The value of a stolen base may vary from daily site to daily site, but on the site where I play my daily cap contests, a steal is worth five points. Throw in the fact that a runner has to get on base to be able to steal another one and a steal becomes worth seven or eight points. And that’s assuming they don’t come around to score or do anything else in their other plate appearances. You could certainly do worse than seven or eight points from a slot. Needless to say, I like guys who can run a little (or a lot) in daily leagues.

In order to be able to better pick base stealers in daily salary cap formats, I decided to look at the pitchers and catchers who are the most and least friendly to base stealers. Read the rest of this entry »

Chris Capuano | Los Angeles Dodgers | Home to San Diego on Tuesday

One man’s folly is another man’s fortune, right? Well the bizarre and unfortunate injury to Zack Greinke after the altercation with Carlos Quentin and the Padres gives Capuano the fifth spot in the Dodgers rotation. Had I been making decisions in LA, he might have had that spot this season to begin with.

Capuano is coming off two straight seasons in which he topped 180 innings and had an xFIP under 4.00. He displayed some serious skill in 2011 with an above average strikeout rate (21%), an above average walk rate (6.6%), and a solid xFIP of 3.60. Unfortunately he was a little unlucky with balls in play (.311 BABIP), and he let a few too many fly out of the park (1.31 HR/9) which led to a 4.55 ERA. But the next year he was basically luck-neutral (.284 BABIP, 1.13 HR/9), and his ERA fell to 3.72. His strikeout skills weren’t the same but were still slightly above average (19.8%), and his walk rate was equally good.

Capuano can obviously pitch, and I am glad to see him get the chance to start again, even if I wish it had come via less unfortunate circumstances. He’s got a good matchup at home against the Padres on Tuesday. He’s currently owned in just 2% of ESPN leagues. Read the rest of this entry »

Last week I listed some guys to target and avoid in daily, salary-cap formats based on platoon splits. That’s just one factor to consider when picking a daily cap lineup, and a commenter mentioned another interesting factor worth considering:

This seemed like a great idea, so below I’ll be identifying the certain pitcher-hitter matchups to exploit in daily cap formats. Read the rest of this entry »

If you’re looking for pitchers to stream or if you’re looking for potentially cheap options in daily, salary-cap formats, here are a few options for week two that are widely available and almost certain to be fairly cheap.

Joe Blanton | Los Angeles Angels | Home to Oakland on Wednesday

We all know exactly what Joe Blanton is. He’s a guy with slightly above average strikeout skills and a great walk rate. Unfortunately, he lives in the zone too much and has a problem with home runs as a result. But in the right ballparks Blanton is capable of being a good fantasy spot starter. Despite the fact that he moved to the AL this offseason, it was nice to see him sign with the Angels because his new home ballpark suppresses home runs at an above average rate.

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The daily salary cap format has become much more prevalent in the past few years. I would imagine a large part of that has to do with the fact that daily fantasy sites have figured out a good way to monetize fantasy sports. But those sites couldn’t make money if we didn’t like playing the format.

If you’re thinking of trying the format out, or if you play and are looking for thoughts on strategy, allow me to describe the strategy I employ.

Let me start by noting that I’m not a huge fan of risk, so I generally play low-risk, low-reward games like double ups, which pay out roughly the top half of the entrants each day. You get the same payout as a head-to-head matchup, but you don’t have to take on the risk of having just one opponent. As a result, my strategy might not be best suited for those who like to play the “lottery ticket” type games where you risk a small amount of money to win a big pot against a lot of other players. You need upside and luck to win those pools.

My strategy begins with the idea that you should save on pitchers when possible. There are quite a few guys I’m higher on than most, so I target them because they’re usually underpriced in my opinion. If I can’t find two bargain pitchers, I’ll just pick a stud with a good matchup to go along with a bargain. Depending on how much money I can save on pitching, I prefer to grab as many high priced hitters as possible. Hitting is just so variable day-to-day, so I’m willing to pay for the guys who go oh-fer less often.

When choosing hitters, the number one thing I look at is platoon splits. I want to pick guys who are really good against pitchers of a certain handedness and who happen to be facing such a pitcher on that day. Other factors like the park and the skill of the opposing pitcher come in to play, but platoon splits are the biggest consideration.

When you can’t find bargain pitching and don’t have much money to spend on hitters, splits can help you find undervalued players. And when you have a lot of money to spend on hitting, it’s important that you be careful not to pick good hitters who struggle against pitchers of a certain handedness.

To help me pick players each day, I created a spreadsheet with a tab listing all players who had 100 or more plate appearances against lefties last year and a tab with all players who had 240 or more plate appearances against righties. I used a different number of plate appearances because there are more plate appearances to be had against righties. I wanted to look at players who got a fair number of plate appearances against pitchers of a certain handedness.

I listed each player’s wRC+ alongside their name. I chose wRC+ because it easily allows you to see how far above average that player is against pitchers of a certain handedness. The league average wRC+ is 100, so if a guy has a wRC+ of 140 against LHP, that means he’s 40% better than average against lefties.

