Some teams just match up extraordinarily well against certain-handed pitchers, and it’s high time that we took advantage of that in our daily fantasy games. By now we’re all aware of the platoon advantage, and like to use favorable handedness matchups to ruin our foes and predict which hitters will struggle (or succeed) against either left-handed or right-handed pitching.
Today is a really fun day for baseball-watchers, as we’re treated to two really interesting doubleheaders in addition to our regular spate of baseballing action. Not only are there seventeen games of MLB action today (barring weather issues), but each of those doubleheaders will feature a debuting top prospect. Wil Myers is prepped to make his major-league debut in the first game of the Rays-Red Sox double-bill in Boston, while Zack Wheeler will start for the Mets in the second game of a New York-Atlanta twofer.
The trouble with daily fantasy baseball is that on some days, everything looks like a bad option.
Sometimes it finally feels like the smart guys who assign value to players hit most everything, at least for a day. There isn’t a glaring value that jumps out at you, and sometimes — even after further inspection — you’re not sure that you can find a hole in the system to exploit. The options may not all be bad, but they’re at least just “okay” or “average,” and that could keep you from being a winner and just falling into the middle of the pack.
I absolutely love it when prospects get called up. LOVE IT. There’s nothing more exciting than infinite possibility. It’s what makes the first day of the regular season so special, and the first day of the playoffs, and, I dunno, it helped make Star Wars pretty cool.
It can also make your fantasy teams complete disasters.
I’m as guilty of it as anyone — oftentimes I’ll run a team of highly-touted prospects out there when creating a fantasy squad, and when they invariably take their lumps, I cringe, see my team fall in the standings, and really wish I had drafted Aramis Ramirez instead of, say, Brett Lawrie last year.
We all have different tolerances for risk, and that can have a powerful effect on how you would play daily fantasy games. Say you’re over on Draftstreet, and you’re looking to play a game with a small buy-in, but a huge pot of winnings and several hundred competitors. Perhaps in that instance you’d be looking for players who have “boom-or-bust” potential — the guys like Carlos Gomez who are as likely to put up two homers and a steal in a night as they are to go 0-4 with four ugly strikeouts. Or if you’re playing a low-stakes game against only a few other players, maybe you’d look to choose a solid, more consistent player — someone like the (normally) reliable Denard Span who is a little more likely to put up a 2-for-4 line with two singles.
So how do we find which hitters are the most or least volatile?
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With the early part of the season past us, and almost 90% of the season left ahead, perhaps it’s time to talk strategy. You’ve drafted your squad and — even though April is a small sample — perhaps you have a clearer picture of your team, and its strengths and weaknesses. You may be out a shortstop thanks to an injury or two, or maybe you’ve suffered from too many Carlos Quentin-induced starting pitching injuries. You had a nice team to start, but now you’ve got a weakness either on the offensive side or in terms of pitching, and you’re ready to make a change.
Well, today I’d like to consider a few possible deals. Oftentimes, we look to trade from a position of strength to cover up a position of weakness. That’s what we’ll explore today: a couple of possible one-for-one (or similar) deals that might be a valuable swap of pitcher-for-hitter or vice versa. Perhaps that will help determine what a reasonable return might be from one perspective when swapping one side of your 5×5 team for another. Always, your mileage will vary based on you league and the population of trade partners available.
Trading a Hitter for a Pitcher
I don’t know about you, but I’m thrilled that Opening Day has come (for most franchises). I assume that if you’re reading Fan/Not/RotoGraphs, you’re probably pretty stoked as well. And nothing says “irrational exuberance” like making changes to the way you look at fantasy players based on a single game on Opening Day.
Nevertheless, there are some things worth talking about — for fantasy — that came out of the past two days worth of baseball. While nothing should dramatically change the way you look at players, a few things happened that seemed to confirm previous theories, or show indications of potential events in the future. So let’s talk about some of the funnest stuff from yesterday and how maybe it’ll be a sign of things to come in fantasy this season.
Chase Utley: Still Great At Baseball
In fantasy, Chase Utley was usually drafted about tenth among second basemen, according to Mock Draft Central. Utley usually popped in the middle rounds (between 8-12), and behind players like Jose Altuve and Aaron Hill and Brandon Phillips. This is not because Utley is a bad, or even average hitter, but because of lingering concerns about joint health in his balky knees.
Like the work of my cohorts here at RotoGraphs, these ten bold predictions are meant to push the conventional wisdom and highlight some players (and events) that will over- or under-perform compared to their fantasy expectations. While they’re maybe not likely to happen, I think that each of these events has a fair possibility of coming to pass. Let’s get wild, shall we?
1) Fernando Martinez hits 20+ HR, making him a useful fantasy OF.
The new-look Toronto Blue Jays are the new darlings of the AL East, projected by many to win out over perennial division powerhouses in the Yankees and Red Sox. The infield, which used to rely on Yunel Escobar and Kelly Johnson up the middle, has a new look with new faces in Jose Reyes, Maicer Izturis, and Emilio Bonifacio in place. And the corners have the tantalizing upsides of young star Brett Lawrie and 2012 breakout Edwin Encarnacion. If everything breaks right, the Toronto infield could be one of the best in baseball, despite not being very deep, in 2013.
You know how when you stub your toe or bang your arm against something, you take a deep, hissing breath through your teeth sometimes? The pain causes you to suck air in with a “Thsssss!” or a similar pulling noise, and you squint your eyes a little?
Well, that’s pretty much what I do every time I try to look at the Mets’ outfield depth chart.
Many words have already been written about the Metropolitans’ lack of impact players in their outfield, with some lamenting that the team may have one of the worst outfields of the past several years, or decades, or ever. While I personally don’t think the situation is quite as bad as some have made it out to be, this depth chart is not going to be pretty, folks. Let’s get to it.