I capable of loving anything? Or is it just that in this Year of the 99-Cent Taco, I’d rather read Infinite Jest and consume literature instead of sport? Doing anything besides consuming, after all, is clearly out of the question. In a late-capitalist society one is defined solely via their consumption, no?

And so but there was a lot of resentment festering at this A’s game. Some of us were probably envious of our escaping co-worker. Some of us were mad at ourselves for having gotten to the game so late. Then, as Craig Gentry led away from first and Coco Crisp from third, and I wondered whether Gentry would attempt to steal the bag to put the winning run in scoring position, Donaldson delivered the dinger that would momentarily recall me to baseball, and to life. Donaldson stole victory from the jaws of defeat and provided the intoxication of winning to a group of co-workers lost in the modern world, badly in need of something greater than themselves. Can remarkable greatness of this thrifty Oakland team save the lost souls of the Bay Area? Can they teach us what it is to love the game once more?

With one of the game’s truly elite players in Donaldson, maybe this will be the year Beane’s stuff works in the playoffs. Josh Donaldson, elite player? That seems weird to write, but WAR don’t lie. As I recall Donaldson’s game-winning home run sailing into the bleachers, I can’t help but think: has Billy Beane created the perfect entertainment?

Sometimes it’s more fun to play with toys than get down and dirty with analysis. David Appelman recently released one such toy in the form of a new heatmap tool. I’ll let him describe what it is and how to use it. My interest today is to look at a few interesting fantasy hitters to get a better sense of their strengths and weaknesses. I’ll use the granular 10×10 grid and a three-year time period when possible.
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First a look at the running totals through half of week eight:

11-8 record
4.08 ERA
8.1 K/9
2.9 K/BB
1.25 WHIP

Here’s a look at this week’s recs, with team wOBA in parentheses:

RHP Henderson Alvarez – 4.9% ESPN/12% Yahoo!/55% own, 27% start CBS – v. TB (.307), @CHC (.293) Read the rest of this entry »

If you regularly read my work, you may have noticed that I write an awful lot about Astros prospects. The reasoning behind this is two-fold. The Astros have one of the best minor-league systems in baseball, with loads of talent at pretty much every level. Furthermore, I happen to live less than a half-hour away from their Triple-A facility in Oklahoma City, and I’m lucky enough to be able to see these guys play pretty much anytime I want to.

I’ve already written plenty about Jon Singleton and George Springer, and today feels like as good a time as any to discuss Domingo Santana. The 21-year-old came into 2014 as the No. 8 prospect in Houston’s system according to our own Marc Hulet, a ranking more indicative of Houston’s organizational depth than of Santana’s talent.

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Agenda

1. DFS Roster Analysis
2. Daily DFS
3. Saturday Selections
4. Table

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We’ve reached the points of the season where we have a pretty good idea of where our teams stand. Things can still change, but for the most part you should have a pretty good idea of how good your current roster is.

With that in mind, join me in the comments below and let’s talk about our favorite players to own so far. Try to stay away from the usual suspects: Miguel Cabrera, Mike Trout, Andrew McCutchen, etc. I’ll kick this thing off.

I’m doing my first Ottoneu league this year – currently sitting in third place. Without a doubt my best value has been Brandon Moss. During our draft we took a fifteen minute break. When we returned it was my turn to nominate a player for bidding. I nominated Moss hoping to catch some people sleeping and because most of us had blown through a ton of our money. I’m guessing the entire league was still zoned out, because no one bid. Perhaps everyone was waiting on someone else to bid, or taking roster construction into play. Nonetheless, I ended up with a $1 Brandon Moss. Dividends.

In my other auction draft – 12 teams; 5×5 with OBP, QS, and S+HLD in replace of AVG, W, and SV – I have a $2 Christian Yelich. He was only that cheap because he was the 234th player nominated. So by that point, many of the owners had their lineups set or were running low on funds. Yelich has cooled off a little of late, but he’s already earned his keep. Oh, and it’s a keeper league. So if I decide to keep him he’ll only cost $6 next season; not bad what looks to be a player with a shot at a 20/20 season perhaps as early as this year.

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Matt Kemp has a reprieve. He’ll be starting in left field while Carl Crawford nurses a turned ankle back to health. So Matt Kemp is starting again. But he hasn’t been starting much recently, and for a man that was a homer short of 40/40 and wanted to go 50/50, that seems strange. We don’t talk about real life baseball that much here, but in this case, real life is the reason his fantasy value is in tatters. And those real life concerns threaten to shatter it permanently.

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