It’s been a long time since Justin Morneau was anything close to a sure fantasy option. 2010 drafters had to decide which Morneau was the real thing, the player who hit .311/.390/.575 with 21 HR in the first half of 2009 or the player who faded badly down the stretch, killing a viable MVP campaign with an .077/.178/.179 September. Those who bought into his potential in 2010 were richly rewarded with princely production — .358/.465/.648 with 11 HR — in exactly half a season of work. Read the rest of this entry »

As Eno mentioned earlier this morning, we here at Fangraphs are engaged in a fight to the death with The Hardball Times for supremacy in Fantasy Squared’s THT vs FG charity league. We drafted some 330 players last night, narrowly finishing before the beginning of the Mariners/A’s game — ok, that’s an exaggeration, but it did clock in at nearly four hours.

First, some of the nuts and bolts about how the draft played out. It’s a 12-team league with $260 budgets, of which just $48 was left on the table. Of the $3072 spent on players, $991 of it was spent on pitchers, which amounts to less than a third of all spending. While that may not seem like much, it is actually slightly more than would have been allocated to the nine pitching spots if the money had been evenly distributed, especially since some teams used one or more bench spots for extra pitchers. 138 pitchers were drafted with the average cost settling just over $7; interestingly, the median value was lower at just $4. Read the rest of this entry »

I almost wish I played in a league where Box Jump and Leg Press were scoring categories, because at least then I would know where to draft Yoenis Cespedes. There’s surely more to the Cuban import than just what he showed in his YouTube video that went viral earlier this offseason, but exactly whether he’ll be able to translate his physical prowess into practical production is still very much an open debate. Read the rest of this entry »

I have to confess, the Cubs’ decision to move Jeff Samardzija into the rotation puzzles me a little bit. I certainly understand that if a pitcher is equally effective in the rotation and in the bullpen, they have more value and a greater impact in the rotation, but the number of pitchers who can actually pitch equally well in both situations is relatively small and may or may not include the Shark.

It isn’t as though the Cubs are dying for a starter, quite the opposite in fact. Matt Garza and Ryan Dempster are locked in at the top and returning from an injury-shortened 2011 is Randy Wells. The departure of both Carlos Zambrano and Sean Marshall netted the team Chris Volstad and Travis Wood respectively, and Paul Maholm arrived after being thrown overboard by the Pirates. That gives the team six players with starting experience even before Samardzija is added to the mix. Read the rest of this entry »

Keeping up with some of my colleagues here at Rotographs, here are three of the players I’m avoiding in drafts this season.

Delmon Young*

I know Young is a popular sleeper, and I know he’s absolutely setting Florida alight with his .485/.500/.970 line with 4 HR, but I am not buying in. If anything, his 33 great at bats enforce my concerns with Young, namely that while he’s entirely capable of having a burst of tremendous performance, he can’t sustain it over the course of a full season. He had one of those bursts as soon as he arrived in Detroit, hitting .324/.336/.481 with 4 HR in just over 100 PAs, but the other shoe dropped as he hit a 4-for-43 skid just before the end of the season. Read the rest of this entry »

Managing the disabled list isn’t often the difference between winning and losing a league, but if it’s done poorly, it can leave owners hurting for bench space and restrict the ability to grab sleepers or move out a slumping player. This time of year, if used well, the DL can be used almost as an extra draft slot. Grabbing an already injured player, then using that vacated spot to pull a top option off the wire gives owners a way to fill a weakness that emerged during the draft.

There is a huge caveat here: I don’t recommend this plan for those who only have one DL spot. At all. The unpredictability of injuries — I see you Miguel Cabrera — means that giving over the only injury refuge on the roster to someone like a Brett Anderson or Dallas Braden produces the wicked choice of dropping the newly injured player, dropping the long-term injury despite the sunk cost already incurred, or playing with a shortened bench. Survivable? Sure, but far less than ideal. Read the rest of this entry »

Our contribution to FantasyPros’ consensus rankings was filed today, and while my own tiers are still forthcoming, now is as good a time as any to take a look at my colleagues’ rankings. Having pitching as deep as it is this year is a mixed blessing. On the one hand, it affords players the luxury of waiting until the middle or late rounds to build their staffs and means that an error in the first couple rounds — losing someone like Clayton Kershaw to injury for example, not that I think Kershaw is terribly risky — isn’t likely to be a fatal blow.

On the other hand, it makes doing these rankings virtually impossible. Who is the fifth best pitcher in the NL? Matt Cain? Zack Greinke? Cole Hamels? Solid candidates all, but picking The One is a tough ask. Generally speaking, I’m in line right with Eno, Jeff, Mike, and Zach, but here are a few things I wanted to highlight ahead of my own contribution. Read the rest of this entry »

Mock draft season is starting to draw to a close and real drafts are starting to fill our calendars, but we here at Fangraphs — with the help of a few friends — put together another staff mock for reference’s sake. It was a 12-team, 23-round mixed mock with 2 SP, 2 RP, and 5 P slots, with the vast majority of those general pitching slots filled by starters.

My personal NL SP ranks will be up next week, but in the meantime, here’s how they fell in our latest mock. As always, the parenthetical note is listed as (round.pick). Read the rest of this entry »

Calling Mark Buehrle a sleeper feels somehow wrong. He absolutely fits the criteria; he’s being drafted late in drafts with potential for a strong year, but he isn’t exactly under-the-radar the way someone like Bryan LaHair is. He’s less undiscovered and more unfairly unloved.

No matter how you parse the data, there is no way around the fact that Buehrle is an absolute workhorse. Since he came into the league in 2000, no one has more 200 IP seasons than Buehrle, who has never failed to throw 200 innings in a season where he started more than three games. Durability is one of those traits that benefit real teams more than fantasy ones, and while it’s certainly his most heralded trait, it isn’t the only thing he brings to the table. Read the rest of this entry »

Michael Barr put up a great piece earlier this week on the siren song of spring stats, and why fans and fantasy players should enjoy the ride this time of year rather than worrying about diminished velocity or a 1-for-9 start. That said, not everything that happens this time of year can be chalked up to irrelevance; especially where playing time is concerned, now is the time that teams are a little more open with their plans for how they would like the season to go.

Most of the high- or even middle-round draft picks for most leagues aren’t going to be subject to these shocks, but the difference between a good sleeper and a bad sleeper can often be whether they get enough playing time to show what they can do. To that end, here are three players who got good news for their potential playing time this week. Read the rest of this entry »