Archive for First Base

Positional flexibility is always something coveted on fantasy rosters. Players such as Matt Carpenter help optimize roster construction because owners have the opportunity to utilize him where it best benefits his or her team, as Carpenter can be slotted in at first base, second base, third base or even the outfield.

That’s why I find it rather interesting that six of the top eight fantasy catchers also have first base eligibility. Guys like Jonathan Lucroy and Joe Mauer have recently gained the distinction, while Carlos Santana and Victor Martinez serve as examples of catchers who have long carried dual citizenship.

Although I immediately worked under the assumption that having catcher and first base eligibility would be highly beneficial next season, it recently occurred to me to ask whether that even matters. Would an owner willfully hold two catchers on their roster — such as Wilin Rosario and Mike Napoli — with the designs of playing both on an everyday basis while punting the first base position?

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If you’re in a league that allows daily roster adjustments, whether it’s head to head or roto, then streaming is probably what you’re all about here at the end. With four more days of games, every little bit helps and picking up the right player could mean the difference between a win and a “if only I had another week to play.” While Mike Podhorzer covers the recommended streamer candidates for pitchers over the next two days, I’ll throw you a few hitters who could give you that one final push. Some may be available, some might not, but all are swinging a hot bat right now and if you can use them…use them. Read the rest of this entry »

When making waiver wire moves at this point in the year, you like to have some sort of comforting reassurance that you know what you’re getting when you pick a guy up. With all the unproven commodities arriving in September, sifting through the names can be aggravating at times because you aren’t quite sure how they’ll perform or how much playing time they’ll even get. That’s why I like to stick with what I know and one of the things I know is that you’re simply not going to find that five-tool fantasy dreamboat that you and everyone else craves. Could you catch lightning in a bottle with a random pick-up? Sure. But your odds of that are probably as good as hitting a lotto jackpot and being able to move out of your mom’s basement and into a command center of your own. Most players that you find available right now have some sort of flaw but are more than capable of contributing in some fashion because they are seeing consistent playing time and have proven where they are most capable. Like these, for example… Read the rest of this entry »

If there’s any tool on this site I truly love, it’s the “last calendar year” sort on the leaderboards. For example, if you head over to the batting leaders and sort by wOBA over the last calendar year, you’ll get Miguel Cabrera & Chris Davis at the top, as you’d expect… but you’ll also see a pretty surprising name crack the top 20 hitters with at least 500 plate appearances: Brandon Moss. In the top 20!

Just look at the names behind him to see how impressive that is, because he’s beating out Jose Bautista, Evan Longoria, Prince Fielder, and Carlos Beltran, among others. But Moss is only owned in about half of ESPN leagues, and barely more than a quarter in Yahoo. Have we all missed something?

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Adam Dunn’s batting average has never been considered great, but it has taken a nose dive over the past few seasons. More and more teams have been using a extreme shift on the left-handed hitter. Dunn has now decided to implement his own shift beating swing adjustment. The change has his batting average up, but at the cost of some home run power.

The 33-year-old has hit at or below the league average AVG over his career.

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There are just two weeks left in August and then, come September, rosters expand and your league’s waiver wire gets flooded with names filled with potential. But until then, you’re stuck sifting through the same old names, desperately hoping someone catches fire and can help boost your fantasy totals, even if for just a short time. Adding help at the corner infield spot can be a difficult task at this time of year, but it’s certainly not impossible. Read the rest of this entry »

With the fantasy seasons winding down and trade deadlines in many leagues being recently passed, a lot of fantasy advice at this point should be focused on next year and future seasons. As people who come to this site for fantasy news and notes, there is a high likelihood that you are the type of person who participates in long term fantasy leagues such as keeper and dynasty formats.
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Back in the spring, each of us here at RotoGraphs participated in a “Ten Bold Predictions” series for the upcoming season. As you can imagine, there’s a bit of tongue-in-cheek in all of those, because you don’t want to say something blatantly obvious like “Miguel Cabrera is going to be great”, for example, but you also want to stick with something that may vaguely be realistic, too.

We’ll probably recap those for everyone following the season, and I’m the first to admit I have some real clunkers in mine. But we can get into the rest another time, because for now, I want to focus on this one: my “bold prediction” that Justin Smoak would be a top-15 mixed league first baseman. Read the rest of this entry »

The king is dead. Long live the king.

That’s right, we have a new number one. For many of you, it’ll be far too late to move Albert Pujols off the top of the heap. But, given how his season went last year, and the excellence he’s shown his whole career, and his combination of contact and power, and his bad batting average on balls in play, it seemed like the good bet was on him to recapture some magic once he was healthy. Maybe the all-star break will help him, but now the mounting evidence about his decline (three-year declines in ISO and HR/FB in particular) is just too much to ignore.

The replacement top dog is not by consensus, however. It’s a pick em, so my ranking got the extra weight. It’s what the boss does in situations like this. But it is worth noticing that all four rankers had a different number one first baseman. Who’s your number one?

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Last year across the majors and minors Brett Wallace hit 25 home runs. This year between the majors and minors he has hit 15. His ISO at triple-A was .227 and at the MLB level it’s at .235. The issue, as it always has been, is the enormous amount of strikeouts. He has struck out in 37.9% of his 87 plate appearances this season but he still has been able to amass a 99 wRC+ — despite a .222 average and .276 on base percentage.
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