Time for another edition of Waiver Wire here at RotoGraphs. I’ll leave the obvious (Justin Smoak “on the water“) out and try to delve a little deeper.

Clay Buchholz | SP | Red Sox (43% owned)
It’s a little too early to put too much stock into the young Red Sox hurler’s high K-rate (9.72), which is the best of his young career. By the same token, the sample size is too small to depend on his nice ERA or above-average groundball rate. So let’s instead look at his pitching mix. His velocity is up across the board, and he’s using his slider a little more and his fastball a little less. Linear weights say that’s a good sign, given the values of his fastball (-19.1 runs career) and slider (+6.4 runs career) respectively. What is a little strange even in a young season is his curveball use, which is down to a career low (8%). Considering he almost threw it a quarter of the time in 2008, and it’s listed as his best pitch by many, that’s a little worrisome. No matter, the curve is still getting a good whiff rate (17.4% so far), as are his other two off-speed pitches (22+% for the slider and change). He’s locating the fastball well (64.7% strike percentage), it’s just not getting any whiffs (7.6%). Perhaps he should use it even less.

Tom Gorzelany | SP | Cubs (4% owned)
It looks like Gorzelany is in the rotation to stay – at least until the mercurial Lou Piniella changes his mind yet again and moves Carlos Zambrano back to the rotation. Gorz (seriously, this guy needs a nickname) seems to be doing it by relying on the slide-piece a little more than usual. Last year, he threw the pitch about 16% of the time, and this year that percentage is up over 30%. Again, the linear weights agree with the decision, as his slider has historically been his only positive pitch (+5.7 runs career). He also got 16% whiffs on it last year, up to 19% this year. It’s hard to tell what his true fastball/cutter relationship is (the systems are a little wonky on that going back over the years), but his mix has changed, and all systems are go. Other than home runs (zero allowed), the luck stats have been in his favor, and his mid-3s xFIP seems to be the best guidepost. It looks like the Cubs found something here.

Ryan Raburn | OF | Tigers (2% owned)
With the news that Carlos Guillen is yet again heading to the most comfortable of places for him – the DL – there are some ABs up for grabs in Detroit. Raburn was already taking at-bats at second base (he’s started there three times), and while callup Brennan Boesch has some promise, the bet here is that the veteran team leans on Raburn in the meantime. While it’s a little worrisome that his walk rate is down and his strikeout rate is up, Raburn is also suffering from a poor BABIP (.267), and it’s early going. The only significant stat right now, swing rate, is only up 2%, and he’s reaching less. Look for all around good play (especially against lefties) eventually and more ABs in the short term.

Once a pitcher holds the Yankees offense to two runs in six innings, fantasy owners sit up and take notice. In their defense, the 39% of Yahoo fantasy owners that still don’t own Dallas Braden have an excuse. For most of his career, Braden has had a strikeout rate closer to five than to the ML average (usually in the high sixes). That poor strikeout rate hasn’t been mitigated by a nice groundball rate either – Braden only burns worms at a 37.6% rate over his career. In fact, it’s hard to tell exactly what he’s done right, except a better-than-average walk rate (2.87 career) and a good changeup (+12.9 runs career).

Well, something’s changed, hasn’t it? Change is the key word here because Braden’s success this year has come from eschewing his fastball (-17.9 runs career) in favor of that changeup. So far this year, he’s throwing the changepiece 32% of the time (compared to 21.4% and 20.1% over the past two years). Just judging by the linear weights, that’s been a good idea, but there’s more to it. His changeup is getting a 22.1% whiff rate this year (anything around 20% is generally thought of as elite – for comparison’s sake, Johan Santana’s changeup had a 17.4% whiff rate last year). Braden’s fastball? A 7% whiff rate. What’s even better is that the fastball only got a 4.4% whiff rate last year – so using his changeup more has made his fastball even better.

Finally, we get to today’s start against the Yankees. Braden threw 81 pitches, and 21 were changeups, for a slightly-below average 26% for him. Even today’s number was above last year’s level, and it’s important to note that these numbers came from a crude Gameday tally, which may have classified some pitches a little differently. In any case, Braden is still going to the changeup more often, even though the 21 changeups today garnered only one whiff. A quick (sanity) check of last year’s whiff totals on the pitch shows that he got 13.7% whiff rates on the pitch last year in a larger sample size. It is reasonable to assume that using the changeup, and its better whiff rates, more often than his fastball is a good choice for Braden and that it will lead to better results.

