September is always an interesting month as baseball inexplicably changes its rules entirely with roster expansion up to 40 players. The month will often yield some big offensive outputs that get overlooked for fear that they were achieved against less-than-stellar competition. While I’ll grant that there are pitchers who wouldn’t normally be in the majors in rotations and bullpens, rarely do I think a guy puts an entire month of numbers against such inferior competition. Today I’m looking at a handful of rookies who’ve made some noise in September and should be firmly on your radar for 2018:

Matt Olson | Athletics

Unfortunately, we know that Olson’s season is done after a Grade 2 hamstring strain suffered on Sunday, but it was a tremendous 59-game run for the 23-year old 1B. He clocked 24 HR in just 49 hits, yielding an obscene 66 HR full season pace. Of course, that’s why we don’t take small samples and extrapolate them out. That said, he totaled 47 HR between the majors and minors so a 30-HR full season in 2018 isn’t at all out of bounds.

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Here’s the transcript from my final chat of 2017. See you again next year!

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We’re back after a long silence—too few things to say, too few good ways to say them, too few time—to review our Bold Predictions for 2017. Our forecasting shtick, as some of you may recall, is to detect Fantasy merit among the cheapest of the cheap—the fourth outfielders, fifth starters, and sixth men out of the bullpen who, in defiance of logic but in our view, might have value in the coming season.

So our Bold Predictions were ten guys who either cost a dollar, went in the reserve round, or weren’t taken at all in the Tout Wars Mixed League Auction the week before the season started. As we reckon it, two of our picks were derailed by injury, two (all right—three, but one of them was too whimsical to really count) were bad, one was not-bad, and four were quite good indeed. If you convened a panel of Roto experts and asked them to pick ten $1 players, would they do better than we did?

Really, we have no idea, and we’d like to know. One way or another, we actually had most of these guys on our teams this season. But then again, we played in enough leagues to have had most of the rest of MLB as well. Hope we’re at least a bit responsible for at least some of you having at least some of the guys who panned out. Read the rest of this entry »

What if we replaced the Triforce with a Tri-ace? What then?

AGENDA

1. Nacho Libre 2
2. Weather Reports
3. Pitchers to Use and Abuse
4. SaberSim Says…
5. TDG Invitational Returns!

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Ownership percentages are from CBS leagues.

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Tuesday’s lowly owned starters are a sad lot. Some decent arms have their ownership up like Daniel Mengden and Tyler Anderson. It’s like “Aces and Duds” today.

Just eyeballing some names, I may hold off and use some the guys going Wednesday (e.g. Andriese, Ynoa, Leiter)

Rafael Montero (3% owned) vs Atlanta (R.A. Dickey)

Montero is a perfectly good option for a team needing just strikeouts and Wins and doesn’t care about their ERA and WHIP. The game against Atlanta is winnable and Montero is averaging 8.6 K/9 as a starter. His value gets destroyed by the 5.0 BB/9 and the problem it causes to WHIP and ERA.
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The Mariners had a disheartening end to their playoff hopes in 2017 but the club has some promising young players who should help the club remain competitive.

The Graduate: Mitch Haniger, OF: Haniger was absolutely on fire early in the year before he got hurt. When he came back, he didn’t show the same patience at the plate and, as a result, it took a while for him to get back into the swing of things. When he’s going good, Haniger can impact every facet of the game. He may never be a huge batting average guy but, if he can walk more often like he did at the beginning of the year, the 26-year-old hitter can still be an above-average offensive guy when you also consider his power potential. He’s a strong defender in right field and should be a very good player for the Mariners for the foreseeable future.

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A fine crust is what this pot pie needs.

AGENDA

1. Altuve Hax
2. Weather Reports
3. Pitchers to Use and Abuse
4. SaberSim Says…
5. TDG Invitational Returns!

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Episode 300 – Get All The Chacin Tips

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

In this episode, Dylan Higgins and Matthew Dewoskin discuss assuming Jhoulys Chacin’s interest in staying in San Diego, Reynaldo Lopez forgetting how to strike people out, Lucas Duda’s contributions to the contest, the path of Rocky Gale to the Majors, Brett Anderson’s dream destination (and getting tips from Chacin), Monday not being a strong streaming day, a Tigers lineup that continues to get worse, Jesse Winker, Deck McGuire, Brett Phillips, surprising Sean Newcomb and Brandon Woodruff picks, comparing Brandon Guyer to Enrique Hernandez, Luis Valbuena’s (rare) success against left-handed pitching, Matt’s review of American Vandal, and Dylan’s review of Fast 8.

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It’s the last week of the season! If you’re still fighting for a money spot, it’s not too late to take advantage of every little thing you can. The Rockies finish the season with a six game homestand, first facing the Marlins for the first three games, taking a break on Thursday, and ending with a trio of games against the Dodgers. Here are some lesser owned names that might be available in your league to consider picking up for the week, especially in a daily transaction league when you could use them only during the games at Coors for Marlins and Dodgers players.

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