UPDATE: Ricky Nolasco is starting Sunday and is no longer eligible. We’re rolling with Chris Tillman (v. NYY, v. OAK) instead.

The torrid pace with which we’ve started the season has tempered. Like a step dad, I’m not exactly mad about the early-season results, just disappointed. Here’s where we are through half of Week 3:

6-6 record
4.00 ERA
87.2 total innings
8.3 K/9
2.7 K/BB
1.36 WHIP

Here’s the link to the spreadsheet if you’d like to check it out.

On to this week’s recs (with opponents’ team wRC+ in parentheses):

RHP Ricky Nolasco – 9.7% ESPN – @HOU (108), @CWS (90)

It feels about as clunky as the George W. Bush “fool me once” quote, but Nolasco feels like a decent enough recommendation based on his solid start. Through four starts he’s got plenty of whiffs (7.8 K/9) especially compared to walks (1.0 BB/9), is inducing grounders at a rate he’s never come close to (48.7%), and in part is riding the wave of a flukishly-low BABIP to a four-game solid stretch to start the season. Still, I’m enthused by how he’s attacking the strike zone; his first-pitch strike rate of 59.4% is his highest as a Twin, and his 51.3% zone rate is the highest he’s had since 2008. He’s healthy and he’s finding the strike zone with so-so stuff, propped up by a pretty good slider. He’s not a mixed-league year-long difference maker, but if that’s what you’re looking for you’re in the wrong place. I think he’ll give you enough in the short term here; I also think that’s what the Twins are hoping for between now and say a certain date in late July…. Read the rest of this entry »

We’ve had a pretty good start to the season. Here’s a look at the numbers through a week and a half:

4-3 record
3.02 ERA
9.2 K/9
3.2 K/BB
1.23 WHIP

And perhaps to illustrate just how tough chasing wins can be in this strategy, we went 3-1 in week 1 with a 9.3 K/9 mark, 2.8 BB/9 and 3.00 ERA. Through half of this last week, we went 1-2 with a 3.05 ERA, 9.1 K/9 and 4.2 BB/9.

Anyway, onto this week’s recs (with team wRC+ in parenthesis):

RHP Rick Porcello – 21.3 percent ESPN – @ATL (62), v. NYY (102)

This is blatantly ripped off from a tweet I read from Marc Normandin of SB Nation, but since returning from the disabled list last August, Porcello has thrown 76 innings with 9.5 K/9 and a K/BB rate of nearly 6.0. Mix in a healthy groundball rate — though that has taken a dive in the last few years — and I think you might have something here. The Braves matchup is a slam dunk, and the Yankees may be tough — I’m especially looking at Porcello’s home run rate — but he’s too good lately to not give a shot here. Read the rest of this entry »

We’re only halfway through the first week results-wise — the structuring of this mandates that we’re always playing a little bit of catch up — but the early returns on Week 1 have been positive. Juan Nicasio got dusted up a bit, but Matt Moore and Nick Tropeano put forth strong efforts, and hopefully that’ll continue.

Here’s a snapshot of our Week 1 efforts to-date. If you’d like to look at the spreadsheet, maybe I’ll post it. And if you don’t care, that’s fine too:

1-1 record
3.00 ERA
9.0 K/9
1.9 K/BB
1.67 WHIP

I don’t know about you all — could write a book with that caveat — but at least fantasy-wise I think of WHIP as a pitcher’s blood pressure. So in this case, this pitcher is like a guy with all the muscles and looks, but a ticker that’s about ready to explode. Clearly I’m not worried after just three starts, but the boys did play with fire a little bit this week. Especially Nicasio but even Tropeano, who had eight baserunners in just five innings. The matchup this weekend against the Twins should be a bit easier.

Here are this week’s recommendations (with team wRC+ in parenthesis):

LHP J.A. Happ – 10.8 percent ESPN – @BOS (124), v. OAK (71)

It was my mistake last week in using team wOBA; I had forgotten we’d switched to the more fair wRC+ at some point in last year’s stream, so I’ll use that moving forward. With Happ my intrigue is double-barrelled; I want to see just what he can do post-Searage, but also I want to hone in on guys with lower ownership than usual. I hemmed and hawed about going with either Phil Hughes or Ervin Santana, but both are owned over 20 percent and Hughes against Bryce Harper may not be an ideal matchup. For what it’s worth, I’m very enthused by his velocity — he’s reached 93-94 on multiple occasions this season — and his command. I just prefer Happ here. It’s the classic give and get with one really tough option and one that should be much easier, but I’ll take my chances with Happ, who was nails down the stretch for the Pirates last year. One thing I’ll be watching is his curve usage; early on, he’s gone back to it after scorning it with the Pirates. Read the rest of this entry »

