Prior to the season, I offered three players I didn’t want on any of my teams — those designed to do well, leagues with rewards for horrific play are another matter entirely — and I stuck to my guns, taking not one of the three for any of my teams. In fact, I don’t believe I used any of them in any of my daily leagues either, though that’s much tougher to prove. In any case, I didn’t make a habit out of it.

So, in the interest of accountability, here are the three players I said I wouldn’t draft along with how they did this season.

Read the rest of this entry »

It’s playoff time. Some leagues have been in playoff mode for a week or two, but with under a month left in real baseball’s regular season, the vast majority of head-to-head leagues have hit the final few matches. It’s this time of year that match-ups become exceedingly important when weighing waiver wire moves, especially in redraft leagues, where anyone and everyone is fair game to drop from here on out for the right addition. Note: This does not mean dropping Ian Kinsler (.182/.207/.327 with a single home run, five runs scored, and three RBI since August 26) is a winning strategy, but if he can’t right the ship against the Indians and Mariners, I don’t love his chances to figure it out in the Rangers’ remaining 13 games against the A’s and the Angels. Read the rest of this entry »

Though he was originally called up as a full-time starter in 2007, Kyle Kendrick has been anything but full-time since 2009. In 2007 and 2008, Kendrick made 51 appearances and 50 of them were starts, but just 67 of his next 107 appearances were as a starter, a rate that has been even lower the past two seasons as Kendrick started 15 of his 34 games in 2011 and 19 of 31 this season. Needless to say, this variable usage pattern makes Kendrick a tough player to draft and hold for an entire season.

As far as this season is concerned, the only obstacle to ownership bigger than Kendrick’s usage was his performance. In the first half of the season, Kendrick allowed opposing hitters to rack up an .822 OPS, which left him with a 4.89 ERA and a 1.48 WHIP and rendered him all but useless. An effective stint in the bullpen later, and Kendrick has emerged as a far better pitcher than he was in the first half, posting a 2.95 ERA and 1.01 WHIP over his six starts in August; his last four outings in the month were even better as he went 4-0 with a 1.23 ERA and a 0.75 WHIP. The .198 BABIP he rode to those results may not stick around, but Kendrick’s string of successful outings isn’t just some mirage. Beating the Marlins and Mets may not be the world’s toughest task, but beating the Nationals and Brewers — the best offense of the bunch — is a better example of what Kendrick has been quietly doing lately, the question is what changed. Read the rest of this entry »

Depending a little on the quality of the farm system in question, being the second best prospect in a team’s minor league system isn’t a bad position to be in. Assuming the system in question is average or above, being the second best prospect means having a great shot to make the majors and a decent shot at being an everyday player. What it does not mean, however, is the wider name recognition that comes with being the big dog in the minors. Trevor Bauer’s early season dominance of the minor leagues meant that the #FreeTrevorBauer hashtags came out every time a Diamondbacks starter faltered even slightly. He eventually did win his freedom, only to go 1-2 with a 6.06 ERA and a 1.65 WHIP in the majors before heading back to Triple-A. I still have pie-in-the-sky hopes and expectations for Bauer’s future, especially as he’s back in Reno making a mockery of PCL and its so called “hitters parks”, but the future of the Diamondbacks’ pitching staff is hardly dependent on just one man.

There was no such clamor for Tyler Skaggs, despite the fact that he’s been nearly as good as Bauer in the minors this season. Their WHIP and ERA figures are close — Skaggs’ WHIP was slightly better at 1.22 compared to Bauer’s 1.30, but Bauer’s 2.39 ERA bests Skaggs’ 2.87 — though Bauer’s incredible strikeout numbers give him the leg up on Skaggs in terms of overall potential. Skaggs does hold one major advantage over Bauer as the fantasy season hits the stretch run: He’s the only one of the pair currently in the major leagues. Read the rest of this entry »

Stephen Drew (ESPN: 14 percent owned; Yahoo!: 19 percent owned)

How much venom has been lobbed at Stephen Drew by jilted fantasy owners over the years? Like Francisco Liriano and any number of other fantasy femme fatales, Drew — through no actual fault of his own — seems to have hoodwinked owners over and over again, sometimes baiting them into taking him when they should have passed and sometimes doing the exact opposite.

He broke onto the fantasy scene in his rookie season with a .316/.357/.517 line, then collapsed the next season with a .238/.313/.370 line in his first full year with the Diamondbacks. If that were the totality of his career, Drew would be just another flash in the pan that didn’t work out long term. Instead, here are Drew’s wRC+ by year prior to this year: 115, 72, 107, 88, 113, 89. It’s that up and down motion, his ability to be 13 percent above league average one year and 11 percent under it the next, that has made Drew such a tough player to draft and such a maddening one to own. Read the rest of this entry »

Brandon Belt (ESPN: 15 percent owned; Yahoo!: 18 percent owned)

Were it not for another left fielder in the midst of PED issues, the chatter in the Bay might well be about Brandon Belt finally looking like the player many expected him to be this season. The expectations laid on the 24-year-old may have been too high given his age and lack of experience, but his performance in July (.186/.266/.214 with nary a home run) failed to reach the most realistic or even pessimistic projections. August, however, has been far kinder to the Giants lefty as he has hit .450/.500/.625 in 44 PAs. Read the rest of this entry »

