• Washington, woof. Both the political arena and the bullpen are a mess right now. Blake Treinen entered the game in the ninth as he normally does and proceeded to allow four baserunners while only recording one out. With the bases loaded, Shawn Kelley came on and got a foul out and a strikeout to end the game for his first save of the year. The silver lining here is that Blake Treinen got his first hold of the year which tells you how useful of a stat that is. Shawn Kelley has been a good reliever for Washington but he never really was given a fair chance to close and I’m not sure if this necessarily changes the calculus.

Either way I’m putting the Nationals situation on red alert. Koda Glover was the early candidate to close games before Treinen was named and it’s possible he could receive a save opportunity soon as well. According to Dusty, the Nationals will likely be making a change at closer and I would go Glover then Kelley but it could be a coin flip. Sidenote: would anyone be surprised if Dusty literally flipped a coin? Whoever ends up receiving the next save opportunities, the Nationals would still need some help in the bullpen so my guess is that the team saves leader may not even be on the team currently. They acquired Mark Melancon last year and they will be linked to any and all trade rumors for saves. You should still go run and pick up Glover and Kelley though.

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Today’s chat honoring the life and deeds of Starling Marte is complete. The answer to the last question is Jesse Hahn. If anybody knows Pete, tell him to come collect his prize.

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Just before the season started, the FanGraphs staff (including RotoGraphs contributors) was asked to make its official predictions for the upcoming season. We took our best shot at predicting the playoff teams, MVP and Cy Young Award winners, and Rookies of the Year for 2017. Perhaps in the coming weeks we will check in with the top picks for MVP and Cy Young, but in this article, we’re going to look at the top rookies.

Our staff picks on the American League side had Andrew Benintendi (40 votes) as the overwhelming favorite to be named the league’s top rookie, with Jharel Cotton (4) and Mitch Haniger (4) rounding out the top three.

Over in the National League, Dansby Swanson (27 votes) was the favorite by a wide margin, followed by Robert Gsellman (12), Manuel Margot (5), and Hunter Renfroe (4).

While it’s extremely early and still much too soon to make any concrete statements about who will win this year’s awards, let’s take a look at the wide-ranging early season performances of the players we expect to be the game’s top newcomers: Read the rest of this entry »

Tout Wars Thoughts:

In Tout Wars, I am currently last in both ERA (5.32) and WHIP (1.58). I knew I would struggle in these two categories but this lack of production is about impossible to replicate. The culprits are:

Name: ERA, WHIP
Corey Kluber: 6.38, 1.42
Rick Porcello: 7.56, 1.74
Adam Wainwright: 7.24, 2.20
Jeff Samardzija: 6.16, 1.42

Two of my closers aren’t much better:
Blake Treinen: 6.00, 2.00
Ken Giles: 9.00, 1.80

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Last week we told you about some hitters who might be of interest to, and only to, people (like us) who play in leagues so deep that they (the leagues, not the people) are hadalpelagic. Your kind response has encouraged us to take on an even more daunting task: identifying, down there among the bristle worms and the viperfish, starting pitchers who aren’t widely owned (which we define as being owned in fewer than 50% of NFBC leagues) and might be worth having. Read the rest of this entry »

There’s nothing more obnoxious than picking the best player of the day when the rest of your lineup decides to take a breather. What happened Cubbies?

Prices listed are for DraftKings.

AGENDA

1. Fade Fade Fading Away
2. Weather Reports
3. Pitchers to Use and Abuse
4. Contrarian Picks
5. SaberSim Says…
6. TDG Invitational Returns!

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If you follow great hair in sports as closely as I do, you already know about Taylor Motter. In Spring Training, he unleashed a hair flip so fantastic that it spawned the Mariners’ new between-innings “Hair Flip Cam.” Sadly, when I looked for footage of the Hair Flip Cam, I only found a handful of Twitter mentions. Trust me when I say that it exists and is awesome.

Acquired in a relatively minor trade with Tampa in November, Motter is a 27-year-old without a whole lot of prospect pedigree. Here at FanGraphs, Motter slotted in as the No. 11 Rays prospect pre-2016, and Seattle’s No. 18 guy this year. In short, he’s not the type of player you’d expect to be the subject of a fantasy column in April.

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I struggle enough with pitcher analysis this early in the season, but it’s even more difficult to evaluate hitters. At least for pitchers, we have pitch metrics, such as velocity and movement, along with pitch mix and batted ball distribution that stabilize relatively quickly. We have no such metrics with which to analyze hitters, so it’s difficult to conclude with anything other then “small sample size, expect regression toward career averages” for each hitter. Let’s see how well I could avoid such a phrase as we take a look at the six hitters that have been added the most in CBS leagues over the last week.

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Today’s Roto Riteup comes to you hotter than Taylor Motter…

Just flow-tastic. #ShakeOnIt pic.twitter.com/uDc4RT5hkm

— MLB GIFS (@MLBGIFs) April 18, 2017

…who continues not to follow me on twitter anymore.

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Well, that was a pretty eventful weekend for closers, let’s get to it with some news from today as well…

• Zach Britton has dreaded soreness in his forearm and was placed on the 10-Day DL. I say dreaded because of a common connection with the elbow but Britton is saying he won’t need a MRI. I’m assuming that’s a good thing and not the Orioles trying to save a buck. Either way, Brad Brach should see save chances in Britton’s place with Darren O’Day and Mychal Givens behind him. From 2009 to 2015 O’Day had a 2.07 ERA in 400.1 innings but last year it jumped to 3.77 and he’s been rusty to the start of this year. I wouldn’t be surprised to see Givens leapfrog O’Day here.

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