It seems that Alex Rodriguez ran across the mound while heading back to first after a foul ball in today’s game. Some pitchers – like Braden – take offense to a player touching his mound. The event was timed to coincide with some discussion about Billy Beane saying that Braden had moxie. Well, Braden showed his moxie by barking at Rodriguez and showing him who was king of the hill, and then willing the Athletics to a victory despite two home runs and a triple play by the Yankees. Hopefully, he’ll combine that moxie with continued focus on his changeup. Fantasy owners will rejoice.

We’ll do a tiered approach here. It’s what we do.

Ervin Santana | SP | Los Angeles (54% owned)
While the ownership numbers may be perplexing (he’s owned in all of my leagues), there’s reason for hope when it comes to the other Santana (soon to be the other other Santana). Most of the signs are looking good for Santana – his strikeout rate is up, his walk rate is down, and he’s even sporting a career-high ground ball rate. The only worrisome thing might be the reduced effectiveness of his slider as measured by his linear weights. It can’t be the half-MPH that he’s lost on the pitch, can it? In any case, he’s benefiting from a career-best 38.9% contact rate on pitches outside the zone, which doesn’t seem like it can continue when seen in the face of his career 58.4% rate. Perhaps people will start whiffing a little more on his pitches in the zone (98.8% !). It’s a strange mix right now, but since he’s healthy he should be on more rosters.

Casey Kotchman | 1B | Seattle (6% owned)
Paradoxically, it took a move to one of the toughest parks in the league for Kotchman to break out his career-best ISO (.310). Of course, that number only stabilizes around 450 plate appearances, so we shouldn’t read too much into it. Instead, let’s look at the numbers that stabilize the quickest: swing rates. Because they are based on pitch-by-pitch data, swing rates have a larger sample size in the early going. Kotchman is swinging at a career-low rate (35% this year, 45.4% career), and this has lead to the best K/BB ratio of his career (1.5). The strikeout percentage is below 10% and good for 25th-best in the league in the early going. That sort of ueber-patience seems to be serving him well. Don’t buy into the power, but the patience may end up leading to a good batting average and good run production, given the dearth of offense in Seattle.

Bud Norris | SP | Houston (5% owned)
(I know, the tiers are a little off.) Ever since Cistulli wrote this masterpiece about Norris’ nice outside-the-zone whiff rate, he has been an interesting character here in the green-and-eggshell. The secondary statistics for Norris are actually sort of frightening – he has an otherworldly strikeout rate (14.09 K/9), a disastrous walk rate (8.22 BB/9), and an insert-bad-adjective here groundball rate (23.8%). Group these rates with his zero HR/9 and you have an early-season special – an ERA (3.52) between his FIP (2.60) and his xFIP (4.03). That might be a strange feat – if it were to happen over a full season. I’d say some of those fly balls will begin to leave Minute Maid park shortly and that the xFIP is the number to follow, but that’s still a decent number that deserves attention. Maybe Norris will split the difference between his good start and bad start the next time he climbs the hill.

Ownership numbers courtesy Yahoo Fantasy Baseball.

Time to take a look at the shortstops and see if anything changed in the first couple of weeks. I’ll be alternating between the middle infield spots every weekend, just as an fyi. We’ll also use projected wOBA one last week.

The Big Four:
1. Hanley Ramirez, Florida (.410 wOBA)
2. Troy Tulowitzki, Colorado (.393 wOBA)
3. Jimmy Rollins, Philadelphia (.316 wOBA)
4. Derek Jeter, New York AL (.390 wOBA)

Jeter moves into the top group here. This is not because of his batting average – it’s a little BABIP-inflated even for a player with a player with a .360 career BABIP. He moves into the top because he’s showing (so far) that he’s still rejuvenated. The two stolen bases and two home runs in 10 games show that he’s still going to take off on the basepaths and that a 15/20 season looks probable. Add that to all his runs and RBI in that lineup, and his batting average, and you’ve got a top player once again. Rollins could drop out of this group – his injury doesn’t help, and may affect his steals totals this year – but he’s still a top option until he shows that he’s not going to attempt many steals when he returns.

