With Masahiro Tanaka officially a Yankee, it’s safe to write about the Dodgers rotation. The Dodgers were finalists in the bidding for Tanaka, but not because they needed excess pitching. the 40 man roster includes seven experienced starters, although one of those will open the season on the disabled list.
For many seasons, the San Francisco bullpen has been a source of pleasure for Giants fans. Unfortunately, the 2013 season revealed some cracks in the foundation. Bullpens are fickle beasts and can be easily brought back from the precipice, but there are some warning signs that dark days may be ahead. Perhaps that’s why our team depth charts project a combined -0.4 WAR from the unit.
Despite the gloomy prognosis from Steamer, a player-by-player analysis of the pen reveals some reason for optimism too. Like I said, bullpens are fickle beasts. This particular bullpen is split between the established old guard and an uppity younger generation.
Over the last few seasons, the Padres outfield has provided fantasy owners with plenty of waiver fodder, stream starts, and emergency band-aids. That may sound dismissive, but Padres outfielders have been a source of the cheap fantasy glue that is necessary to win championships. Their 2014 unit looks poised to pick up the mantle.
Over the past two weeks, we’ve discussed player valuation in Ottoneu leagues and sending signals to affect the perceptions of other owners. Today, let’s move on to a topic that is a little more near and dear to our hearts – offseason trading.
About 24 hours ago, plus or minus zero minutes, I posted on the topic of elite relievers and when such players should be purchased in a draft. I recommend skimming that first as some of the points are pertinent to this article.
That piece was designed to offer some general tools and thoughts for those in relatively standard leagues. However, FanGraphs offers a custom fantasy game called Ottoneu – perhaps you have heard of it. Ottoneu offers four scoring systems, two of which are scored by points. This article is about the value of elite relievers in those points formats.
As you might have noticed, we are a few days into our offseason analysis of relievers. We’ve mostly discussed the best of the best thus far, and we’ve been sure to warn everybody that waiver wire hawks may want to allocate the $20 it takes to win a Craig Kimbrel to another position. If you’re the kind of guy who finds a Koji Uehara or Mark Melancon for free year after year, why should you pay $20 for a closer? You’ll eventually get your saves – even if you’re at the bottom of the pile in April – and the extra $20 could go into hiring 20 more home runs and RBI in the outfield or a catcher that contributes in more than one category.
Like every other position, closers also get hurt. Unlike most other positions, the guy who steps in as the next closer is sometimes as good or better than the first guy. Again, see Uehara and Melancon. So that’s the common line of thinking on elite relievers, that an active owner can find underpriced saves without taking on the injury risk of a $20 relief asset. However, there are definitely circumstances where it makes all the sense in the world to pay for 40 saves, massive strikeout totals, and drool worthy ratios.
It’s probably safe to say that Kenley Jansen has finally freed himself from the shackles of setup relief duty. Since entering the league in 2010, Jansen has been comparable to the historically excellent Craig Kimbrel with one exception, the Dodgers keep blocking him at closer. In 2013, it was the recently re-signed Brandon League who stood between Jansen and fantasy reliever gold. Of course, League asploded and hemorrhaged runs all over the field, so Jansen was called back into action. He was worth over $14 according to Zach Sanders, a value that was held down by just 28 saves.
Aroldis Chapman is best known for throwing ridiculously hard. Last season, he averaged 99 mph with his fastball according to BrooksBaseball.net, and he frequently reaches over 100 mph. While 2013 was a lesson in regression for Chapman and his fantasy owners, he still struck out over 40 percent of batters faced, saved 38 games, and posted a 2.54 ERA. Even if that isn’t as good as his superlative 2012, nobody is going to complain about $13 of value from a reliever.
Last week, we spent some time talking about what goes into price expectations in an Ottoneu league. The take away point is simple: in Ottoneu leagues, one person’s trash is another person’s treasure.
Jarred Cosart is coming off a funky debut, one that is going to convince more than one less-than-savvy owner to proclaim him a sleeper. The number that counts is 1.95. That was his ERA. 94.5 is another positive number associated with him. That was his average fastball velocity. Unfortunately, the rest of the data set is oozing the disgusting goop of an ugly regression ahead.
