While most are taking a little breather from their fantasy baseball teams during the All Star Break, it can’t hurt to scour your waiver wire and see who’s still out there that may help you out for your second half push. Players coming back from injury are always a good target as well as players recently called back up from the minors. Here are two for you to consider… Read the rest of this entry »
You’ve heard about Howard Bender’s draft. And you’ll hear about Jason Catania’s draft and Jeff Zimmerman’s draft. Because we all got together and decided to pick six, deep league style. Our CI, MI, OF, C, SP and RP all had to come from a pool of players that was owned in less than 10% of Yahoo leagues. Here are my picks and why. In the order I drafted. I had the third pick of four.
Chris Heisey
A disclaimer about deep leagues and waiver wires: One thing you want are live bodies with some upside. It’s the usual caveat. So Heisey has flaws — he’s now struck out in 18.2% of his at-bats in his first 396 plate appearances, so he might have that flaw. Then again, his minor league rates were closer to 20% most years. He could improve in that category. His BABIP is fine (.308) and though his current ISO (.209) would rank high in his minor-league work, it would still fit. And he’s got a .192 ISO so far in the majors. He stole 27 bases against two caught-stealings in High-A, and had very good success rates all along. So he has good speed. And power. And could improve his strikeout rate. And is battling for playing time with a guy with a .245 career batting average and a strikeout rate over 33%. Yes please.
We’re now halfway through the season, so let’s update our rankings of the guys shutting things down in the ninth inning. Here are the preseason, May, and June rankings for reference, as well as the saves leaderboard. This rankings are based on three things (in no particular order): current performance, expected future performance, and job security. That last one is important for closers but not always easy to gauge. There hasn’t been a ton of movement in the last month, but there’s always some…
Unless your closer’s name is Mariano Rivera, there’s a possibility he’s going to get hurt at some point during the season. Pitchers are a fragile bunch. It happens. Two teams have been hit especially hard in that area this season.
If you had told the Phillies and Dodgers at the start of the season that their closers on June 30th would be Antonio Bastardo and Javy Guerra you’d have been laughed out of the building by Ruben Amaro and Ned Colletti. Yet, here we are. The two teams haven’t needed their star closers much; the Phillies would be in first with me at the back of their pen, and the Dodgers just aren’t good enough for an elite closer to matter. But, to the fantasy consumer, they mean plenty. Let’s take a look at the two new faces.
We’re getting close to the halfway point of the season for most teams (Game 81, not the All-Star break), so now is a good time to step back and look at some closer workloads. A lot of times a manager will run his top reliever out there game after game early in the season only to have it come back to haunt them down the stretch. They might have to ease off them a bit or deal with a prolonged slump. Happens all the time. Let’s list the number of appearances each closer had made so far, as well as extrapolate that out into a full season workload. Forgive me, but the following table does not include last night’s games…
If nothing else, Joakim Soria’s 2011 season has proven the true volatility of the closer position. After some early struggles; which led to five blown saves and a brief demotion, Soria appears to have returned to form. While it’s difficult to evaluate his performance due to his tiny innings sample, there appears to be some evidence that suggests Soria may have truly returned to his former level of dominance. Still, if Soria slips up again, Aaron Crow is still waiting in the wings to reclaim the closer job. Does Soria have what it takes to permanently keep the job this time?
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After picking six for over 20 days straight, I’ve won one day. One stinking Bobby Valentine. Perhaps I’m not the best person to turn to for strategy in this particular game. I’ll offer it up anyway.
Mimicking my general fantasy strategy, I’ve been pushing money away from pitching. There are so many good matchups every day, why not find a good, cheap pitcher against a terrible offense? Last night, I chose a $17.75 Shaun Marcum (at home against New York), but that’s about the most expensive I’ll go for a starter. I was severely tempted by a $10.75 Daniel Hudson in Pittsburgh, and even Jonathan Sanchez at home against the Nationals made sense at $6.25 (or his opponent, the $3.50 Jordan Zimmermann). Don’t spend on starting.