Hello again. We’re back for season for of breaking down two-start pitchers for the upcoming week. After two solid years, last year was a bit of a struggle:

35-48
4.66 ERA
7.1 K/9
2.2 BB/9
1.41 WHIP

I’ll completely understand if that’s turned you off from my #analysis, but I’m back again to try win over your hearts. Let’s see what we can do. As usual, I’m back trying to help guide you through the pitfalls of grabbing guys making two starts in the week to come, with the caveat of sub-50 percent ownership in ESPN leagues. If you think those guidelines are too high or low, please, please feel free to chime in on the comments section. The only way this can get better is through help from you, the reader.

Read the rest of this entry »

If you’ve for some reason been following my path as a fantasy baseball player closely, first thank you and secondly you might know I’m in the Fangraphs Ottoneu Staff League II. The league features some of your favorite writers from the Fangraphs family, including Scott Spratt, Brad Johnson, Jeff Zimmerman and more. David Wiers is in the league too.

For point of reference, here’s the league homepage.

As I’ve mentioned every now and then here and on Twitter, my fantasy baseball strategy is kind of bizarre. I guess I just get really weird about players I do and do not want, and don’t get into the politics in an auction of bidding a player up that I do not want just to price enforce. For me, with a finite number of roster spots and the odds you could wind up with a player you don’t want with just one false move, the risk just isn’t worth it.

For instance, if I’m totally out on Sonny Gray — basically just a name, so don’t read too much into it here — and he’s about to go for $15, I won’t bid $16 just to get him to $20, which I think is a more fair price. Instead, I think the strategy I employ is quite a bit less risky. Maybe it’s dumb, but I just throw guys out for the first number of rounds that I have no interest in, but I’m certain they’ll go for more than a buck. If I can get my league mates involved in spending dollars and using roster spots on guys I have no interest in, I might get a deal later. But even if I don’t get a deal, I at least get a bit more clarity as I clean up the draft board.

Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve already hit you all with my 10 hot takes for the season, but we’re still a couple Fridays away from firm fantasy stuff for me to write about. So this week, I’ll show you all my final Scoresheet roster with a breakdown, and you can all skewer me for mistakes you think I made. Next week I’ll go over my Ottoneu roster and you can do the same.

I’m sure that’s very thrilling for you.

Here are a few league resources if you’re interested:

Team list and rosters
Draft page
League page

Anyway, earlier in the draft season — Scoresheet is about a month-long draft — I shared the progress I’d made to that point in the season. Well the draft wrapped up within the last few days, and for the most part, I’m happy about the team that I’ve got.

Have a look:

Starting Lineup

C- Yasmani Grandal
1B- Jose Abreu
2B- Scooter Gennett
3B- Trevor Plouffe
SS- Xander Bogaerts
LF- Stephen Piscotty
CF- A.J. Pollock
RF- Jason Heyward
DH- Justin Bour Read the rest of this entry »

No fancy intro here. I tried to make them all fantasy relevant for uh, the first time ever. So here goes:

1. Kyle Gibson holds top-50 value in leagues this season.

Gibson is currently coming off the board at No. 363 according to Fantasy Pros, which ranks him the 109th starting pitcher on average being drafted. And I see why most are meh on him; he’s not exactly young, walks too many guys and is much more of a contact/grounders guy than strikeouts. He’s the quintessential Twins pitcher. But if you strip down his 6.7 K/9 mark, you’ll see that he fanned six batters TOTAL in April, and had respectable rates thereafter.

Here’s his month-by-month K/9:
April – 2.4
May – 5.4
June – 8.2
July – 8.6
August – 6.1
September/October – 8.3

While it isn’t totally clear what the ceiling is here, he fanned 7.4 batters per nine in the second half. Combine that with a better than 50 percent groundball rate, and you might have something there.

2. Zach Britton is the No. 1 closer in fantasy this year.

I’m going nuts for his combo of nearly 80 percent groundball rate, 10.8 K/9 and virtually no walks. I don’t care if his team isn’t likely to be good. I think he saves 40-plus games with ease. He’s also going nearly 30 picks after Craig Kimbrel, and exactly 30 after Kenley Jansen.

