It’s nearly the end of May. Roughly one third of the way through the regular season. Already, we’ve had our fair share of surprises. New main characters are scattered across your league, or all concentrated on the roster of a sure to be smug top seed.

Whether it’s the manager who added Davis Martin early or the one who was utterly convinced by Jordan Walker and his offseason with Driveline, they’re certainly sitting pretty so far. 

For every one of those managers, there’s the one who missed out on Corey Seager in the draft, bought low on the veteran slugger, watched him go hitless in the seven games after trading for him, begged for him to hit the phantom IL, and then knowingly grimaced while moving him to the actual IL at the end of last week due to back tightness. 

And another who started their draft with Tarik Skubal or Garrett Crochet instead of Paul Skenes. 

The randomness of baseball, fantasy or otherwise, is part of what makes the game so frustratingly intoxicating.  Read the rest of this entry »

Some like it hot. And the A’s are certainly some. Since their move to West Sacramento, A’s hitters have finally been treated to a friendly home park. But that park is much friendlier when the weather warms up.

In this case, timing is a proxy for expected weather. Put simply, since we expect it to be hotter in the summer, especially in Sacramento, we expect offense to increase as the hitting environment becomes more favorable.

Read the rest of this entry »

They make us feel like gods. Those pitchers who begin the season on the fringe of being rostered who you stream against a weak offense to begin the season, who then go on to give you five innings with a handful of strikeouts and a win. 

In this throw away culture where newer is always better, it’s easy to lose sight of the essentials. And that’s especially true when “newer” means throwing three different fastballs over 97 mph or uncorking splitters that are hurled so fast they necessitate a new name.

That presents an opportunity. To zig where the market is zagging today is to not cast aside the command artists as flukes, but instead to let results come before the flashiest of underlying numbers. If the K-BB% isn’t convincing and the Stuff+ is lacking, there is still a path to success, and to surplus value via waiver wire adds and trades.

You know this story already. 

Remember Rick Porcello? Read the rest of this entry »