Heading into the season, Chris Archer was a pretty popular starting pitcher target in fantasy leagues. He was one of those non-sleeper sleepers, if such a term exists. You know, the guy everyone is hyping as a sleeper, which jacks up his price to “he has to enjoy a full season breakout just to break even” territory. It was easy to see why he was so appealing to many. He averaged 95 mph with his fastball, struck out a high rate of hitters in the minors and posted an impressive 3.22 ERA over more than half a season’s worth of starts with the Rays. But over his first nine starts of this year, things haven’t gone exactly the way his fantasy owners had hoped and expected. Read the rest of this entry »

The MLB transactions list is usually a good place to start when a fantasy owner is looking for a surprise addition. Suppositions about those transactions can work even better, but I’m too late.

I’m a bit out of the loop on things, but I don’t think I’m off base here. I figured that both of these players were kind of obvious as recommendations when I saw their names, but their needles haven’t moved much since the announcements of their impending returns to 25-man rosters, each in a different circumstance.

If an owner has any reservations, then I’d say to them that I wouldn’t hesitate. I’d be aggressive, if there were any wonder about how one of the two would play in my league – in other words, if it’s because of league depth or something similar.

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

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Ah, May, that time of the year in which the baseball season is no longer new, or young, but rather, established enough where players are beginning to lose their jobs and the injuries are starting to pile up, clearing the way for younger talent to make their mark on the fantasy radar. That’s where we find our two contestants this week, one of whom has benefited from playing time thanks to an early-season flameout, and the other suddenly pertinent in fantasy due to his newfound opportunity.
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Yesterday, I shared which starting pitchers have suffered from the most rotten luck so far this season by comparing their ERAs to their SIERA marks. Naturally, today it’s time to look at the opposite side of the coin — those whose ERAs are not supporting by their underlying peripherals and have significantly higher SIERA marks. Let’s take a gander.

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• It is looking like Matt Wieters may not play again in 2014. Additionally the earliest he could be back is in July.

After Wieters fully rests from the injection, the Orioles expect to get a more definitive idea about what’s going on with the elbow. Showalter has said he would like to know by July 1 whether Wieters can return behind the plate this season.

For owners in shallow leagues and short benches, I could see him as droppable right now.

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For the most part, there’s some truth to the fact that you have to get em up to get em out: The average ISO for the twenty guys hitting the most ground balls per fly ball this year is .090 — far below the league’s .145 average. That isn’t to say that it’s as easy as “Hit More Fly Balls = Hit More Homers.” There’s probably an ideal batted ball mix for each hitter.

But, if you have an established hitter that is suddenly hitting a lot more ground balls, and their power is down, it seems reasonable to worry about that power. After all, the guys putting the most balls in play have reached the threshold for stability, and these batted ball stats are more reliable with every day.

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Following an abysmal 2013 campaign that saw him slash .209/.306/.357, Rickie Weeks entered the 2014 season as Scooter Gennett’s very expensive backup. Last season didn’t exactly come out of nowhere either, as it marked the third consecutive campaign in which Weeks’ weighted on-base average declined.

Weeks has started just 11 games this year, but five of those starts have come in the last nine days. Before anyone goes taking that as evidence that Weeks may be working his way back into the regular starting lineup, I’ll note that four of those five games were against left-handed starters. Still, it’s the largest chunk of playing time he’s gotten all year, and he is absolutely crushing the ball.

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We have come a long way when it comes to evaluating a pitcher’s performance. No longer do we look at W/L record, hits allowed and other metrics that are greatly influenced by factors outside the pitcher’s control. We have learned to focus on the pitcher’s underlying skills. However, it remains very difficult to look past ERA for the majority of fantasy owners. This is somewhat understandable when looking at full year results, but when we’re still just a month and a half into the season with pitchers generally in the 50-60 innings range, ERA should be almost completely ignored. ERA estimators such as SIERA are much more predictive of rest of season performance. So with that in mind, here are your SIERA underperformers and acquisition target list. I have only included pitchers whose SIERA marks are below 4.00. If a pitcher is sporting a 7.00 ERA with a 4.70 SIERA, then sure he may be a bit unlucky, but he still stinks!

