For the past few years, we’ve grown accustomed to a steady diet of high on-base, high-average, moderate power output from Billy Butler. In the early going, 2014 hasn’t been nearly as tasty.
Terrible breakfast puns aside, Butler’s numbers are down across the board, and anyone lining him up in a util slot has got to be concerned. So is Butler a buy low or a guy you should be trying to get rid of?
In my FanGraphs+ write up of Michael Brantley, I wrote, “Michael Brantley out-earned Bryce Harper this year. That is probably the last time I’ll be able to type that sentence, but it does give you a sense of how much value Brantley created compared to his cost.”
Brantley broke double digit home runs for the first time in 2013 and set a new career high in stolen bases, as well. He put up solid R and RBI numbers (more combined than Harper, for example) and his .284 average was enough to help any fantasy team. And 2014 is shaping up to be even better.
In an industry league I joined this off-season, I inherited a team with Jean Segura as my starting SS and biggest trade chip. Having never been a Segura fan, I started shopping the Brewer speedster, and found myself relatively flush with offers. In a 20 team league, I think at least eight owners inquired, and deals were pretty solid.
This week, I finally traded Segura, and the return was not what it would have been three or four months ago. So what happened?
If you happen to be a FG+ subscriber, and you happen to have visited Justin Masterson’s page, and you happen to have read his 2014 FanGraphs+ Profile, you saw these lines: “Fantasy owners will look at his 2010-11-12-13 roller coaster and be nervous. I’ll be buying at the discounted price and laughing all the way to the fantasy-value bank.”
As the author of those lines, I feel it is my responsibility to address what has been an all-around putrid start to the season from the supposed ace of a playoff-contending staff. Besides, I own Masterson across multiple leagues and my own nerves would probably benefit from some analysis.
A few weeks back, I talked a bit about holding or targeting players with season long injuries in ottoneu leagues. The idea in that piece was to treat injured players like Prospects – you can’t be sure when they will be back, nor can you be confident in how they will perform.
When players are underpriced (say you have a $1 Patrick Corbin), you might as well hold them (or target them in trades). But when prices rise to more typical levels (say a $10 Corbin), there may be a different path forward, particularly for pitchers returning from Tommy John surgery.
If it feels like you have spent every moment of Spring Training 2014 hoping that the next article you read is not about a pitcher you own (or one who plays for your favorite MLB team), you are not alone. The Braves have been hard hit, but they are not the only ones, and the latest pitcher to go down hit close to home for me.
Patrick Corbin has been a personal favorite for about a year now. It was just over two months ago that I implored you all to buy on Corbin and since I only give advice that I intend to take myself, the Diamondback hurler has found his way onto the majority of my teams. This seemed like a great thing until the last 24 hours or so, and suddenly I am left trying to figure out what to do with him.
Bold predictions week is one of my favorite weeks of the year. As any of my friends will tell you, I love to make outlandish claims with little to no evidence to back them up, and then refuse to change them when faced with logic. But, now that I am an adult with a kid and a job and that kind of adult-y stuff, I need to be more rational most of the time.
For one week a year, though, I get to throw moderation to the wind, go with my gut, and drop some bombs. Of course, I love logical thought too much to not have reason behind my predictions, but they’ll be bold…oh, they’ll be bold.
This is not a fun article to write. Although writing it may be better than how I got here. For the last few weeks, I have been telling you how I lay out my plans for auctions, and for the last few years, executing those plans has resulted in some terrific fantasy seasons. And then Sunday, March 9 happened.
It was set to be a busy day, with back-to-back three hour auctions scheduled, but was made even worse when I woke up with some sort of terrible stomach virus. Instead of hanging out with friends and auctioning, I was doing my best to grab the players I wanted between (and sometimes during) mad dashes for the bathroom. The resulting rosters were not what I had planned on, which is unfortunate for my fantasy seasons, but convenient for writing an article on how to recover from a failed auction.
Or is that the victori? Either way, it’s definitely there, and you don’t even have to squint too hard to see it.
When the OF rankings were posted yesterday, I was aghast to see Shane Victorino ranked a lowly 52. Ok, maybe aghast is a strong word. But he was definitely behind a handful of guys I think he should be ahead of. And in the spirit of open discourse and wanting to justify my own love for the Red Sox outfielder, I set out to validate my disagreement.
Last week over the course of two nights, the Second FanGraphs staff league held our annual auction. As always, I entered with a simple strategy – stay calm, nab the one or two big names you need, but mostly let the rest of the league cash out early, and clean up with sleepers and guys who slip through the cracks.
That didn’t work out so well this time. You can see the way the auction went here. If you scroll through far enough, you’ll see that those sleepers didn’t sleep and the guys falling through the cracks didn’t fall that far. An overabundance of caution led to moderate early prices and too much cash to spend later. So what’s an owner to do?
