If you’re a Mariners fan, turn away from this Roto Riteup. You went through enough last night and you don’t want to relive it.
On today’s agenda:
1. Taijuan Walker struggles in debut
2. Don’t count on Josh Hamilton playing this year
3. Brandon Belt could return Sunday
4. Streaming Pitcher Options
Agenda
Two runs in the top of the ninth kept the Astros from getting a hold, hold, save out of off-season acquisitions Pat Neshek, Chad Qualls and Luke Gregerson. The pair the Astros scored in the top of the ninth erased the save opportunity for Gregerson.
Jonathan Papelbon threw nine of his ten pitches for strikes while recording his second save of the young season. After his Edward James Olmos ugly, three walk Wednesday night outing, Ken Giles bounced back results-wise tonight, recording two strikeouts as he garnered a hold in a solid inning. His fastball is down about 2.5 mph from his 2014 average of 98. With his slider losing about 0.5 mph so far, the velo gap between that and the heater is narrowing. 96 is still plenty of velocity, but keep an eye on this, as maybe he’s just building up arm strength and will be back to 98+ in short order.
On Chicago’s south side, many fantasy owners benefitted from Brian Duensing’s first save of the season that he procured during the Twins 6-0 victory over the White Sox. Or they didn’t. He came in to pitch the eighth, and when the Twins put up three in their half of the ninth, Paul Molitor left him out there to close out the game. Sox setup man Zach Putnam surrendered a couple of earned runs in his make-work inning.
I play in a lot of fantasy baseball leagues. Like, a lot. I absolutely love the game, can’t resist a challenge, and have a tough time saying no when invited. All of that adds up to a 16-league portfolio when the dust settles. I’m sure some of you are thinking, “well doesn’t every result help and hurt you at this point?” Not quite. Part of that is because I’m a bulk drafter when it comes to “my guys”. There are certain players on both sides of the ball that I really focus on year-to-year and I end up trying to roster them as often as possible provided the format and pricetag are in line to do so.
I obviously can’t just copy the first team across the remaining 15, though, so I do have a shit-ton of different players. In fact, I have 244 different players at least once. A major part of this is because I’m in two NFBC 50-round draft-and-holds and I’ve got a lot of players on both of those teams that don’t show up anywhere else because of how deep we go in that league. As my league count ballooned, I began keeping track of who I have year-to-year to see how my investments shook out against what I believed coming into the season. We’re going to take a look at my portfolio today from the hitter side of things to see how it all turned out.
A new baseball season is upon us, so it’s time to start mining those bullpens in search of middle and late-relief arms that will provide value for those in holds or solds (saves +holds) leagues, as well as those who run out relievers regularly in deeper mixed or “only” formats to pad strikeout or ratio categories.
Just a few quick notes about this column. I’ll typically rotate topics between waiver wire considerations, tiers and tier updates and arms with both starting pitcher and relief pitcher eligibility among others. If there’s anything you’re looking to be covered or have feedback on the column, please drop a note in the comments or hit me up on Twitter.
Lastly, I typically provide two ownership percentages for each player discussed. For the purpose if this column I will note Yahoo! followed by ESPN’s ownership rate, simply because those are the outlets I find myself on the most.
For today I looked for a couple of younger middle relievers that were owned in 2% or less in leagues that could contribute in at least the holds and strikeout categories.
Roberto Osuna | Toronto Blue Jays | 2% (Y!), .2% (E)
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Welcome back for what I believe to be year four of 2xSP. We didn’t roll out last week with mostly just aces and No. 2s to deal with in the opening week, though I suppose you could have streamed Kyle Kendrick, right? Anyway…as always, I’ll keep the spreadsheet updated and will share it periodically (or upon demand if you wish). Here’s the link to it for now. If you can think of specific ways to improve this, please let us know in the comments. Thanks.
First a look at the last year’s totals:
49-39 record
3.79 ERA
7.6 K/9
2.7 K/BB
1.30 WHIP
Here’s a look at this week’s recs, with team wOBA in parentheses. Yahoo ownership figures courtesy of twitter pal @PandaPete21 (follow him!):
LHP Daniel Norris – 5.8% ESPN/23% Y! – v. TBR (.310), v. ATL (.305)
Let’s just get this out of the way: this first week was hard. Not only are drafters seemingly getting smarter this year — thereby depriving you of my recommendations of Danny Duffy, James Paxton and Brandon McCarthy — but this is a quirky week where I really wanted to recommend Shane Greene (exempt as Tuesday starter with an off day) and Eno Sarris-darling Anthony Desclafani (same as Greene).
But anyway, this Norris week is pretty awesome. He gets a couple of really nice matchups, and will no doubt race up the ownership numbers as the season wears on, making this probably the only time we can recommend him in this sort of format. Norris’ Rays matchup could be beneficial because their rotation is still so in flux they haven’t even announced a Monday starter yet. Yikes. Norris looked pretty good in his season debut — his second big league start as well — “outdueling” C.C. Sabathia over 5.2 innings with five strikeouts to get his first major-league win. Projections are high on Norris this year as well, expecting roughly a strikeout an inning with so-so walk numbers and a high-3.00s/low-4.00s ERA. They Jays will push him pretty hard with Marcus Stroman out too, I’d imagine. Most projections have him making ~20 starts, but it’ll likely be north of that should he remain healthy. Read the rest of this entry »
Everyone loves a sleeper. I’d say this is an indisputable fact — or close to it. Not all sleepers are the same, though, and I find the post-hype sleeper to be the most rewarding type to peg correctly. Perhaps I’m just a sucker for tools being actualized and promising prospects figuring it out after struggling initially. While the season isn’t even a week old yet, let’s check in on a few post-hype sleepers who are off to a good start. Read the rest of this entry »
Kendall Graveman just had a very bad major league debut. If you were like me and bought into the sleeper hype—which with Graveman started as soon as the A’s acquired him from him Blue Jays in the trade that sent Josh Donaldson to the land of Molson and denim—you might be feeling a little sheepish right now. I went so far as to start him in a DFS, though as Chad Johnson pointed out, it was somewhat slim pickings yesterday.
Given the lack of any track record, this bad start was probably enough reason for many fantasy owners to jump the Graveman ship. While I can’t say that I blame such owners, I can say that I am refraining from dropping Graveman in the leagues in which I own him.
Why? A deeper look at his line for the day (.357 BABIP; 43.8% GB%; two homers on six fly balls?) made me want to take a closer look at the start, so I watched the condensed game on MLB.com. What I saw was enough to convince me to give Graveman a couple more chances.
Here’s what I saw:
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Early-season baseball is a treacherous time. Though sprinkled with the classic “take it with a grain of salt” disclaimer, spring analysis remains most effective for misleading fantasy owners. Then there’s the first week of games. Show anyone 20 at-bats as a season total and perception skewing is almost a foregone conclusion. These aren’t small sample sizes, they’re dangerous sample sizes. As we all go on trying to avoid doing anything too crazy, too early, here are five interesting things from the season’s first five days:
Agenda