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Do they still do the worst column of the week thing at Grantland? I love those things! Let’s try to top the good folks at Grantland in this space today!

My baseball consumption and internet reading have been way down in the first month-plus of 2014. The bosses at work are really making me like actually work a lot lately in this post-Marxist, post-industrial capitalist world. Little do they know that this column is being written on the company’s dime! I feel like I’m starting to finally win here. Long introduction long, I’ve been having to follow the season pretty much through Grant Brisbee’s columns to this point, and earlier this week, Brisbee provided an embarrassing gif of Buster Posey catching the fear as Jason Heyward slid in to the plate, eluding Posey’s fraidy-cat tag.

I’m with Darryl Ratzlaff who tweeted at Giants beat writer Hank Schulman, “was little league. Franchise philosophy? I havent seen Sanchez scared of contact Injury in his head.” That’s exactly right. Posey might have more tools than Hector Sanchez, but Hec has a plus-plus heart. They say you can’t measure heart, but I just did.

Defensive Runs Saved has Posey at +1 on the year and +16 for his career, but I’ve got news for John Dewan: that play linked to above qualifies as a Defensive Run Lost (DRL), another new stat I just created. Worse, watching Posey run for the hills with a runner barreling in on him has a cascading effect on the rest of the club. When they see the highest-paid player on the squad dogging it in a meaningless Ryan Vogelsong start in May, they know they don’t have to bother selling out for the team either.

What’s that you say? Posey is hitting .292/.386/.467 while leading one of the game’s best teams (so far) in WAR? Posey might be first in WAR, but he’s also first in appeasement and last in heart. And to think, the Giants could’ve drafted an all-heart gamer like, I don’t know, Justin Smoak or Gordon Beckham instead.

It’s time for Sabey-Sabes and fantasy owners everywhere to either give Posey his outright release or move him to third base. They say good-hitting catchers don’t grow on trees, but Andrew Susac is hitting .312/.404/.610 at Triple-A Fresno. Plus, Hector Sanchez is a money player. He’s already got 16 ribbies this year. I know this is FanGraphs and so you guys don’t know what ribbies are, so I’ll educate you. A ribbie is a run batted in, meaning a player drives in another member of his team via a walk, hit, or even an out. It’s something gamers who don’t care about their UZR or OPS+ or wOBA or WAR or VORPS or FIP do for the ball club in pursuit of victory.

I really feel for Sabey-Sabes, his skipper—Boch, Giants fans, and Posey fantasy owners. Posey is the Giants all-time San Francisco leader in Championships+, another new stat I just made up, but he’s sold out to sell sports drinks and protect his health to avoid another potentially career-threatening injury. What’s more important: keeping Posey healthy so the Giants don’t have to trade Kyle Crick for Carlos Beltran later this summer, or trying to win a game in May? If you answered winning a game in May, you’re a get-it guy or gal. Each game is equally important. This isn’t Animal Farm; some wins aren’t more equal than others. Duh!

I can’t stress enough to you how important the phantom tag heard ’round the world is to this season. It’s an even year, so you’d think the Giants would just waltz to the World Series a la 2010 and 2012; however, that plan was dashed nearly three years to the day that Scott Cousins took Posey out. The Giants can’t recover from this unless they turn things over to the young bucks with nothing to lose in Susac and Sanchez. Sabey-Sabes has pulled off this addition by subtraction once before when he dealt Bengie Molina to Texas and turned catching duties over to the eventual Rookie of the Year in 2010, a guy named Buster Posey. That guy is gone now.

It’s time to look beyond the stats and sell high on Posey.

In all seriousness, one could make the case Susac is the top prospect in the Giants’ system right now. As the trade deadline approaches, if the Giants stay in contention, a catching-needy team would be wise to take a run at Suasc. He’s shown power, patience, plus-plus looks, and the ability to throw out Billy Hamilton five times thus far during his minor league career. The 24-year-old second-round pick out of Oregon State could have a bright future if he can stay healthy, as injuries have plagued him dating back to college.

This article was funded by Take it Back PAC: Andrew Susac for Starting Catcher in 2014. It was entirely facetious with the exception of the final paragraph.