The Next Best Thing:
5. Jose Reyes, New York NL (.342 wOBA)
6. Stephen Drew, Arizona (.321 wOBA)
7. Jason Bartlett, Tampa Bay (.389 wOBA)
8. Rafael Furcal, Los Angeles NL (.316 wOBA)
9. Elvis Andrus, Texas (.322 wOBA)

There’s a lot of movement in this tier. Reyes moves to the front – and is the best candidate for replacing Rollins in the top tier – because he’s healthy. Two stolen base attempts in the first ten games is not enough to move him higher, but it still counts as a good sign. Once he starts taking off more, and shows a little more life in his bat, Reyes should re-join the top group.

Like most of us predicted, Bartlett is indeed regressing. But if he gets his walk rate back up to historical levels, the hope is still there that he can put a nice batting average and plus steals together at a tough position. Drew moves ahead of him because he looks like he is finally putting together the better parts of his game at one time. Once the line drives re-appear, he could have a career year. Furcal joins the group more because he’s playing every day and has four stolen bases than because of his gaudy batting average. His upside looks a little like Bartlett’s at this point in their respective careers.

Andrus joining the middle group may be premature, but he’s playing so well, and Alexei Ramirez so poorly, that not making this move seems more radical than promoting Andrus. He is hitting .323 and walking 10+% of the time. But on the negative side of the ledger stand his single stolen base and his inflated BABIP (.400), meaning the batting average may come down and he needs to steal more to move up any further. If Bartlett doesn’t pick up his walk rate, and Andrus keeps hitting frozen ropes, we may see a flip-flop there.

The Leftovers:
10. Alexei Ramirez, Chicago AL (.319 wOBA)
11. Marco Scutaro, Boston (.354 wOBA)
12. Yunel Escobar, Atlanta (.357 wOBA)
13. Erick Aybar, Los Angeles AL (.339 wOBA)
14. Asdrubal Cabrera, Cleveland (.354 wOBA)
15. Miguel Tejada, Baltimore (.344 wOBA)

Cabrera and Escobar are not yet capitalizing on the gains they have made in their early careers, so the surprising repeating veteran Scutaro jumps ahead in the rankings. Scu-Scu-Scutaro is still not swinging at anything outside the zone, which bodes well for his newfound patient approach. Aybar moves up because he’s showing a nice walk rate in the early going (13%), but this part of the rankings has been generally underwhelming. Perhaps Alcides Escobar can begin stealing bases so that he can supplant someone here?

To give credit were credit may or may not be due, I stole this headline from the New York Daily News’ Jesse Spector. What is twitter good for if not for some good ole’ fashioned idea-stealing, even if Paul Bourdett and I have been arguing about Chad Qualls since spring training. In fact, Spector, Amanda Rykoff, Jay Jaffe and Dan Wade all created the somewhat-facetious hash tag #ChadQuallsSupportGroup after last night’s implosion by the Arizona closer.

With the “Follow Friday” portion of the article complete (way to mix formats!), it’s time to wonder out loud if last night’s work really was an implosion, if Qualls is suited for the closer role long-term, if he may be the next to lose his role, and who might take the mantle from him. In order.

First, it’s important to realize that this may be much ado about nothing. Yes, Qualls had a bad night. Here’s the play by play:

– R. Furcal walked
– R. Furcal to second on wild pitch
– M. Kemp flied out to center
– A. Ethier grounded out to second, R. Furcal to third
– M. Ramirez singled to shallow left, R. Furcal scored
– J. Loney singled to center, M. Ramirez to second
– C. Blake singled to shortstop, M. Ramirez to third, J. Loney to second, M. Ramirez scored, J. Loney to third, C. Blake to second on shortstop S. Drew’s fielding error
– R. Martin intentionally walked
– R. Johnson hit for R. Ortiz
– R. Johnson grounded out to shortstop

That Casey Blake ‘single’ was actually, by many accounts, an error by Stephen Drew. If Drew doesn’t sail the ball over first base on that play, the inning is over and Qualls has two saves in three chances and fewer backbiters. Otherwise, he was mostly just guilty of a little wildness.

