This will be a real quick hitter here, thinking about periphery stuff in terms of roster strategy…

There are no doubt going to be a goodly number of you drafting fantasy baseball teams this weekend (so many in fact that we’re trying to throw together a weekend-long marathon chat for you should you want to check in with crisis situations!). After looking at the many squads I’ve already procured through sometimes deft and sometimes drunken decisions, I’m starting to prepare for my roster spots yet to become available via the disabled list. So while this is a waiver wire piece, it’s rather a bizarro-waiver-wire piece because I’m asking you to think about it in advance. Yes, it’s a strange time of year.

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Almost all fantasy leagues have a few spots to place players that are on the DL. Fantasy owners should look at filling these available roster spots with players currently on the DL. I will look at a few players that can be used in these slots.

Victor Martinez – C, DH (1.4% owned in ESPN, 13% in Yahoo) – Victor will not be playing in 2012, so if an owner is in a 1-year league, ignore him. In a keeper league, he has some definate value. Good hitting qualified catchers are hard to find. While an owner may not be able to stash him for a season, why not try hold onto him until the end of the season. If there is a point when he must be dropped to the waiver wire, try to trade him off. Attempt to turn the release into a bidding war. State that owner A, the owner with the best waiver wire ranking and an open DL slot, will get him up unless another owner offers up a trade.

Salvador Perez – C (6.4% ESPN, 11% Yahoo) – Sal is expected to miss 12 to 14 weeks. His return should be in late July at the earliest. All catchers wear down and are generally bad offensively. Sal will be a decent C option when he returns in all but the shallowest of leagues.

Brett Anderson – P (0.4% ESPN, 4% Yahoo) – Brett has been a decent fantasy option when healthy. The problem is that he is rarely healthy. He will not be the same pitcher that he was when he came up in 2009. Since 2009, he has lost 1.5 MPH to his fastball and his strikeout and gone down (7.7 K/9 in 2009 to 6.6 K/9 in 2011). This last injury will degrade his talent even more. Brett looks to return in August when many pitchers may be getting shutdown. He could step in for some innings late in the season.

Rubby de la Rosa – P (0% ESPN, 1% Yahoo) – I like Rubby potential fantasy value more than Brett Anderson. He threw hard (96 MPH) and averaged 8.9 K/9 in 13 games last season. The main problem holding him down in 2011 was his 4.6 BB/9. He could be a great pitcher if he could get the walks under control. He looks to be ready to return from TJS late in the season.

Managing the disabled list isn’t often the difference between winning and losing a league, but if it’s done poorly, it can leave owners hurting for bench space and restrict the ability to grab sleepers or move out a slumping player. This time of year, if used well, the DL can be used almost as an extra draft slot. Grabbing an already injured player, then using that vacated spot to pull a top option off the wire gives owners a way to fill a weakness that emerged during the draft.

There is a huge caveat here: I don’t recommend this plan for those who only have one DL spot. At all. The unpredictability of injuries — I see you Miguel Cabrera — means that giving over the only injury refuge on the roster to someone like a Brett Anderson or Dallas Braden produces the wicked choice of dropping the newly injured player, dropping the long-term injury despite the sunk cost already incurred, or playing with a shortened bench. Survivable? Sure, but far less than ideal. Read the rest of this entry »

Recently, I posted my 2012 starting pitcher DL projections. In the projections, I used games started, age, and injury history to predict the percentage chance a pitcher will end up on the DL. Today, I am going to give an initial stab at how throwing a large number of curveballs and sliders affects a pitcher’s DL chances.

I started by looking at the season after the season in which a pitcher threw over 120 innings. Normally, 39% of these pitchers will end up on the DL. The percentage increases even more if the pitcher threw a large number of sliders or curveballs.

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A pitcher’s fantasy value is more than ERA, WHIP or K/9. Even if they have great values in rate stats, they are useless if they aren’t pitching. Today I am going to give the chances for certain starting pitchers to end up on the disabled list in 2012.

Last year, I determined a formula to get the percentage chance a pitcher will end up on the DL. Historically, any starter that pitched 120 innings in the previous season has a 41% chance of ending up on the DL. So of a team’s 5 starters, 2 will spend time on the DL on average.

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The Milwaukee Brewers may have expected to go into the regular season without one of their key players. While the Brewers will have Ryan Braun for the entire season, Corey Hart might miss some time at the beginning of the year following arthroscopic surgery on his knee. Though the outfielder is expected to only miss three-to-four weeks — and might even be ready for Opening Day — there’s also a chance he’ll miss a few games to begin the season. While that doesn’t seem like much, it could have an impact on the transitioning Brewers.

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We — collectively — are going to steal Mike Podhorzer’s idea and make some crazy predictions for the coming season. Every year, something happens to surprise baseball viewership. Jose Bautista and Lance Berkman come to mind over the past few years.

So let’s try to open our minds and let crazy in for some fun. Then we’ll look back at the end of the season and see which RotoGraphs staff member can access the other side most effectively — then we’ll scoot down the bench a little away from him.

1) No player will hit 40 home runs this year. Obviously Mike Stanton and Jose Bautista loom large, but there were only three guys that managed the feat last year, and the point is that power is down. Handy graph time!

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Grady Sizemore

Grady is out until opening day with a strained lower back. Grady has played in only 104 games total over the last 2 seasons and is fairly familiar with the being on the DL. Currently, there is no firm time table for his return.

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Zach Britton (BAL – P) – In 2011, Britton started his first season in the majors on a tear. After his first 10 games, the ground ball pitcher had a 2.35 ERA and 5 Wins. The good start to the season was because of an extremely low BABIP (0.242). Over the next 10 games, he had an 8.00 ERA that was BABIP (0.410) driven. At this point in the season, he went on the DL for 17 days with should inflammation. After the short DL stint, he came back and pitched much better, with an 4.47 ERA and a 0.282 BABIP. During the whole time, he was able to maintain a relatively constant strikeout rate, walk rate and fastball speed.

This off season, he stated that his shoulder has still been in pain. He had an MRI on it that came back negative. With that news, he has begun long toss sessions to get ready for the season. The 23-year-old stated that he will just have to deal with the inflammation at various times over his career.

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Victor Martinez

Martinez torn his ACL on Tuesday and will likely be done for the season. The true nature of his injury, and therefore his return time, will not be known until he has surgery on his knee. He looks to be basically useless for the upcoming fantasy season. If a some owner has the option to drop him as a keeper, go ahead and let him go. There is no reason to keep a 34-year-old DH/C/1B for the entire season on the DL when some other player, that can contribute, could be kept. I could see him be drafted in all leagues and then stashed on the DL. With most fantasy teams, these DL spots will fill up with players that plan on returning rather quickly, so he may end up back on the waiver wire early in the season.

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