Let me start by saying I’m making an assumption that most of us form our basic opinions of a player’s fantasy value with categories in mind. By that I mean most of us play in yearly roto or H2H formats that use categories. Some people play in points leagues, but from what I can tell, points leagues make up a fairly small percentage of yearly leagues. And not all points leagues are the same. My guess is that whatever your opinion is of a player’s value, it’s somewhat based on categories.

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Agenda

1. A couple observations
2. DFS time
3. For Monday
4. Table

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It’s Sunday, which means a couple of things: 15 baseball games, wonderfully staggered throughout the day; weekly lineup decisions; and that you’ve probably killed a few brain cells over the past few days, so maybe you’ve forgotten some things you learned this week.

Because of that, I’m going to trial the Sunday daily beat being home to a “week in review” for the tips, charts and research our daily fantasy team does throughout the week.

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Can we take a moment to talk about Chase Utley? I briefly mentioned Scott Kazmir’s come back the other day. Utley’s isn’t very similar because he hasn’t actually gone anywhere the past few years, even if it felt as if he had at times. Utley’s stayed productive despite his body’s seemingly ill wishes. From 2005 – 2009, it’s hard to put into words how good he was. He was second in WAR over that time period with a 37.4 mark, second only to King Albert’s staggering 41.

Obviously his prime was fantastic, even if, as a Braves fan, it was tough to watch. But damn, if it wasn’t fun, too. Over the past few years, injuries have been a bother, but he’s still remained remarkably productive at the plate. Since 2010, his wRC+ marks are as follows: 128, 111, 113, 126, and 252 (’14; small sample, etc.). Utley’s revert back to otherworldly excellence so far has been marvelous to watch, and to read about it, which you can do here. Hopefully he continues his tear for a little while longer, because it’s been fun.

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Agenda

1. How to make good chile
2. DFS stacks
3. Sunday picks
4. TableTimeTM

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Halfway through week two, here we are:

4-1
2.67 ERA
9.5 K/9
3.2 K/BB
1.13 WHIP

I think that’s about the best one could expect so far. Regression is coming though, right? I wanted badly to recommend Garrett Richards for this week (@WAS, @NYY), but his ownership rates in CBS leagues (76 percent) are far too high for me to appeal to my unwritten rule that at least two of the three leagues have to be under 50 percent (between Yahoo!/ESPN/CBS Sports).

So here’s who you get this week:

RHP Zach McAllister – 2.6% ESPN/9% Yahoo!/43% CBS – v. KC, @SF Read the rest of this entry »

Agenda

1. How do you set your lineups?
2. DFS Stacks
3. Saturday Selections
4. Sur la Table

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So, remember that time I recommended stacking Giants versus Paul Maholm? Yeesh. Oh well, perhaps you’re nice enough to let me slide on that one. Hell, I can’t be the only one who thought he’d get hit pretty hard. I thought the match-up itself had tremendous blow-up potential, considering Ryan Vogelsong was on the other end of the bill. Unfortunately, it didn’t quite work out that way. The Giants I happened to pick performed alright, but they weren’t winning you any money. So hopefully, we have a little better luck today.

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We always hear our not-so-favorite broadcasters mentioning a player’s stats against a certain pitcher. Well, I think we are all hopefully smart enough to not take the results of 15 meetings between a pitcher and hitter seriously. Instead, we split samples into larger groups like right-handed hitter vs. left-handed pitcher. I have decided to cut the difference and create a spreadsheet which takes a middle ground. I grouped pitchers by handedness, velocity and groundball tendencies and found how hitters performed against the different pitcher groups.

First off, I wanted to have this Excel-only spreadsheet available online before the season started. Well, I got it done and working in time. Since Visual Basic macros were used in the final view, it doesn’t have a online option which I wanted. So today, I am going to make it publicly available, but at some point I hope to have it working in all spreadsheet formats and/or online at a place like Google.docs.

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Today’s Roto Riteup was written while listening to my brand new vinyl of Illmatic. Tomorrow will be the 20th anniversary of Nas’ debut album. You can grab the album + MP3 download from Amazon for less than 22 bucks plus shipping. Order it now, thank me after you listen to it. For what it’s worth, Nas did a reddit AMA earlier in the week as well.

On today’s agenda:
1. Corey Hart in right field again?
2. Michael Brantley, RBI guy?
3. Kansas City (Outfield) Shuffle
4. The Daily Five

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