The fact remains that Qualls is walking over six per nine, only striking out four per nine, and has struggled now through spring training and the opening weeks of the season. In fact, if you extend this period back to June of last year and include spring training, Qualls has had a stretch in which he’s put up a 5.00 ERA, 1.27 WHIP with 5.8 K/9 and 1.4 B/9 rates. He’s also blown six saves in 19 chances over that time. It’s not a great record in what amounts to a significant amount of time for a closer. Because his control is usually so spectacular, and has been even over this mediocre stretch, it’s tempting to say that the control will return and that the low strikeout rate is not an issue (especially considering his better 7.3 K/9 career rate). However, he also has 10 hits per nine innings over this time, so he’s been very hittable. Can you afford to have a closer that only punches out a half a guy per inning and gives up a hit per inning? Since the time period includes more than half of last year, we can’t just blame this on his offseason knee surgery either. Perhaps it has more to do with the drop in velocity and effectiveness of his slider.

In any case it’s an open question that will ultimately be decided by the Arizona management. But blowing six saves in 19 chances is not going to keep you your job very long. Fantasy owners are right to go looking for his possible replacement, Juan Gutierrez, on the waiver wires today. Since he figured things out at the beginning of July last year, the Arizona youngster has put up a 2.33 ERA, 0.99 WHIP with 6.8 K/9 and 3.49 B/9 rates. He’s got great stuff and has been proving himself, and he has been making good progress defeating his main weakness (walks). It may not be long until we see him take the mantle from Qualls. Don’t drop an established closer, but if you can make room for Gutierrez, now is the time to do so.

I’m back from Japan and have Basu-Baru pictures for your pleasure. Baseball in Japan has many of the trappings of the American version, but also includes cheerleaders and choreographed songs. Interestingly enough, the game I saw featured two Westerners at cleanup – Tony Blanco for the Chunichi Dragons and Alex Ramirez for the Yomiuri Giants. The pitchers had decent stuff, and the crowd was louder than many (most?) regular season MLB games, but overall the package was something like a AAAA game.

I digress. Time to take ownership of these outfielder rankings and change them up a bit. I will be doing them all season, as a sort of power ranking at the position. We’ll go with the FANS’ projected wOBAs (aka their upside projections) for another week.

The Top Three:
Ryan Braun, Milwaukee (.405 wOBA)
Matt Kemp, Los Angeles NL (.367 wOBA)
Justin Upton, Arizona (.388 wOBA)

Nothing much to say here except it looks like Upton’s ankle isn’t bothering him. These guys are studs and by the end of the year, could easily all be top-five fantasy players despite playing in the outfield.

There’s Nothing Wrong With…
Grady Sizemore, Cleveland (.343 wOBA)
Matt Holliday, St. Louis (.390 wOBA)
Carl Crawford, Tampa Bay (.367 wOBA)
Jacoby Ellsbury, Boston (.354 wOBA)
Curtis Granderson, New York AL (.340 wOBA)
Nelson Cruz, Texas (.368 wOBA)
Ichiro Suzuki, Seattle (.369 wOBA)
Shin-Soo Choo, Cleveland (.389 wOBA)

After the spirited Choo vs Granderson vs Sizemore comments conversation from the last time we updated these rankings, it’s only natural that we find a way to put them all in the same tier where they belong. Nelson Cruz is absolutely on fire, but his BABIP (.357) and K rate (24.1%) together suggest that the batting average should regress to his career norm. Granderson is still having trouble with lefties, but if he continues to bash righties to this extend, he’ll stay out of the next tier.

Not Quite Five-Category Performers
Josh Hamilton, Texas (.321 wOBA)
Jason Bay, New York NL (.397 wOBA)
Adam Lind, Toronto (.394 wOBA)
Nick Markakis, Baltimore (.349 wOBA)
Manny Ramirez, Los Angeles NL (.396 wOBA)

Manny is actually showing that he’s still got something left and with another tater or two could even join the next tier. That said, his missed games will keep the old(er) man back a little. Those same missed games should come into play with Hamilton eventually too. Lind’s power has taken a slight step back, but it’s early going and all it looks like he needs to do is loft the ball a little more (33.3% FB this year, 36.8% last year).

Missing Something?
Jayson Werth, Philadelphia (.382 wOBA)
B.J. Upton, Tampa Bay (.310 wOBA)
Andre Ethier, Los Angeles NL (.370 wOBA)

Werth reminded us that he has some injury issues by missing time with hip soreness, but has otherwise played well. The older Upton is actually playing about as well as can be expected, and in leagues that don’t use batting average, he may yet prove to be an elite option. Ethier will have his supporters, but his fly ball rate already fell, and his power pace should fall with it. The batting average should be strong this year, though, and he’s still a solid option.

