Last season the Milwaukee Brewers bullpen posted the highest ERA of any major league team. As a group, their collective BABIP and their strand rate were both second worst, beating out only the Houston Astros and New York Mets respectively. The Brewers also posted the second most meltdowns in the league (only the hapless Rockies managed to have more, and they were in the stratosphere of awful, coming in with 102 meltdowns. Yes, 102. That isn’t a misprint). Despite their struggles, there is plenty of reason for hope for not just saves, but solid ratios from the Brewers pen this coming season.
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General Manager Billy Beane has done a magnificent job of acquiring depth in the outfield. Both he and manager Bob Melvin seem to have a firm grasp on the value of platooning positions, and the outfield that the A’s have built is exhibit A in this. With so much talent, the question is of course guaranteed playing time and starting roles.

After his breakout season last year, Josh Reddick should be a fixture in right field. He did struggle down the stretch (read: all of September). He did set a career high in games played in a single season by 10, almost 20 more games than he played in 2011. It could easily be chalked up to a mix of fatigue and pressing too much in a playoff hunt. Seeing his September/October triple slash of .164/.214/.295 was brutal to watch (although his home run in Game 2 against Detroit was amazing to see live). His .174 BABIP during that time frame speaks volumes about his real struggles, as his K% was lower than his seasonal average and his BB% dipped just a tick. His average will never inspire you, but his power is real and his counting stats should be plenty enough to warrant a mid round draft pick.
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In the coming weeks, we’ll be covering each team’s potential depth charts in an effort to shine a spotlight on the interesting playing time battles that will be waged this spring. Obviously none of these depth charts are set in stone — rather they should function to focus your attention in the right places to find cheap fantasy value.

Bullpen arms come and go. The nature of pitching a mere 40-70 innings in a season leaves plenty of room for random variation. With that caveat out of the way, there might not be a better team to find cheap rate stats and holds than San Diego.

As our very own Jeff Sullivan noted earlier in the week, the Padres are moving the fences in at Petco Park. While this may increase the home run total, run scoring may not increase much — if at all. From a reliever standpoint, perhaps the most important thing to watch isn’t home run numbers, but the health of current closer Huston Street.
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After being lucky enough to have our friends and colleagues over at The Hardball Times invite me in for yet another mock draft (courtesy of Mock Draft Central), I jumped at the chance to take a new approach. You can find the full results of the draft here.

In my previous “expert” mock draft, I expressed my intent to go for power, even to the point of burning myself in areas of batting average and pitching. In one regard, last night’s draft was similar to the first: once again pitching took a back seat to my hitters. Rather than focus on big power and RBIs, yesterday I strived to go the opposite way and aim for average hitters with lesser power but had the chance to steal more bases. The draft was set up identical to a standard ESPN 5×5 rotisserie redraft leagues with  the exception of having a second catcher and thus 27 roster spots. Read the rest of this entry »

Edit: The entire draft can be found in this Google document set up for your viewing pleasure.

The RotoGraphs crew has already finished one (slow) mock draft, and while there has been plenty of position and round based evaluation, what follows is a team evaluation. I’ll be the first to admit my mistakes and I’m not too proud to laugh at them either.

My final team is as follows, displayed in standard ESPN format. While normally 25 man rosters is the norm, I’ll have two empty BN spots. I would have filled those spots with two relievers. Read the rest of this entry »

Edit: It should be noted that several players listed below were not drafted with the intention of making them primary third basemen. Mike Petriello grabbed both Headley and Trumbo, and I took Ryan Zimmerman early, then both Freese and Scutaro later on as my CI/MI players. Machado was picked up by Jeff Zimmerman, who already had Hanley who could play either SS or 3B. 

Even after the decline of two staples at third base in Kevin Youkilis and Alex Rodriguez, the position is stronger — not to mention deeper — than I would have imagined. After 15 rounds, there has been a total of 16 third base eligible players taken in The RotoGraphs Ridiculously Early Mock Draft. For the 2013 season, it appears as though the third base position will be offer a wide range of choices for fantasy managers. There are plenty of early round/big money picks as well as more than a few mid and late round options. Read the rest of this entry »

Given his previous prospect pedigree, it wasn’t terribly shocking to see Jarrod Parker perform so well in his first season in the big leagues. However, throw in the fact that he missed the entire 2010 season due to Tommy John’s surgery and now there was suddenly doubt cast over the young hurler.

Fortunately for himself — and for his future fantasy owners — Parker came roaring back in double-A in 2011 and earned himself a late season MLB start. He was seasoned for all of four games in triple-A in 2012 and then earned another call up. Despite pitching a grand total of 20.2 triple-A innings, according to ERA, Parker hit his stride almost immediately. His first half 2.96 ERA was sparkling, despite some underlying issues.
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Terrible TV commercials aside, it is hard to argue that “going to Jered”  has been anything but a good thing. For the second straight year Jered Weaver has ranked in the top 10 in terms of qualified starting pitchers ERA. Sure, ERA isn’t the most reliable evaluation metric, but for fantasy purposes it clearly suits us quite well. Considering that it has been almost 650 innings since Weaver last posted a seasonal ERA above 3.02, it’s safe to say that Weaver is an elite pitcher.

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My inner (and outer) nerd is going crazy with all the recent baseball news. Oh, and the fact that IPL 5 as well as WCG 2012 is going on is great as well. Baseball is my true love, but I admit it: I cheat on it with StarCraft. I’m so sorry.

• The biggest news of yesterday was the trade that involved the Minnesota Twins sending Denard Span to the Washington Nationals in exchange for pitching prospect Alex Meyer. Span join B.J. Upton in moving from the AL to the senior circuit, and while Span may not have the same flashy name as Upton, his move also effects AL and NL-only leagues. Over the past four years, Span has average 18 stolen bases, hit .280 and posted a .348 on-base percentage. His counting — and to a lesser extent his rate stats — took a dive in 2011 when he suffered a concussion and then battled the subsequent effects. Span consistently sits amongst the top of the leader board of smallest SwStr% and K%. He makes for an okay-if-not-inspiring later round pick.
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For the most part, I was always terrible at those “Choose Your Own Adventure Book!” It wasn’t that I didn’t enjoy them, I did, but I would pick a route, then if I didn’t like where that was headed, I’d flip back and pick a different option. Unfortunately, outside of trading or straight dropping a player, we don’t have that option in the fantasy baseball realm.

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