The title of the article is an allusion to Schott’s Miscellany, which you should definitely check out if you never have and feel compelled to know that a group of larks is called an exaltation or that a member of the 32nd degree of Freemasonry is known as a Sublime Prince of the Royal Secret.

–Important Early-Season Defensive Leaders–

Defense is not a category in typical fantasy leagues, but I don’t think it’s universally safe to ignore it in making fantasy decisions. In particular, the defensive play of newly promoted major leaguers can make or break their chances at playing time, and the defensive success or struggles of all players can lead to changes in positions and therefore eligibilities. It’s early in the season, but there are several players I’ve had my eye on that have already shown a clear tendency in their defensive numbers. First, let’s take a look at the positive performers.

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Agenda

1. DFS Cash Game Strategy
2. Daily DFS – Sanchez
3. Tomorrow’s Targets – Porcello, Lester, Valencia, Orlando
4. Factor Grid

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Yesterday saw Avengers: Age of Ultron go live in theaters in select European countries, with more joining the list throughout the coming week. In my amateur opinion the first Avengers was grand and raised expectations for the follow up. In a week we’ll see if the hype was worth it as the domestic release is May 1.

On today’s agenda:
1. Hotter than Kolten lava
2. A (far too early) Steven Souza humble brag
3. Alex Guerrero, pinch hitter
4. Streaming pitching options
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• Mark Melancon’s velocity dip is beginning to become a national story. One night after imploding in excruciating fashion, baseball columns and podcasts alike were abuzz with discussions of the righty’s nearly 5 mph dip. Of course, this isn’t new news to Bullpen Report readers, but there’s nothing like copious run allowance to bring ugly peripherals to the surface. Earlier this afternoon, manager Clint Hurdle said that he was sticking with Melancon, although the wormburner wasn’t available to take to the mound tonight.

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The first few weeks of the season is dangerous territory to be making any kind of declarations, as you dedicated minions of the small sample size know all too well. Third base has typically been my beat, and I’m certainly not interested in ringing the alarm of Adrian Beltre‘s .158 batting average nor am I bandwagoning onto Luis Valbuena’s .356 ISO. Players have strong starts, they have cold starts, our job is to remember the whole marathon versus sprint metaphor.

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Jonathan Lucroy, Yan Gomes, and Travis D’Arnaud all recently hit the disabled list. John Jaso was on the DL after just one plate appearance! Matt Wieters started the season on the DL and it seemed like Devin Mesoraco was headed there soon until a recent PH appearance. He hasn’t started a game since April 11th and he missed seven games in between PH appearances on the 12th and 21st. That is four of the top 10 drafted catchers, another within the top 15, and one of the most popular second catcher options in Jaso as he stood to get a ton of playing time as a non-catching catcher.

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Chris Carter is off to a bad start. This is an unambiguously true fact. Jeff Sullivan, among other Twitterers (Tweeters?), have succinctly illuminated this unambiguously true fact:

selection of players with ISO of .000 Curtis Granderson Brandon Phillips Desmond Jennings Logan Morrison Chris Carter

— Jeff Sullivan (@based_ball) April 21, 2015

Carter has supplemented the zero extra-base hits with four singles, 21 strikeouts and nary a run batted in to speak of through 51 plate appearances. (FYI, that’s a 41.2-percent strikeout rate.) His atrociously bad start is the talk of the Twitter town, and it has Astros Manager A.J. Hinch dropping him in the batting order. As of last night, Carter’s ownership had dropped to 67.7 and 73 percent in ESPN and Yahoo! leagues, respectively, as owners have jumped ship.
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Agenda

1. Farnsworth on Herrera
2. Daily DFS – Kendrick
3. GB / FB Splits
4. Tomorrow’s Targets – Chavez, Bailey, Ross, Gentry
5. Factor Grid

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Episode 13 – Sample Sizes Are Fun In April

The latest episode of “Field of Streams” is live!

In this episode, Dylan Higgins, Matthew Dewoskin, and Steve Adams discuss mixing up players and their former teams, the red-hot Joey Votto, the polarizing J.A. Happ, why NOT to use Jose Reyes against righties, pining for Eduardo Escobar, looking forward to Matt’s birthday, and Matt and Dylan facing off for the first time.

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With draft season over and duly reported upon, we have been brooding about what new worlds to conquer. Our long-promised sabermetric investigations are forthcoming, but they take time, and we’ll no doubt be staggering down many blind alleys and culs-de-sac before we get someplace worth bringing you to. We’ll keep providing progress reports—well, status reports, anyway—on Team Birchwood in the NFBC Main Event, but those won’t take long, even if our bargain-basement starting pitchers stop igniting upon exposure to oxygen and we move up in the standings.

Meanwhile, having been irritated during draft season by so-called experts touting so-called sleepers who were already well-known in places like Kazakhstan, we find ourselves even more irked by these same experts, now that the season’s started, touting waiver wire pickups that are probably making casual fans on Pluto sneer. Let’s quickly do a Google search and see what we come up with. “Week 3 Waiver Wire.…” Hmmm… pre-injury Jake Lamb. Odubel Herrera. Drew Pomeranz. Wade Davis, for God’s sake. We’ll accept arguendo that there are dilletantish Plutonian 10-team mixed leagues in which some of these guys might be available. But if you’re far gone enough to be reading not just Rotographs but this particular blog, you or somebody else in your league already owns them. So what exactly do you do when, say—this is of course completely fanciful–Brett Lawrie disables your left fielder with a slightly-misdirected hard slide and it’s time to go replacement shopping? Read the rest of this entry »