As Lou Reed and Jimmy Durante, among numerous others, have observed, it’s a long, long while from May to December, but the days grow short when you reach September. In other words, as Yogi Berra (RIP) evidently really did say, it gets late early.

For the Birchwood Brothers, though, the situation is direr. It’s not just late, but too late–too late to cast off the drab cloak of mere respectability and don the royal raiment of Fantasy preeminence that we crave. We co-manage teams in three leagues, and our fate in each of them seems to be the same:

–In our NFBC Main Event league, a modest surge has taken us to 5th Place (198th of 450 Main Event teams overall); we’ve got an outside shot at 4th, though could easily finish 8th, thanks to the saboteurs on our pitching staff. If our pitching had been as good as our hitting, we’d be 18th overall. Conversely, if our hitting had been as bad as our pitching, we’d be 405th.

–In our NFBC Slow Draft league, an epochally bad two weeks for our pitchers (6.27 ERA and 1.373 WHIP in 70 innings) has taken us from first place to fourth. It’s probably too late to recover. We begrudge Dallas Keuchel nothing, but his 11 baserunners and 9 earned runs in 4 2/3 innings last week finished us off, statistically and emotionally, and produced a game score of 11, a number so bad that…that…that it’s worse than all but one of Kyle Kendrick’s 25 starts this year, and Kendrick pitches for Colorado and has an ERA over 6.

–Meanwhile, in the Fangraphs mid-season league we ourselves oversee, we are in third place, and that’s where we’re going to wind up, once again held back by our pitching.

That’s right, we’re whining again about our pitchers. We’ll stop now. Forward-looking and sunny-dispositioned as always, we have risen on stepping stones of our dead selves to higher things, and are already thinking optimistically about next season’s draft, and asking ourselves, What have we learned? Can we derive any lessons from our season that go beyond Draft Better Guys? Three things, we think: Read the rest of this entry »

Episode 280

The latest episode of “The Sleeper and the Bust” is live!

In this episode, Paul Sporer and Eno Sarris continue their discussion of 25-and-Under players to target for 2016 by jumping into starting pitchers. Of course we couldn’t finish all of them so we’ll do more on Thursday, but we do get into plenty including Noah Syndergaard, Julio Teheran, Michael Wacha, Carlos Rodon, Lance McCullers, and Luis Severino among others.

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Earlier today, we published my conversation with Joey Votto about aging, and within the post is a graph that didn’t necessarily fit the narrative but should contain an interesting tidbit for we fantasy players.

Take a look at this graph again, except instead of looking towards the end of the graph where the old guys are hanging out, look at the beginning of the graph. Under 25, it looks like hitters with pull percentages under 45% have a little more growth left in them than their pull-heavy counterparts.

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The storybook narratives of 2015 do not limit themselves to the Mets or the Twins or the Rangers or the Astros. Surprises abound each year, usually in the form of a former prospect who finally hit his stride or a journeyman Minor Leaguer who catches lightning in a bottle. Perhaps they’re more surprising, then, when they come from seemingly established players.

For example, Bryce Harper finally evolved into the Bryce Harper of prophecies’ past, basically hitting twice as many home runs as projected. Except the evolution happened, like, two or three or seven years sooner than expected. I don’t know when it was supposed to happen, but surely it wasn’t supposed to happen at 22 years old.

And Carlos Gonzalez, at 29, has hit a career-high 37 home runs, a healthy dozen-or-so more than any of his previous four seasons — all after having arguably the worst April of his career (rivaling 2011).

I’m thankful the Tigers traded Yoenis Cespedes into the National League so I can write about the dude now. Aside from Matthew Kory’s assessment of Cespedes’ chances to win a Most Valuable Player (MVP) award two weeks ago, we have pointed little attention to how Cespedes earned his way into MVP discussions in the first place. The injustice ends here.

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Episode 118 – No Phones Down The Elevator

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

In this episode, Dylan Higgins and Brad Johnson discuss Dylan losing his phone in a ridiculous way, repeat analysis of Orioles righties that prefer to face righties still being fine against lefties, a few pairs of intriguing pitcher matchups, looking at Henry Owens and Matt Moore in 2016, Jeremy Guthrie’s return to the Royals rotation, boring but dependable options in Tom Koehler and Logan Verrett, considering J.A. Happ despite Coors Field, and a cameo from Brad’s dog.