Upside to Join the Top
Andrew McCutchen, Pittsburgh (.360 wOBA)
Carlos Quentin (.375 wOBA)
Michael Bourn (.326 wOBA)
Jason Kubel (.370 wOBA)

Outfielders are a tough position to handicap because of the sheer numbers, which also won’t allow me to go too deep. By highlighting some guys that could join the elite with the right years, we can delve a little deeper. So, while Shane Victorino is a fine option in the outfield, McCutchen is stealing bases at a pace (five so far) that would outpace the Flyin’ Hawaiian should it keep up. Bourn has shown the same plus plus speed. Should Quentin stay healthy, and Kubel prove that he can keep his slugging percentage over .500 year-in and year-out, they would join the power elite. So far, so good.

This post comes to you all the way from Tokyo town. I just flew here today (yesterday? tomorrow?) and boy are my arms tired. (badum-ching!) As you can tell, it’s been a looong day. Let me quickly get to a couple waiver wire ideas before I pass out.

Shaun Marcum
Our shallow league special won’t be on the wire long, but if you missed out, don’t worry. There’s plenty of reasons to be suspicious of Mr. Marcum. First, even before he missed all of 2009 with elbow surgery, he hasn’t been the picture of health. His major league high is 159 major league innings in a season, and 168 total innings in a season. He doesn’t have a nice K/9 (7.13 career) or ground ball rate (40.3% career), and though his career ERA looks okay (3.95), his career FIP is much less interesting (4.81). That’s probably because he’s somehow managed to put together 400+ innings with a .273 BABIP. In his first start he had a sparkling .068 BABIP even. If it wasn’t such an obvious idea, actually, it seems that the best move here would be to sell high. Here’s a bet his ERA ends up in the low 4s where it belongs with his peripherals.

Dexter Fowler
It takes a little deeper bench in order to take advantage of the fact that Fowler is being summarily dropped in many leagues, but the reward is there for the patient manager. While Seth Smith is definitely a nice pickup in most leagues since he’s getting the lion’s share of at-bats by taking on righties, Fowler is not yet chopped liver. Obviously, the team is looking at Fowler’s nice .322/.374/.470 major league line against lefties (and his correspondingly putrid .228/.343/.353 line against righties) and making what they believe to be the best short-term move for the team. The problem is that this split has only come in 461 total major league at-bats (which is not a significant level for splits like these), and his minor league splits were non-existent (.843 OPS vs lefties, .859 OPS vs righties). Expect Fowler’s upside to will out and force some sort of move by management (Brad Hawpe, I’m looking at you), and in the meantime, just put him on your bench and slot him in against lefties. You’ll enjoy both short- and long-term return.

Scott Downs
The deep league special is a speculative play based on an incredibly tiny sample size seen in one light. Yes, Jason Frasor blew one save. And yes, it’s one inning. And yes, he probably won’t be removed from the closer’s role in Toronto today. On the other hand, Downs has been amazingly consistent for three years now (FIPs around 3.33 all three years), and managers love consistency. Compare Frasor’s range on his FIPs (2.99 to 4.55) and you’ll see that it’s not at all assured who’s going to have the better year in that pen this year. Throw in the fact that Frasor has been linked to the Twins in trade rumors, and Downs looks like a good bet if you’re a-speculatin’.

(I couldn’t help myself.)

It seems that Mike Leake has taken the Reds’ fifth starter job, making him the first player to skip the minors since Xavier Nady in 2000 and the first pitcher since Darren Dreifort in 1994. (Shame on him for outpacing our crack staff here at FanGraphs, but his player page will be up as soon as he plays a game.) Prospect Maven Marc Hulet will be giving us a detailed scouting report on Leake shortly, so I will focus here on finding a good comp for Leake. That might help us appraise his chances for success in the coming year.

Darren Dreifort doesn’t really make a for a good comp because he had what was considered at the time to be plus-plus tools or stuff, and he also came up as a reliever. Nady’s obviously not a good comp, though with Leake taking the ball for Dusty Baker, he may have as many TJ surgeries in his future as the Cubbies’ outfielder (zing!). Yes he pitches with a different hand, but could Jim Abbott provide us the best comp for Leake?

