Washington is said to be looking to make a move for another major bullpen arm. Wade Davis is one name they are looking at, and Aroldis Chapman is another guy they have inquired about. No deal is imminent at this point, but you may need to start thinking about and potentially acting on the implications of one of these guys going to Washington. Would the Nationals move Papelbon out of the closer’s role? Even though he has posted a 2.64 ERA and 2.94 FIP, it’s hard to argue he deserves a higher leverage role than a Davis or Chapman. Papelbon has a lower HR/FB% (5.3%) and GB% (36.8%) than his career norms, which would concern me as a Papelbon owner. Papelbon is also known to be territorial about his closer’s role, so that is also a scenario to monitor if the Nationals do acquire a big arm for the bullpen. Trading Chapman would move Andrew Miller into the closer’s role, who should be owned in most leagues, whereas Davis’ trade would give Kelvin Herrera a nice hold on the job, especially after Joakim Soria had another rough outing tonight.
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I wanted to try something I have never done before, but always enjoy reading when others do it. I’m referring to blind comparisons, where you compare two or more players’ statistics without saying who they are. When Paul Sporer and I went to an HQ seminar, the presenters did this a lot. Sporer was pretty good, where I think I said Adam Eaton for every player with a low ADP and a decent amount of stolen bases. Like I said, this is my first shot at this so I doubt I will come up with any crazy pairings just yet, and I limited this article to first basemen so the sampling is a bit smaller than if I did the whole league. In the words of Ghostface Killah, “Be Easy.”

These are numbers I compiled Thursday morning, so if anything big happened yesterday, I would’ve missed it. Though one game shouldn’t skew these numbers that much, obviously. Also, for ADP, I went to FantasyPros who compiled the ADP from NFBC, CBS, Yahoo, ESPN, and RTS, then averaged those numbers. Let’s get started.

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Wade Miley hasn’t been a fantasy-relevant pitcher this season with his 5.36 ERA, but his performance on Tuesday night against the White Sox piqued my interest nonetheless. He wasn’t particularly good in the start, allowing three runs with just four strikeouts and three walks over 6.1 innings. However, Miley was just two pitches away from preventing the White Sox from scoring at all.

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There was a time, many, many years ago, when I would never roster a rookie starting pitcher. This was when I first began playing fantasy baseball in the late 1990s. Whether it’s because rookie starters now seem to enjoy more immediate success than in the past or we just do a better job evaluating pitchers in general that enables us to separate the wheat from the chaff, I no longer avoid rookie starters, and have not for a while. I already discussed selling Michael Fulmer two weeks ago, so that leaves us with just only a couple of rookie American League starters we truly care about, one of which is Blake Snell.

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Let’s go fishing!

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Yesterday, I discussed the five players with the highest ownership spikes over the last week in CBS Sports leagues. Today, I’ll check in on the players fantasy owners are scrambling to kick to the curb and drop them off their rosters. The most dropped list could be a good place to start if you’re looking to buy low. Let’s see if that’s the case this time or if owners are justified dropping each. Since the top of the list is littered with players on the DL or players demoted to the minors, I will only include those healthy and in the Majors.

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It’s been a month since I last checked in on the hottest pickups in CBS leagues. So let’s take another gander. Below are the players whose ownership rates have increased most in the past week on CBS. Are owners justified in rushing to the free agent pool to add these players?

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My colleagues have been reviewing their Bold Predictions this week, so I figured I would follow suit. Here is the link to my original Bold Predictions piece. I am going to take a slightly different approach when reviewing them, however, since most of mine turned out to be pretty brutal. If I were to give legitimate odds on most of these, giving them a 1% chance of working out would be rather optimistic. So I decided to break down each prediction three-fold:

What works with this prediction?

What doesn’t work with this prediction?

What would be the more reasonable prediction at this point?

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As our much needed baseball break comes to an end, it’s time once again to explore the free agent pool and search for hidden treasures.

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Yesterday, I calculated every qualified hitters’ xBABIP and compared it to each of their BABIP marks to determine which hitters have most underperformed. Today will bring a look at the opposite side of the coin — those hitters whose BABIP marks most exceed their xBABIP marks. These aren’t necessarily sell high candidates, but you figure their batting averages should decline, perhaps significantly, the rest of the way.

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