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Agenda

1. The Grind Returns
2. Daily DFS
3. SaberSim Hi/Lo
4. Tomorrow’s Targets – Porcello, Buchanan, Napoli, De Aza
5. Factor Grid

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There’s no getting around it: it’s late September and fall is officially upon us, and as the seasons give way to one another, we mark the end of the waiver wire column for 2015. It’s been rad surveilling the deep fantasy seas with you, but we’re reminded of that line about all good things, so with an eye on closing the deal in the fantasy playoffs, here are two arms who could help the cause in deep leagues.

As usual, the players listed in this space are better suited for mono leagues, and the ownership percentages are by way of CBS.

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It’s been one heck of a year for rookie hitters. Though, if you’re in a CBS league and take a look at the season-to-date value rankings, you will only find one rookie that made the top 50, Kris Bryant. That’s no surprise though as it’s not often a rookie is that good that he’s able to break into elite fantasy territory in his first season. Of course, some hitters were just promoted too late in the season, like Carlos Correa, to build the counting stats necessary. So while the counting stats from this year’s rookie crop are what we generally expect, the power is not.

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I’m late to the Rick and Morty party, but man, that show slays me. My favorite episode thus far is probably Meseeks and Destroy, though Total Rickall is a pretty outstanding story too.

On today’s agenda:
1. Yadier Molina’s busted thumb
2. The Good Samardzija shows up
3. Streaming Pitching Options

Yadier Molina’s busted thumb
If it seems like the Cardinals have been hit with a lot of injuries lately, you wouldn’t be wrong. Between Matt Holliday still nursing a hamstring to Randal Grichuk’s shoulder woes and Matt Adams still not playing full games in the field, the Cards starting position players are pretty banged up. Adding Molina to the list of injured players is the latest, and arguably one of the gravest. He’s caught 134 games — of which he started 131 — however given his torn ligament in left thumb, we may have seen the last of Molina until the playoffs. For fellow Yadi owners scrambling for a replacement, I just picked up Tom Murphy. After his home run on Monday, Murphy is up to 22 dingers on the year between Double-A, Triple-A and the bigs. Don’t count on great rate stats from him, however playing at home this week gives him a chance to shine in Coors Field. After this home stint the Rockies are on the road in another hitter friendly park in Arizona then San Francisco to wrap up the season, so other than the final series, he’s hitting in favorable parks. Murphy is available in 98 percent of CBS formats and over 99 percent of Yahoo! or ESPN leagues.

The Good Samardzija shows up
After scuffling through a lot of innings this year, Jeff Samardzija pitched a gem in the opener of a double-header in Detroit. He allowed a lone hit and zero walks to go with six strikeouts during his complete game shutout. The Shark needed just 88 pitches to finish the nine innings, with 10 pitches going for swinging strikes. Even with the terrific outing he owns a modest 5.04 ERA/4.18 FIP/4.30 xFIP on the year, and while you can’t expect only one of 22 balls in play to fall for a hit every start, it’s at least a good sign from Samardzija after he tossed five clunker starts in a row. Unfortunately the remaining schedule for him doesn’t get any easier as he’ll pitch in Yankee Stadium in his next start before hosting a rematch against the Tigers in Chicago for his season finale. For a more complete breakdown of his season, be sure to check out Mike Podhorzer’s write up of Samardzija from last week.

Streaming Pitching Options
If you enjoy streaming pitchers or play DFS, tune into the Roto Riteup for recommendations each and every day.

A pitcher for today: Robbie Ray at LAD (Alex Wood)
The Dodger offense looks good against lefties on the year, however they’ve been pretty average in the second half. I like Ray’s changeup and yeah, he burned me in his previous start, yet I’m still confident he’ll gets some whiffs and be effective today. He’s a bit of a risky start, but Ray is available in 70 percent of CBS settings and more than 90 percent of ESPN or Yahoo! formats.

A pitcher for tomorrow: Marcus Stroman vs NYY (Ivan Nova)
Ain’t no brakes on the Stroman hype train! For some reason he’s still unowned in half of CBS leagues, 60 percent of ESPN formats and 70 percent of Yahoo! settings. The Yanks have a strong offense, but I’m breaking character and going with a “momentum” pick here. It helps that Stroman is pretty darn good.

• Sorry about not getting Thursday’s MASH report out, so today’s post covers the past seven days.

• Jung-ho Kang will miss the rest of this season and probably part of next with a fractured tibia and torn meniscus.

Kang’s native Korea did not take the news well, either. The fans are reportedly irate over the Chris Coghlan slide that took Kang out at second, and out of action until possibly late-May of next season.

This injury sucks in so many ways.

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