Abbott was also a first round draft pick that skipped the minor leagues. Just as there’s some skepticism about Leake’s eventual upside, there were rumblings around baseball that the Angels decision to bring Abbott up so quickly was about ticket sales and publicity. Leake is considered a good athlete for his position but his tools are doubted. Abbott was a little taller than Leake (6’3″ to Leake’s 6’0″), but they seem to be of similar build, clocking in around 200-210 pounds each. Mariano Rivera once talked of Abbott hitting home runs in batting practice, and he tripled in a spring training game once, so Abbott was an athletic guy too.

Abbot’s bread and butter was a fastball-curveball combination and eventually succeeded for a while because of slightly above-average control. Leake’s best two pitches are a fastball and a curveball and has above-average command of those two pitches. If only they pitched with the same hand, they’d seem to make a solid comparison.

In some ways, the Abbott comp could be seen as a compliment. After all, Abbott is one of only fourteen left-handers to have more than 12 wins at the age of 21 in the last 80 years. But of course, that’s a terrible stat to use to measure a pitcher, and it’s the other statistics that we are more interested in. Abbott did win those 12 games with a below-average ERA (97 ERA+ in 1989), and aside from the inspirational aspect, his career was not particularly long or distinguished. Given the possibility of an above-average lineup behind him, Leake could win some games in 2010. But those picking him should probably not hope for much more from the Reds’ starter than Abbott gave the Angels in his debut season. Abbott had a 3.92 ERA, 1.46 WHIP, and 5.71 K/9 that year.

Today is supposed to be a waiver wire article, but we’ll have plenty of those. For those of you still planning one last draft (and the internal FanGraphs league is one of those), I thought I would present to you my second-ever auction draft. Yes, I’m a noob. But with more mocks and real-life auctions in my review mirror, I’ll be able to step up the auction coverage here at RotoGraphs.

Here are my results, with comments coming after:

Position Player $
C Brian McCann 22
C Jarrod Saltalamacchia 1
1B Adrian Gonzalez 31
2B Brandon Phillips 21
3B Gordon Beckham 17
SS Alcides Escobar 12
CI Paul Konerko 10
MI Chris Getz 1
OF Justin Upton 30
OF Carlos Lee 19
OF Matt LaPorta 4
OF Seth Smith 1
OF Scott Podsednik 1
UT Gaby Sanchez 2
BN Xavier Nady 1
BN Matt Joyce 1
Total Offense: $173

Position Player $
P CC Sabathia 26
P Josh Johnson 22
P Brett Anderson 16
P Roy Oswalt 6
P Ryan Franklin 5
P Ryan Madson 4
P Kerry Wood 3
P Ryan Rowland-Smith 2
P Jonathon Niese 1
BN Ian Kennedy 1

Pitching total: $87

This was a 15-team put on by MDS (MillionDollarSleeper), who I’m sure you’ve seen around the comment boards at this site and others. He brought in an impressive collection of talent including David Goleblahblah, Paul Greco from FantasyPros911, Tim Heany from KFFL, Rudy Gamble and Grey Albright from Razzball, Paul Bourdett from AOL Fantasy Fanhouse, Antonio D’Arcangelis from RotoExperts, Scott Swanay from Fantasy Sherpas, Chris Carbonell from the Starbonell BlogTalkRadio show, Charlie Saponara from FB365, and yours truly.

Given that it was a 15-team league and my second attempt ever, I don’t think I fared so badly. I’d say Adrian Gonzalez for $31 was a little much, but the top-tier first basemen went for closer to $40 and Albert Pujols went for $48, so I think I did okay there. Maybe $10 is too much for Paul Konerko, but Adam LaRoche went minutes later for $15 and I felt (much) better. Things happened a little differently with Alcides Escobar – ten minutes after wondering if I’d spent too much on him, Everth Cabrera went for $4 and I wondered if Escobar’s superior batting average (based on fewer Ks and minor league history) was worth $8. Maybe it will prove to be. Carlos Lee for $19 looks about as bad as he does in a uniform, but the crib sheet I was using from LastPlayerPicked.com had Lee worth $21 next year and I was happy to get the power production with a good batting average for relatively cheap. And as for Scott Podsednik and Gaby Sanchez, who both showed up on my NFBC teams, too: They were cheap. And I think they’ll play almost regularly all year. So that’s something.