3. Jeremy Jeffress is a top-half closer.

He’ll first have to fend off Will Smith for the regular role, and he’s also going to be closing for a bad team. But I like the stuff; he combined nearly a strikeout per inning with a nearly 60 percent groundball rate. Oddly enough, neither he nor the left-handed Smith were all that effective against lefties last year, but I’d wager manager Craig Counsell would be more likely to want to have more flexibility to use the lefty than Jeffress. Then again, maybe Smith gets traded as well.

4. Aaron Hicks becomes Carlos Gomez, 2.o. Read the rest of this entry »

We’ve started our annual Depth Chart Discussions, re-branded as Playing Time Battles for 2016. You can catch up on every team we’ve covered in the Playing Time Battles Summary post or following along using the Depth Chart Discussions tag.

After an offseason marked with drastic change, it’d be hard to term the Padres 2015 season as anything short of a disaster. General manager A.J. Preller shot for the moon, and landed with a loud, crashing thud as the club finished 74-88, 18 games out of first and better than just six of its National League counterparts.

Flat out the Padres simply did not hit last year. They did show a little power, but ultimately ranked 15th in batting average and on-base percentage. Ranking 12th in slugging percentage and eighth in home runs probably helped the team finish 10th in runs scored, but being last in hits and 10th or worse in basically every other offensive statistic paints a pretty accurate picture of what was going on with the Friars.

The infield has been drastically re-worked, with three-quarters of the starting squad gone. Among those shipped off included the chronically underperforming Yonder Alonso and Jedd Gyorko. Alexi Amarista, who was allowed to take over 350 PA with a .544 OPS, has been rolled back to a more fitting utility role. Yangervis Solarte is basically the sole survivor of the infield, though that doesn’t mean there’ll be a shortage of familiar faces. Read the rest of this entry »

Spring training has started and that means fantasy draft season is underway. One of my favorite drafts is the slow burn of my annual Scoresheet league, which — perhaps to your dismay — I brief you all on every single year.

Here’s a link to our league page, where you can scope it out for yourself.

For those unaware, Scoresheet is rooted in real-life strategy, where you build a full team complete with backups, bullpens and if you choose, a handful of minor leaguers. You can have 30 players “active” at any time, and can simply designate anyone as “minor leaguer” if you choose not to use them. Unfortunately, I had to do that with Dayan Viciedo last year. Hey, for a low price I took a chance on cheap pop against left-handed pitchers. It didn’t pan out.

Read the rest of this entry »

We’ve started our annual Depth Chart Discussions, re-branded as Playing Time Battles for 2016. You can catch up on every team we’ve covered in the Playing Time Battles Summary post or following along using the Depth Chart Discussions tag.

No offense in the American League scored fewer runs than the White Sox last season, and as a result it stands to reason that the bats couldn’t support what was one of the finest starting rotations in all of baseball last year. The Pale Hose scored 22 fewer runs than the next worst (Rays, 644) team, and were also among the AL’s worst in walk rate (14th, 6.7%), isolated power (.130, last), batting average (.250, t-10th), wOBA (.300, last), wRC+ (86, last) and pretty much any other offensive statistic that one could muster.

It’s not hard to find the culprits.

Among the 11 White Sox hitters to accrue at least 200 plate appearances last year, just two — Jose Abreu and Adam Eaton — posted wOBA marks above .320. Geovany Soto checked in at .311 with an uber-weird .219/.301/.406 line, but he just barely cross the threshold in terms of PA. Melky Cabrera snuck in at .307, and everyone else was worse than the .300 AL average in 2015. Between those seven other players, the White Sox gave just under 3,000 plate appearances to below-average hitters last year, including 600-plus to Avisail Garcia and Alexei Ramirez, and nearly 500 to Adam LaRoche.

For a second it’s worth focusing on Cabrera and LaRoche, considering they were the two big-ticket items brought in to help prop up an offense that, quite frankly, was in the same position the season before. Instead, they combined to nearly 1,200 plate appearances of below-average production — all at a cool cost of $25 million, by the way. But while those two are still essentially promised full-time playing gigs in 2015 — Cabrera is actually probably the lesser of two evils in the outfield with Garcia — the team didn’t take upgrading the offense lightly. Read the rest of this entry »