Manny Machado (ESPN: 0 percent owned; Yahoo!: 3 percent owned)

The first round of the 2010 draft has already produced five major leaguers: Bryce Harper, Drew Pomeranz, Matt Harvey, Yasmani Grandal, and Chris Sale, plus supplemental picks Mike Olt and Chance Ruffin. Soon, the third overall pick in that draft, the Orioles’ Manny Machado, will join them as the sixth first rounder – and third of the first five picks in that draft – to make the jump to the Show. Read the rest of this entry »

Missing out on Randall Delgado in all of the Ryan Dempster-related mess was surely something of a disappointment for the Cubs, but credit the Cubs’ brass for getting a piece of value in Arodys Vizcaino. The 21-year-old Vizcaino was Baseball America’s 40th best prospect heading into the season and while Tommy John surgery will keep him from building on that promise this season, it matters little to a franchise whose aspirations are for the future rather than the present, and all it cost them was the National League’s fifth best pitcher in the month of July.

Paul Maholm started the season poorly, giving up six runs in both of his first two starts and striking out just four to help soften the blow to owners’ ERA, but then seemed to find a groove. Over his next four starts, Maholm looked like a totally different pitcher, giving up no more than a run per start and actually racking up a few strikeouts. He regressed as expected, though his results were more middling than actually bad, until he was absolutely rocked by the Diamondbacks on June 23.

It was on the back of that outing in which he gave up six earned runs in just over three innings of work without recording a single strikeout that the new Maholm emerged. Over his next 45 innings, Maholm allowed just five runs, walked just nine hitters and has struck out 32, good for a 6.4 K/9 over that span. Sure, 6.4 isn’t actually a good K/9 mark, but almost a full strikeout higher than his career rate.

It’s Maholm’s inability to miss bats that makes me especially wary about his move to Atlanta. The Braves aren’t particularly adept at turning groundballs — Maholm’s specialty — into outs. They’re allowing a higher team BABIP than the Cubs are by a full 10 points, and much of that comes from their outfield defense, which is certainly above average. The move to Turner Field from Wrigley will help Maholm in the sense that he has given up far more home runs to righties than he has to lefties — nine to three so far this year — and his new park is particularly tough for right-handed hitters to homer in, but I wonder if his platoon splits will become more exaggerated in his new home.

While Maholm gives up more home runs to righties, he actually performs much better against them overall, allowing them a .240/.306/.388 line compared to the .304/.377/.476 line he allows to lefties. While Wrigley suppresses left-handed home runs especially early in the season to the tune of a 95 left-handed home run park factor,  Turner is far more favorable with a left handed home run park factor of 104. Don’t be surprised if Maholm gets even tougher on righties now that he doesn’t have to worry as much about giving up as many cheap home runs, but equally don’t be surprised if the .853 OPS he allows to lefties climbs even closer to .900 with the shorter home porch.

It is to Maholm’s credit that there isn’t one specific thing he’s changed with respect to his pitch usage that has precipitated this run of excellent form, but it does make me feel like we’ve seen this from Maholm before. Even in the seasons where he’s a solidly above average pitcher on the whole, he tends to fluctuate between runs of being average and then being well above average rather than pitching at or near the same level all year. The takeaway here isn’t that Maholm is going to be a bad pitcher in Atlanta or that owners should be dropping Maholm and picking up Casey Coleman or anything like that, but if there’s someone in your leagues that’s hurting for pitching, Maholm might bring back an oversized return with a month’s worth of good starts bolstering his resume. Theo Epstein and company did an admirable job transmuting Maholm into a solid return, now might be a good time for fantasy owners to do the same before the other shoe drops.

The center of the baseball world seems to be South Beach right now, though perhaps not for the reasons Marlins’ fans would have hoped. Admit all the wheeling and dealing of the front office, there are a pair of interesting fantasy options.

Justin Ruggiano (ESPN: 45 percent owned; Yahoo!: 24 percent owned)

Ruggiano came up from Triple-A swinging and for the first time in his major league career, good things started happening when he made contact. Counting from the first game he started this season on June 2, Ruggiano’s OPS has never dipped below 1.000, and yet, the Marlins’ outfielder was one of ESPN’s most dropped players over the last week. After multiple stints as one of the biggest risers, Ruggiano hit a 2-for-19 skid and enough people cut bait that he went from virtually unavailable in ESPN leagues to ownership rates under 50 percent; he’s consistently been more available on Yahoo!. Read the rest of this entry »

Replacing Joey Votto is something of a misnomer, since unless Andrew McCutchen is just sitting on the wire, any other player picked up to replace Votto is going to be a downgrade. At this point, those who have sullenly placed their star first baseman on the DL have two tasks: Limit the damage and pray for a quick recovery. The latter is between you and the vengeful, capricious fantasy gods, but the former can be helped. The best available option is going to depend entirely on specific leagues, as there are a couple good options that are available in about 50 percent of leagues, but each may not be available in any given league. Noted in parentheses are each player’s ownership, listed as (ESPN owned; Yahoo owned).  Read the rest of this entry »