Ahhh, Opening Day! It was a lovely lunch break at work yesterday as I flipped on the Mets game and celebrated the first full day of baseball. While it was of little surprise that the Mets lost, there was no shortage of drama around the league. More specifically, it took all of half a day to remind fantasy owners how silly it is to invest too heavily in closers on draft day.
Though my love for Carlos Carrasco is no longer a secret, I feel like I haven’t shared my optimism as much as I did for my favorite sleeper from last season, Andrew Cashner. However, I did first recommend him in deep leagues last summer (he failed to deliver, oops), discussed a bit of his intrigue when delving into the Indians rotation depth chart this year and then boldly predicted that he would outearn names like Danny Salazar, Justin Masterson and Corey Kluber to finish as the most valuable Indians starter. Now that he has officially won the fifth starter job in Cleveland, there is cause for celebration.
We have been told ad nauseam that spring training stats mean nothing. For the most part, this is true. As soon as you begin reading an article quoting a pitcher’s spring ERA or a hitter’s batting average, you could safely skip any analysis the author provides. But two years ago, with the help of Matt Swartz, I discovered that a pitcher’s strikeout percentage actually does carry some significance with regards to his regular season performance. Knowing this, we could look to the spring stats to identify which starters are punching out batters at a significantly higher rate than they have in the past. These make for an interesting group of breakout candidates.
There’s an intriguing battle taking place on the Nationals between two rather similar pitchers. Both Taylor Jordan and Tanner Roark debuted in Washington last year and impressed. Though Roark did post a sparkling ERA, neither one of them is getting a whole lot of preseason fanfare, perhaps because their strikeout rates don’t wow us. But the winner of this battle is likely to be a strong source of profit in NL-Only leagues, while offering the potential for mixed league value.
In 1996, Larry Labadini spent $251 of his $260 auction budget on hitting in the early years of LABR. That meant that his pitching staff was completely filled by $1 hurlers. Labadini finished fourth that year, but his strategy has forever been known as the Labadini Plan. I have been dying to try this in an auction, but never actually went through with it. It’s obviously high risk and there are always too many pitchers I want to own that cost more than a buck. One day though, it must happen.
As a reward for winning last year’s Tout Wars mixed online draft league, I was given the opportunity to join one of the three live auction leagues. Given that I hate snake drafts and auction day is one of the most enjoyable of the year, I couldn’t say yes fast enough. My next decision was to choose which league I preferred to join between the two mono leagues and the 15-team mixed. This was also pretty much a no-brainer. The AL-Only league is the famous and storied one featured in one of my favorite books, Fantasyland. It is home to many of the titans of the industry such as Ron Shandler, Larry Schechter, Jeff Erickson, Andy Behrens, Lawr Michaels, and of course, the man who writes for every website, including this one, Jason Collette. I soon learned that I would indeed be joining this league and yesterday was our auction high up in the McGraw Hill building in New York City.
Yesterday, I went beyond the obligatory 10 bold predictions and shared my bold hitter league leaders in each of the five standard fantasy categories. So today, I take on the pitchers. Although still difficult to hit on any, the pitchers are a bit easier to get right than the hitters for two reasons. One, there are two ratio categories, rather than one, so playing time expectations are less important. And two, there’s a larger luck component involved in pitching which makes the elite guys less of a lock to lead the league in any specific category.
In 2012, I hit on one of my 10 picks. Last year, I was demoted back to the minors after putting up an 0-fer. Let’s hope that lit a fire under my butt and results in a breakout predictions year.
Why stop at just 10 general bold predictions? For the third year, I am publishing my bold league leaders. These are even more difficult to be right on than the bold predictions. In 2012, I nailed exactly 0 of my 10 picks. Last year, I regained my prospect status, actually hitting on one with my predicted National League home run leader, Paul Goldschmidt. Remember, these are bold league leaders, so when running through names, I instantly disqualified a player if I didn’t personally believe the player would be considered bold to lead the league in said category.
Let’s see what I’ll be rooting for on the offensive side of the ball this season.
This is my fourth year posting my bold predictions and it is always one of the most enjoyable posts to put together. In 2011, I published a whopping 20 bold predictions, but only hit on 4 of them. I say only, but in reality, my benchmark or target correctness was always 20% to begin with. In 2012, I increased my batting average to a more respectable .300, hitting on 3 of my 10 predictions. I was again right on with 3 of my 10 last year. After consolidating my skills, am I due for a breakout season with 5 correct predictions?
Today marks the end of the 2014 Pod’s Pick series and we finish off with my favorite position, starting pitcher. This is where we find the most divergent opinions as an extra projected win or two or a slightly higher expected strikeout rate is enough to push a player up a whole bunch of spots in the rankings.
The starting pitcher edition of Pod’s Picks may help you find value or learn who to avoid at their current going rates. The bullish section will only include players from my top 78 (which assumes 6 1/2 starting pitchers active per team with 2 1/2 closers), while the bearish group will only include those whose RotoGraphs consensus is in the top 78.
