With the calendar flipping to May, it’s time to re-visit the catcher tiers. When you’re scoping out players to target in trades, this should help guide towards players of similar value/potential. You’re not always going to find owners amenable to trading, so when you’re unable to pry loose your top target, at least you can find someone reasonably comparable. Though the one month is but a small sample size, let’s see which backstops are hottest moving forward and which ones have cooled in value in the fantasy community’s eyes. Again, these tiers are based not just on recent performance, but expected value moving forward as well. Read the rest of this entry »

While you don’t normally put lofty expectations on your catchers to produce big-time fantasy numbers, the slow starts of players such as the Monteros, both Jesus and Miguel, as well as Salvador Perez, have been extremely frustrating for owners thus far. Knowing what they are capable of producing, no one wants to drop them from their roster, but there’s a definite need to pull them from the starting lineup and plug in a more productive option, even if just for a short time. If you have the bench space available to make such a move, then here are a couple of backstops who should be able to help you out. Don’t expect either to be your long term solution, but for right now, they’re worth a look. Read the rest of this entry »

I don’t know if anyone has told you people yet, but it’s only April and the data we are looking at right now comes from what is known around these parts as a very small sample size. What that means is that there are still five more months….yes, months….of baseball still and numerous players will receive anywhere from 400 to 500 more plate appearances between now and the end of the season. Take a moment. Drink that in. Think about it for a few seconds. And while you do, remember this: a bad trade reputation spreads a lot faster around your league than a good reputation. Unless your league is filled with complete idiots (and that may very well be the case for some of you), your testing of the waters with ludicrous trade offers that you yourself would never accept in a million years is going to potentially come back and bite you in the ass. Read the rest of this entry »

When he was in the Yankees farm system, Jesus Montero was considered one of the best hitting prospects in the minor leagues. He was strong. He was fierce. He had both the fire and the attitude. The Jesus was good. All that seemed to be missing was the purple leisure suit and the pony-tail. Oh yeah, and a glove. But the Yankees were almost willing to overlook the defensive shortcomings of their rising star if it meant getting that bat into the heart of their lineup. But a need for pitching took precedence and the Jesus was soon headed west to Seattle in exchange for a young, stud arm in Michael Pineda. Read the rest of this entry »

Let’s face it…nearly every guy who is sitting on your waiver wire is flawed in some way or another and the thought of using someone from the scrap heap on a full-time basis makes your fantasy skin crawl. But when Jason Heyward goes in for an appendectomy and you’ve already lost Yoenis Cespedes, Michael Bourn and Ryan Ludwick, desperate times call for desperate measures. Now obviously you’re not going to find one guy out there who is going to do it all for you, so your best bet is a platoon. And based on ownership percentages, it looks like you can solve some of your issues just by looking north of the border and using the DH spot from the Blue Jays. Read the rest of this entry »

While it’s still fairly early, we should probably take a moment and see if we can evaluate some of these early starts to the season, both good and bad. We’ve got a guy like John Buck who is clearly playing way over his head right now and most everyone knows that he is clearly a “find the sucker in your league and sell high to him right away” type player but there are a few catchers out there where the jury is still out. Hot starts, cold starts — which do you believe in and which do you not? Here’s my take on three backstops who you might be wondering about… Read the rest of this entry »

As usual, the primary waiver focus leans towards pitching with calamitous bullpens and hot young arms taking center stage. But what if your pitching isn’t the problem? Let’s say you’re flush with quality starters and secure closers and you don’t want to spend the bulk of your FAAB budget on Tony Cingrani or Edward Mujica. What about adding a little offense to secure your future? Leagues with short benches make it tough to stock a few good bats as most people tend to use their bench for starting streamers, but deeper leagues with more abundant bench spots allow you to do both. So here are a couple of guys who might be helpful adds as part-time injury fill-ins who could blossom into full-time fantasy stars. Read the rest of this entry »

Being that we’ve only completed about two weeks of the regular season, I like to preach patience above everything else when it comes to your fantasy team. Obviously there are some cases where waiver moves are a necessity, but when it comes to your struggling stars, patience is the key. Small sample sizes, law of averages, however you want to put it; so little time has passed with so much more to go and sometimes you just have to endure a couple of bad weeks to reap the quality benefits down the road. But not everyone subscribes to that theory and there are owners out there who are pained at the sight of their team near the bottom of the standings right now and have very itchy trigger fingers. If you are in need of help at the hot corner and you have one of those panicky owners sitting on Royals third baseman Mike Moustakas, now might be the time to pounce.

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If you polled 100 fantasy baseball owners a month ago and asked who would be the number one catcher through the first 10 games of the season, how many of them do you think would have said John Buck? One? Two? No way. Not even close. Not even if you limited your polling strictly to people in Flushing, Queens wearing a Mets jersey would you get that many. The guy was barely an afterthought heading into this season and anyone who actually drafted him, no doubt in the very last round of a very deep league, probably had already drafted Travis d’Arnaud a few rounds prior. But while his preseason value was the equivalent of a piece of gum on the bottom of your shoe, you’ve got to love what he’s done so far and you should be standing on the top of a mountain, singing his praises to the world. Read the rest of this entry »

Playing the waiver wire can be a tough thing this early in the season. For many, this first couple of weeks is about tweaking the roster, fine-tuning a few positions and keeping an eye out for anyone who may have been flying under the radar. For others, it’s about exhibiting patience and allowing your decisions to be based on more than just 30-odd at-bats. I tend to lean towards the latter, but obviously there are some instances where you need to make moves, whether it’s due to an injury or a sudden platoon situation developing. So if you’re going to be making moves, at least make sure you are picking someone up who will be there for the long haul. A guy off to a hot start is nice, but if he’s going to be riding the pine in two weeks, how helpful will he really be in the grand scheme of things? With that consideration in mind, here are two guys I was looking at recently… Read the rest of this entry »