If you are not going to spend on starting, there’s really no reason to spend on relieving. If a starter is no guarantee to perform on any given night, at least he’s guaranteed to show up and, you know, play. The ottoneu Dark Lord Niv Shah was kind enough to give me the points per position in the Pick Six game so far. Clearly, relievers are the red-headed step-children of the game.
| Position | Average Points |
|---|---|
| C | 4.248 |
| CI | 6.271 |
| MI | 4.596 |
| OF | 5.909 |
| RP | 3.193 |
| SP | 7.091 |
After all that blabbing about not paying for pitching, it might be surprising to see that starting pitchers have the best number in this table. But the point wasn’t that pitchers are not worth spending money on, the point was that there were plenty of bargains. Niv is nothing if not eminently bug-able – he graciously gave me the points per dollar spent for each position.
| Position | Average Points Per Dollar |
|---|---|
| C | 3.096 |
| CI | 5.461 |
| MI | 4.383 |
| OF | 4.185 |
| RP | 1.873 |
| SP | 2.057 |
Ah-hah. So, even just by groping my way through the dark with intuition instead of the numbers in front of me, it looks like I stumbled onto a viable strategy. Spend where you get the most return for your dollar: non-catcher offense.
Oh, and while you are at it, join a group! Now Pick Six has groups so that you attract like-minded players easily. Oh, and with groups you might be able to put a little friendly gummy-bear wager on the thing. If you like gummy bears or whatever. I’m in #PraiseBeltran and I started RotoGraphRegulars. Pimp your group here if you want others to join in!
It’s time to update our closer rankings as the calendar flips to June. Here are the preseason and May rankings for reference, and here’s the saves leaderboard as well. Obviously those saves are the most important thing here, but the best closers give you more than that, boosting your strikeout total while pulling your ERA and WHIP down. A number of high-end ninth inning guys lose their jobs this month or are now dangerously close to losing it, so there’s been some movement up top.
Relievers are a notoriously fickle bunch. But few closers have beaten opposing batters into submission more frequently than Joakim Soria since he became Kansas City’s stopper in 2007. Soria ranked fourth in the majors among relievers in Wins Above Replacement from ’07 to 2010, trailing only Mariano Rivera, Jonathan Papelbon and Jonathan Broxton. The only real concern with The Mexicutioner heading into the 2011 season was health, as shoulder problems put him on the DL in 2007 and 2009. But Soria appeared in a career-high 66 games last year and looked poised to dominate once again.
Instead, the 26-year-old has gotten torched. Soria blew his third consecutive save chance yesterday versus the Angels, as Torii Hunter hammered a 90 MPH pitch over the left field fence at Kauffman Stadium to put L.A. on top. In 22 innings pitched this season, the right-hander has -0.3 WAR. And for the time being, Soria has been booted from the closer role in favor of rookie Aaron Crow. What’s going on with Soria?
To close out our series of looks at the values of players in ottoneu Pick Six, we look today at pitchers. As before, the numbers below are based on weighted averages of THT’s Oliver and BPro’s PECOTA (more weight to Oliver b/c it includes this season’s data). The numbers are FP (FanGraphs Points per IP), though keep in mind that for starters this number is divided by four to keep starters from being the only thing that matters in pick six.
Tim Lincecum, 5.33 FP/IP, $48
Josh Johnson, 5.21 FP/IP, $38
Felix Hernandez, 5.04 FP/IP, $49
Cliff Lee, 5.04 FP/IP, $43
Roy Halladay, 5.01 FP/IP, $52
Johnson’s injury risk has kept his value down in traditional ottoneu, but when he’s healthy (currently has shoulder ouchie), he’s the best value of this group. But you can’t go wrong here: more than any other pitchers in baseball, these guys should give you lots of productive innings per start.