Quite possibly my favorite sporting event — yes, perhaps even above baseball — kicked off yesterday. Though the refereeing was less-than-stellar, I enjoyed the opening game of the World Cup. I’ll be rooting for South Korea as well as the USMNT. Here’s to hoping both can make it out of their groups. They’ll need some luck to do so.

On today’s agenda:
1. Brock Holt keeps mashing
2. The return of Jesus Montero
3. Nick Swisher is activated
4. The daily five

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Another day, another save for 39-year-old Koji Uehara of the Boston Red Sox. He fanned one and induced two groundouts to seal his 14th save of the season on 14 pitches. Uehara has now converted 30 consecutive save opportunities dating back to July 6th of last season. Koji owns a 0.63 ERA (1.69 FIP) and a ~33% K-BB% in 27.2 innings of work in ‘14. Something else that caught my eye while cruising Uehara’s player page is his SwStr% over the past three seasons: 18.9%, 18.5% and 18.5%. Have to love the consistency. With my tail between my legs, I’ll have to admit I was totally wrong on this guy heading into this year. I anticipated Father Time creeping up on the old man, but he’s apparently nowhere in sight. Sorry for doubting you, Koji.
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Episode 128

The latest episode of “The Sleeper and the Bust” is now live! Eno Sarris and Nicholas Minnix discuss, by request, Marcell Ozuna; Alex Wood; Danny Duffy; Mookie Betts; Joc Pederson; Jay Bruce; George Springer; Marco Estrada; and Carlos Gonzalez, Michael Cuddyer and the Colorado Rockies’ outfield. Other topics of interest covered: Justin Verlander, the Seattle Mariners’ shuffled roster that now includes Jesus Montero is up, Adam Wainwright, Wilson Ramos and Francisco Liriano.

As usual, don’t hesitate to tweet us or comment with fantasy questions so that we may answer them on our next episode.

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When your job is fantasy baseball analyst, you get suckered into joining a lot of leagues. I’m in eight this year, which isn’t Eno Sarris crazy, but it’s hard to keep up with them all when daily fantasy is the top priority. The hardest part is staying current on the standings in each league. That’s how I learn where my team is weakest, which waiver wire players will help me most, and the best ways to weaken my rivals. In short, it’s my Toyota Key to the Game.

The sheep are satisfied with monitoring the overall standings, but raw point totals are relatively unimportant. In a standard 5×5 league, the point total is usually skewed towards some bad rosters at this point of the season. You know, the owners who are 200 innings ahead of pace and lead strikeouts and wins despite having the worst strikeout and wins per inning ratios. It’s the standings by category you need to monitor if you want to win your league. Here’s an example from the Blog Wars league, which also happens to be my worst league this season. I believe Read the rest of this entry »

The data is a little thin today. My RSS reader is down/under attack so I had to go old school and check as many websites as I could manually.

• Carlos Gonzalez had a “fatty mass with tentacles” or a “Cheeto” or a “shrimp” removed from his hand. Which ever  it was, it is probably good it is no longer in his hand.

• After scoring a 158 the last time I ran my PAIN report, Francisco Liriano now heads to the DL with an oblique stain. These core injuries for pitchers usually take about two months to heal.

• The Rangers have just been snake bitten with injuries. Tanner Scheppers is back on the DL and Jim Adduci re-broke his finger on a minor league rehab assignment. Grantland’s Jonah Keri looked in detail at the Rangers struggles to stay healthy.

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Relievers are a volatile bunch. Some of you drafted the Greg Hollands and Koji Ueharas of the world early and you’re like “this closer game is easy.” Others are saying “I can’t believe I spent a ninth-round draft pick on Joe Nathan.” More are lauding their own snag of Francisco Rodriguez from the Opening Day waiver wire while their fellow players still lament that between Joe Smith, Rex Brothers, Mark Melancon, and Darren O’Day, their free agent scavenging has borne little fruit.

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Some fantasy pundits – including a few at RotoGraphs – and owners were optimistic about the fortunes of Joe Mauer entering this season, in large part because the Minnesota Twins were moving him away from catcher permanently. Although his brand of statistical output is mediocre for a first baseman, the catcher eligibility he retains could make him one of the more valuable rotisserie commodities in this transition year.

Mauer’s apologists – such as yours truly – were confident of his chance to avoid injury as long as he manned a less stressful position. His rough first two-plus months of the 2014 campaign seem to have done little to tarnish the RotoGraphs group’s and my hopes, though.

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Agenda

1. Top Prospect Call Ups
2. Daily DFS
3. Friday Picks
4. Table

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We’ve lightly discussed in this space before the utility of rolling out a relief pitcher for daily fantasy.

In short, the cost per point can be favorable and some of the best value available, but the risk of posting a zero is high –the most heavily used closers, Cody Allen and Mark Melancon (31 appearances each), have appeared in fewer than half of their teams games (not to mention each started the year as a setup man – Francisco Rodriguez leads full-season closers with 30 appearances, 46 percent of his team’s outings).

Whether you choose to deploy a closer or not will largely depend on your risk preference. To try and help out, the table below shows how often closers have pitched with certain rest (it includes seasons since 2010 in which a pitcher notched at least 10 saves).

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When a player has a poor start to the season, it can be very difficult to properly rate him in fantasy. Even when he starts to play to his previously established career standards, that one bad month can drag down his season totals for the rest of the year. While it is important to not overrate the most recent month’s production in lieu of the bad month in April, when that recent month matches a player’s track record, it is pretty clear which is the anomaly. Here are a handful of players who suffered from poor starts this season and have heated up with the weather.

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