Below are four lists. The purpose of each list is:

• Identifying potentially underpriced options against LHP
• Identifying good hitters to avoid when they are facing LHP
• Identifying potentially underpriced options against RHP
• Identifying good hitters to avoid when they are facing RHP

For the potentially underpriced options, I listed guys with who aren’t owned in all leagues (with one exception) on the assumption that guys with lower ownership percentages will usually have lower prices on daily sites. I also tried to list at least a guy or two from each position. For good guys to avoid, I listed big name guys with high ownership percentages. Enjoy!

If you’re looking for a starter to stream or if you’re trying to find some value in some sort of salary cap daily format, here are three guys I like to begin with and like even more given their matchups in the opening week.

A.J. Griffin, Oakland Athletics – 4/4 home to Seattle

Griffin was solid in an 82.1 inning debut last season. He posted a 3.06 ERA and 1.13 WHIP with a strikeout rate around league average (19.1%) and above average control (5.7%). He might have a bit of upside in the strikeout rate as his swinging strike rate was above average. But because Griffin doesn’t have a huge fastball, I’d expect any improvement to be fairly small. But a league average strikeout rate can go along with an above average pitcher when the pitcher has some other skills as Griffin does. Read the rest of this entry »

The Braves bullpen put up some fantastic numbers last season. A lot of it had to do with Craig Kimbrel’s gaudy numbers, but the group as a whole was pretty good. They were the fifth best bullpen according to WAR and had the second best ERA backed up by the best xFIP and the second best SIERA. The scary part is that they added to the unit by dealing Tommy Hanson for Jordan Walden.

The Closer

Craig Kimbrel

You could go on and on about how great Kimbrel was last year and post an endless list of crazy stats. But the short version is this: Kimbrel led relievers in K% and only one guy was within 10 percentage points of him. He also led the league in K/BB, xFIP, and SIERA while trailing only Fernando Rodney in ERA. He’s the undisputed #1 closer this year. Unfortuantely, that means he’s going way too high in drafts. The latest you can get Kimbrel is probably somewhere in the 40’s, and you just can’t pass on the quality hitters still available at that point to take a closer. Read the rest of this entry »

We’re making bold predictions this week. My ten will be guys currently not being drafted as “starters” in ten-team mixed leagues that I think should and will be. In other words, I’ll be picking a guy going outside the top ten at each infield position, two guys going outside the top 50 in the outfield, and three guys going outside the top 60 starters. All ADP numbers are from ESPN.

1) Jonathan Lucroy, currently the 14th catcher being selected, will be a top ten catcher. Lucroy was well on his way to being a top ten catcher last season had he not missed two months in the middle of the year with a broken hand. Check out how he compared to other catchers with 300+ PA last year in the five roto categories on a per plate appearance basis:

Read the rest of this entry »

Because the standard roto format uses batting average, most analysis, rankings, and projections are based on that and the other standard roto categories. If your league uses additional categories or replaces traditional categories with new ones like average being replaced by OBP, you’re can’t just rely on the normal analysis and cheat sheets provided by fantasy sites. You’re going to have to do a little bit of extra work. The purpose of this post is to aid those playing in leagues in which OBP has replaced average as a category.

When  OBP replaces average, you can’t simply look at the guys who have the best OBPs to determine who gains an advantage in this format. What really matters is the difference between OBP and average. To determine when the difference becomes significant, I created a spreadsheet with all qualified hitters from the last three years with their OBP and average. Then I calculated the difference between those numbers,  the mean and the standard deviation for the differences. The mean was .068 and the standard deviation was .02. I then sorted the differences large to small and cut out all players that were within one standard deviation of the mean. Below are the lists of players who were more than one standard deviation from the mean. Read the rest of this entry »

The Yankee lineup is a bit of a mess. And that’s being nice. With Mark Teixeira, Curtis Granderson and Alex Rodriguez all ailing, guys like Juan Rivera and Brennan Boesch will start the season in a lineup that is usually one of the most formidable in the league. With Travis Hafner and Chris Stewart also figuring to see regular at-bats, this lineup is anything but formidable.

But this post is just about the infield, not the whole lineup.

Let’s start with the Teixeira injury. Teixeira was originally reported to be out with a strained wrist injury until sometime between the first and middle of May. But it now appears that Teixeira has a partially torn tendon sheath. This is the same injury Jose Bautista had last year that ended his season early. Teixeira’s injury is supposedly a bit different in that the tendon under the sheath is stable whereas Bautista had an unstable tendon, which is the reason Bautista’s injury required season-ending surgery.

If we could be sure Teixeira would be back sometime in May, he might still be worth drafting as your corner infielder. But with so much uncertainty about the timeline after this latest development concerning his injury, there’s probably too much risk to take on. However, if you play in a league with more than one DL slot, he might be worth stashing if he falls to the last couple rounds of your draft.

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