Archive for First Base

I hope that I’ve been giving it to you straight. On that note, these recommendations aren’t the most inspired. Oh, look: a guy who hit two bombs yesterday. Check it out: a recent call-up who was raking while in the minors.

Which kind of brings me to a larger point: It’s not often that I find players inspiring enough to recommend. Obviously, I’ve done it. I’ve been doing it for years … sometimes well, sometimes not so much. As far as the players go, I mean. Perhaps I’m just feeling particularly cynical or depressed.

What kind of recommendations do you want to see? I second-guess just about any name I come up with because of the multitude of league formats out there and, as a result, the usefulness of a rec. To me, there’s never enough context. I’d love to see what kinds of things readers want in a list of recommendations.

Read the rest of this entry »

Anyone who regularly reads my work knows that Ike Davis has been a favorite of mine for years. More often than not, that love has proven to be misguided, leading me to spend money on a player who has not provided nearly the value I hoped for.

Davis got off to a rocky start this year, largely due to a messy playing time situation with a Mets team that was clearly ready to move on. But since being traded to Pittsburgh, Davis has put up a valuable, although somewhat unexpected, month of baseball.

Read the rest of this entry »

In January, I wrote about my optimism regarding Jon Singleton. Coming off a disastrous 2013 season in which he slashed just .220/.340/.347 in Triple-A, he has rebounded in a way that should find him back in the upper tier of prospects. I’ve had the opportunity to see Singleton play quite a bit this year — throughout this piece, I will revisit my remaining concerns about Singleton from four months ago, discussing how the 22-year-old has easily surpassed even my own high expectations in 2014.

The first signs of life came in winter ball, as he led the Puerto Rican Liga de Beisbol Profesional Roberto Clemente with nine home runs. At the time, I wrote the following:

It’s only a 35-game sample, but he hit .268/.396/.537 and he showed more power against lefties than ever before, swatting five homers in just 49 plate appearances against left-handers. While it’s obviously a tiny sample, consider the fact that Singleton had hit just five homers in his previous 443 plate appearances against lefties over the last three years. The one bad trend from his stint in winter ball? His strikeout rate remained a bit high, at 24.8%.

Read the rest of this entry »

Today’s waiver wire features a recent tradee and a middle infield speculation. As usual, these recommendations are geared to mono leaguers.

Read the rest of this entry »

It’s another truly deep dive in this week’s waiver wire adventure. Since I’ve been asked several times, the deep league edition of the weekly waiver wire is typically meant for Mono league owners. Or perhaps if you play in a 20-team mixed league, you could use these recommendations as well.

Read the rest of this entry »

We all know the story with Juan Francisco. He hits for an insane amount of power, strikes out a ton, and generally does not play great enough defense to warrant regular play. The latter is actually my biggest concern with Francisco. As Brett Lawrie nears full health, the Blue Jays will be looking to find creative ways to get Francisco in the lineup, whether that means Lawrie becoming the regular second baseman or the Blue Jays pulling a Dodger Outfield move on the 1B/DH spot with Adam Lind, Edwin Encarnacion, and Francisco is yet to be seen.
Read the rest of this entry »

They both have five home runs and have wRC+ of 151 or better. These two veteran sluggers seem to be getting back to their old ways of power and patience leading to success offensively. For that reason, I am advocating either picking them up, holding onto them, or acquiring them in leagues that have excess UTIL spots or CI spots.
Read the rest of this entry »

Jesus Aguilar is the very definition of a prospect with more value in fantasy baseball than in real life. Our own Marc Hulet ranked him as the 11th-best prospect in Cleveland’s system last year, and left him out of the top 15 entirely this year. There are plenty of very good reasons for this exclusion, starting with the fact that Aguilar is a bat-only prospect; he has well below-average speed and doesn’t have much of anything to offer defensively.

Furthermore, the 23-year-old’s one plus tool, his power, has mostly been of the five o’clock variety throughout his minor-league career. Listed at 6’3″, 250 pounds (I’d bet my life savings on the over regarding his listed weight), he puts on one hell of a show in batting practice, hitting the ball out of the park to all fields. However, following his 23 homers in A-ball back in 2011, he hit just 15 dingers between High-A and Double-A in 2012, and 16 last year in Double-A.

Read the rest of this entry »

Today’s edition of the deep league waiver wire is for those with a truly barren free agent pool scrambling for an injury replacement. Even better, both have dual position eligibility, which is extremely helpful when you’re faced with so few pickup options.

Read the rest of this entry »

Over at Viva El Birdos, SBNation’s Cardinal’s blog, author Craig Edwards has a great post on Matt Adams and the shift. In the piece, he notes that Adams hits almost all of his home runs to right field or right center, showing that his best way to beat the shift has been to just bash one over the fence. This season, things have started off a bit differently.
Read the rest of this entry »