Agenda
The return of another baseball season marks the return of another tradition: the search for talent in the far reaches of fantasy leagues. In this space, we’ll root through the dumpster bins as we try to locate the players who were either forsaken on draft day or who have stumbled on to playing time opportunities. Some guys will work out, some others — heh, perhaps more than some — won’t, but whether you’re looking for spare parts or trying to keep your head above water in a deep format, this column is for you.
Two quick notes: Most of the players discussed are best suited for mono leagues, although there is the occasional customer whose value extends to mixed formats. Finally, I use CBS for the ownership percentages.
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So, it’s been a busy preseason and I had a list of all the articles I wanted to publish before the season officially began. Unfortunately, I failed. And as a result, Eno beat me to the punch. But I’m going to do it anyway. A whole three years ago, with help from math wizard Matt Swartz, we discovered that spring pitcher strikeout and walk rates actually do hold value and using them could improve projections, even if just marginally. This was validated recently by another math wizard, Dan Rosenheck. So with that in mind, let’s take a look at which pitchers enjoyed a strikeout rate surge during spring training.
After getting a taste of baseball with the Chicago Cubs and the St. Louis Cardinals teaser game, yesterday’s full slate gave us much more to observe.
On today’s agenda:
1. Alex Avila’s big day
2. Jered Weaver’s poor start
3. Quick thoughts on Nori Aoki
4. Streaming Pitcher Options
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Opening Day is here and the closer carousel is in full swing.
• Colin touched up on the Craig Kimbrel trade fall out last night and as expected Jason Grilli was tabbed as Kimbrel’s replacement. Grilli threw a perfect inning today with two strikeouts for his first save of the year. Grilli’s fastball topped out at 97 mph today and he was consistently hitting 95 mph which is actually better than in his heyday as the Pirates closer. The options behind Grilli aren’t too appealing so if Grilli pitches reasonably well he should have no problem holding on to the job. Strangely enough, in some sense the better Grilli pitches the worse his job security would be as he would become an intriguing trade commodity for competing teams considering the Braves have clearly played their hand on not competing this season. Either way, I would advise you to run to the waivers to put a claim on Grilli and don’t be afraid to spend a lot of your FAAB budget on him as well.
• Well, the initial 2015 disabled list is getting finalized. In the table below are the players who have started the season on the DL according to MLB.com’s transactions. I expect the number to increase as more players are added. I will have a complete list on Thursday.
To start off, Shane Greene is currently owned in 3% of Yahoo! leagues so he is essentially risk-free and costs absolutely nothing. I have mentioned this before, but having guys like that on your roster is a positive as it gives you built in waiver wire drop-ability. I know prior to using the “waiting on pitching” strategy I often would come into some issues when my roster was stacked with guys I invested in or felt I couldn’t drop, and when an appealing add came across the waiver wire I struggled with being able to let anyone go.
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I’m entering my first full season doing second-base tiers, after a midseason call-up last year. One small housekeeping item to get out of the way is that I prefer to only include players who are more or less universally eligible at the position. For example, Mookie Betts played 14 games at 2B last year, making him eligible on some sites and ineligible on others. Thus, he does not appear on this list. Additionally, I only ranked players who are currently on Major League rosters.
One thing that was interesting for me as I assembled these rankings is that I don’t have particularly strong feelings about the specific order within some of the tiers, but I have a considerable amount of conviction regarding the tiers themselves. In other words, this year’s 2B crop has some pretty clear-cut groups of elite, near-elite, above-average, etc. With that, let’s get to the rankings:
TIER ONE
Jose Altuve
Robinson Cano
I quite nearly gave Altuve his own tier, but I believe enough in a Cano bounceback that I made room for him too. I wrote about the Houston infield a few weeks ago, so you can check that out for more of my thoughts on Altuve. Short version: I absolutely love Altuve, and do not expect much regression in 2015.
The 12:15 P.M. EST slot here on Mondays is supposed to have something to do with shortstops. Jhonny Peralta went 1-for-5 with two strikeouts last night, and Starlin Castro went 1-for-4 with a strikeout. Quota met?
I’ll get back to shortstops in short order, but without any 2015 results to parse or season long fantasy advice to give, I’m going to discuss some daily fantasy strategy. I typically play on DraftKings but have plenty of followers who play on FanDuel, and I’m taking part in an expert daily fantasy accuracy contest this season that will take place on FanDuel. For that reason, I wanted to take a quick look at how the scoring systems on each site differ. Read the rest of this entry »
It has begun! May your leagues bring you much joy. What follows is one approach to auctions that should bring you future joy.
I participated in two auction drafts. In both, I decided to spend little on pitching. In The Fake Baseball’s Friends and Family League (TFBFFL), I spent almost the minimum on our (co-own the free team with Zach Sanders) rotation and bench. I spent $16.00 on 12 pitchers ($2 max), but the results were not horrible: Drew Hutchison, Homer Bailey, Carlos Martinez, Henderson Alvarez, Shelby Miller, John Lackey, Sean Doolittle, Carlos Rodon and Rafael Montero. I dropped Chad Qualls already for Zach McAllister. We have enough bats to upgrade.
In my next auction, I wanted two better pitchers, but I still gave myself a $40 cap. I wound up spending $45 on the following:
