With the news that Jose Reyes is being activated from the disabled list here on Wednesday, there’s a fairly good chance that whoever owns him in your league might have a shortstop  to send back to the player pool. Of course, if your Reyes owner is like me and landed Jean Segura early on, then chances are, you won’t be seeing the extra help on your waiver wire. If that’s the case, then perhaps there’s someone else out there whom you haven’t investigated just yet, so here are a couple of suggestions. Read the rest of this entry »

“Winners never quit and quitters never win,” is probably one of those old adages you had shouted at you numerous times growing up. It doesn’t matter if you played a competitive sport, were in the math league or on the chess team (think I’ve covered our base demographic here, no?), you’ve heard it countless times. And if you haven’t, that’s probably because you weren’t paying enough attention and why you’re now living in your mom’s basement, working some dead end job, using a fake name and email to troll on the internet. But I digress. We’re here to talk about quitters — quitters in fantasy baseball leagues, obviously, not in life. Read the rest of this entry »

With the start of every month, we like to adjust the position tiers to help guide you towards expected risers and steer you away from some of the expected fallers. But obviously, the beginning of the month doesn’t always coincide with the best time for waivers, so I thought a mid-month stock report might help put guys on your radar that may not necessarily have been there before. Or, conversely, take them off your radar to save you some aggravation. Not every catcher will be mentioned so if your favorite doesn’t appear here, it’s not a personal slight. But feel free to mention him in the comments should he actually be doing something notable. So without further ado… Read the rest of this entry »

When Eric Young joins the Mets in Atlanta on Wednesday, a lot more is going to change than just his address and uniform. His playing time, the Mets leadoff situation and, of course, his fantasy ownership percentages are all due for an increase thanks to the trade that sent minor league pitcher Collin McHugh west to Colorado in exchange for the speedy outfielder. Perhaps because he is not a marquee name and all Mets eyes were glued to Zack Wheeler’s debut, the deal fell somewhat under the radar, so if you’re in need of a quick burst of speed and he’s available in your league, then a waiver claim is definitely recommended. Read the rest of this entry »

When the popular, based-on-actual-events cinematic classic Revenge of the Nerds and it’s less-appealing set of sequels failed to break down the barrier that existed between jocks and nerds, it seemed that all hope was lost. But when fantasy football went mainstream and those very same jocks were looking at things like yards per carry and target percentage, it appeared as though a breakthrough had been made. And when many of those jocks spilled into the fantasy baseball world and began studying things like BABIP and strikeout rates, you could almost hear a chorus of angels sing as the only thing being stuffed into lockers these days were jackets and copies of The Book. The bullying had finally stopped, or so we had thought. But just as in life when one bully is finally brought down, another seeks to take his place and us nerds who find statistics and the fantasy game so appealing are being victimized once again. And the worst part of it, is that it is being done by many of our own. Read the rest of this entry »

The Kansas City Royals have been one of the most enigmatic teams in the last few years. Not because they’re small market or because they’ve been a perennial punching bag for the rest of the American League, but because expectations have been on the rise for some time now and they consistently fail to deliver. Once the worst farm system in baseball, the Royals were suddenly flush with all of this great, young talent. We saw the debuts of players like Eric Hosmer and Mike Moustakas and watched as they added key pieces like Lorenzo Cain and Alcides Escobar. They hadn’t quite put it all together over the last two seasons, but this year, with a revamped rotation, the Royals became darlings in the American League and some even thought they could compete for a wild card this year. But while James Shields and Jeremy Guthrie did their part early on, the hitters failed miserably. The young studs were a disaster and after a modest 14-10 April, things spun out of control as the Royals went 8-20 in May and opened June 1-2. Manager Ned Yost was at a loss. He shuffled the lineup dozens of times without success. They fired their hitting coach and replaced him with the legendary George Brett, hoping that some Royals royalty would jump start the offense. But instead, it was the nerds who got things going for the Royals. Yost put the lineup decision into the hands of the sabermetric boys and the next thing we knew, Kansas City was on a six-game winning streak. Read the rest of this entry »

The Yasiel Puig hype is out of control. After a hot spring, he landed on everyone’s fantasy radar and now here we are, four games into his major league career and already we are shipping his cleats off to Cooperstown and engraving the plaque. No one is screaming “small sample size” and no one is referring back to the throngs of ballplayers who made a big splash to open their careers yet did nothing to follow it up. Instead, we’re being inundated with comparisons to already well-established superstars, insane statistical projections and lists of Cuban-born players who have found success in Major League Baseball. In fact, the amount of Cuban history that I have seen, heard and read about in the past week is overwhelming. So much so that I have actually decided to try out a brand new strategy for my fantasy team. I have decided to become a fantasy racist. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s time to update the catcher tiers again as we enter the month of June and look towards closing out the first half of the season soon. Two months in, things are starting to take shape a little more. The sample size of data is more plentiful and we’ve now seen those who started off slow begin to heat up finally while some of those hot starts have cooled significantly. Let’s take a look and see where everyone is falling into line. Read the rest of this entry »

I can’t remember which of my fellow RotoGraphers it was who recommended the movie The Girl Next Door while we were baking in the Arizona sun back in February, but it was on the other night and I decided to give it a shot. What I realized first, after the obviously increasing level of hotness of Elisha Cuthbert, was that Hollywood would be dangerous if they ever had an original idea. But as I sat and watched this blatant knock-off of the 1983 coming-of-age classic Risky Business, the line in the title of this post was spoken and I found it quite apropos for the fantasy baseball world. Often times, we tend to overpay for certain players based on personal preferences or just basic preseason hype and it’s always important to take a step back later on down the road and ask yourself if it was worth it. Today we’ll do that with Cardinals first baseman Allen Craig. Read the rest of this entry »

As I look through the standings of my various roto leagues, the common thread that ties them all together is the ease at which points can be accrued just by boosting your stolen base totals. In one league, less than 10 stolen bases separate fourth place in the category from ninth place. In two others, 12 steals could make up an eight-point difference. If people love the strategy of streaming pitchers so often, what’s the harm in streaming in a stolen base guy for a week or two? Obviously, those who are left on your wire are, more or less, one-category helpers, but for just a temporary boost, who cares? There’s nothing wrong with a quick fix if you know that’s all you’re looking for. Take your steals and…pardon the pun….run! Here are a pair of guys who fit the bill perfectly… Read the rest of this entry »