On the pitching side, CC Sabathia went for less than Johan Santana ($28), Dan Haren ($31), Felix Hernandez ($33), Zack Greinke ($32) and Tim Lincecum ($41), so I was happy to get my ace for cheaper than most. I also preferred CC, despite his big innings totals, over Ubaldo Jimenez ($26) and Ricky Nolasco ($25) as much as I like the younger pitchers. Lord knows CC has put up big innings totals before.

Once I spent my top-closer money on Brett Anderson, I knew I’d be looking for value in the saves category. Advice from Baseball Prospectus’ Marc Normandin was ringing in my ear (punt saves!), but I decided I’d rather try to field a full team this time. Once he’s healthy, I happen to think that the Indians will want to run Kerry Wood out there at closer to pump up his value for a trade, meaning that between him and Ryan Madson, I think I might have a second closer in there somewhere.

It’s kind of a wonky team and seems devoid of elite, top-shelf talent, but it just might work. What do you guys think?

During the season, we will update these rankings based on new information which will hopefully help you determine good trade targets and stay on top of each position. This week, we’ll take a look at some springs so you can see who is on a roll going into the season.

The Top Targets:
Ryan Braun, Milwaukee (.405 wOBA)
Matt Kemp, Los Angeles NL (.367 wOBA)
Justin Upton, Arizona (.388 wOBA)
Grady Sizemore, Cleveland (.343 wOBA)
Matt Holliday, St. Louis (.390 wOBA)

There’s not enough news here to justify moving players around, but there are a couple things to mention. Justin Upton sprained his ankle last week and got dropped on some draft boards because of some early speculation that it might dampen his speed. Well, all he missed was one game and he’s currently hitting .366/.456/.714 and is a John Dewan candidate for a ‘breakout’ season because of that slugging percentage. If last year wasn’t his breakout season, you’re looking at a perennial top-five player in fantasy baseball. Upton’s also been the subject of some speculation and comparison over at TMI (insider), FWIW (LOL OMG).

It’s also worth mentioning that it’s ‘All Systems Go’ for Grady’s Ladies in the Cleveland bleachers this year. The good-looking coffee-cup-wearing outfielder they love so much is batting .378/.521/.595 with two stolen bases (against no caught stealings). A healthy year will remind people why Sizemore was a first round pick in the past, and one year he’ll have a lucky BABIP year and have a great batting average to boot.

The Next Best Thing:
Jason Bay, New York NL (.397 wOBA)
Jacoby Ellsbury, Boston (.354 wOBA)
Carl Crawford, Tampa Bay (.367 wOBA)
Jayson Werth, Philadelphia (.382 wOBA)
Ichiro Suzuki, Seattle (.369 wOBA)
Adam Lind, Toronto (.394 wOBA)
Nick Markakis, Baltimore (.349 wOBA)

Adam Lind’s skeptics might point to his poor spring (.214/.267/.429) as a sign that Lind won’t repeat his strong 2009, but it’s early going. He didn’t always put up .200+ ISOs in the minor leagues, and perhaps one could use that as evidence that his power is suspect. That camp can walk back his power projections, but I prefer to split the difference and like CHONE as the ‘floor’ projection (.293/.350/.502) despite the poor spring. Really, it’s only forty at-bats.

The Leftovers:
Josh Hamilton, Texas (.321 wOBA)
Curtis Granderson, New York AL (.340wOBA)
Nelson Cruz, Texas (.368 wOBA)
Manny Ramirez, Los Angeles NL (.396 wOBA)
B.J. Upton, Tampa Bay (.310 wOBA)
Andre Ethier, Los Angeles NL (.370 wOBA)
Shin-Soo Choo, Cleveland (.389 wOBA)

Because of his hot spring (.420/.455/.700), Josh Hamilton could be on the cusp of joining the group ahead of him. Maybe – if only he hadn’t suffered from two injuries in the spring. It is, of course, the injuries that keep people from drafting Hamilton. The good news is that these injuries probably could not have been avoided. Madison Bumgarner hit Hamilton in the hand, and he only missed a couple games with a hand contusion because it was only Madison Bumgarner (badum-ching!). Then Hamilton got a toothache. It seems ridiculous to type these words, but Hamilton’s got a litany of injuries that seem just as bizarre and it all adds up to something. Maybe. I’d focus on the nice spring numbers and draft him low for a bounce-back season.