Last night, Jacoby Ellsbury had three plate appearances in his return back from a fractured foot. He had a hit and a walk after missing just 20 days. I decided to go back and look at players who fractured their foot and how they performed after returning.

With a sample size of one game under his belt, Ellsbury looks great and he feels pretty good (source)

“Yeah it was a nice game back,” Ellsbury said. “I’m definitely excited about it. I felt pretty good out there.”

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As David Wiers mentioned about a week ago, Albert Pujols is done for the year, and his value in 2014 will likely be all over the board. In re-draft leagues, you have the pleasure of writing Pujols off for the next couple months and not thinking about him again until pre-season rankings come out.

However, dynasty leagues such as ottoneu will require a different look at the ailing (and maybe aging?) first basemen. In some leagues, Pujols has been (or will be) cut, while in others owners are trying to decide what to do. The big question is, “Have we seen the last of MVP Albert Pujols, or is there reason to expect a bounce back next season?”

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Darin Ruf is hitting just short of .300 with great power in his first 150+ plate appearances in the big leagues. Evan Gattis has 15 home runs in less than half of a debut season, and is catcher-eligible to boot. Let’s get crazy.

Of course, you knew what was coming, because titles work that way: they’re old. As terrible as it sounds for a mid-thirties desk jockey who has never been much better than the second- or third-best player on the court for his weekly lawyer league style pickup basketball game, two players that will be 27 years old at the end of the week are old, and that means something about their ceilings.

Still, there might be a chance these players are in different situations.

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“Dude’s not even 24 and he’s already hit 20+ homers twice. He’s on a trajectory that’ll take him to the top of the first basemen, with good plate discipline and power.”

or

“Have you seen him hit? Freddie Freeman’s power numbers in the minors were not exciting. Disagree.”

There’s good points on both sides of the battle. But Freddie Freeman owners in dynasty leagues are probably wondering if they have a long-term, top-of-the-table asset, or if he’s a better plug-in piece for a contender.

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Last week I took a look at three power arm prospects who could be handling the 9th inning soon for their major league teams. In that article I profiled Detroit’s Bruce Rondon, Toronto’s Marcus Stroman and Seattle’s Carter Capps. Today I thought I’d continue with that theme by looking at a few more players with similar potential who are the property of National League organizations.

Heath Hembree, RHP, San Francisco Giants

Hembree was a 5th round pick in 2010 out of the College of Charleston – a very underrated baseball school. The South Carolina institution has had three or more players drafted every year since 2005. The school hasn’t had a player taken in the 1st round, but they have had three 2nd rounders and also saw current Yankees outfielder Brett Gardner taken in the 3rd round. Hembree was the Closer for a Cougars team that made a run to the NCAA Regional Finals his draft year. A torn right meniscus in his knee and irregular usage somewhat limited his innings in college, but he generated a lot of buzz leading up to the draft. After being picked by the Giants the fireballer then struck out 22 batters in his 11 inning short season pro debut that year. He’s largely continued that success over the last couple seasons.

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Fantasy Players spend a tremendous amount of time every season chasing Saves. Relief pitchers are for the most part inherently unreliable and unpredictable and there tends to be a tremendous amount of turnover at the position. So with so much unreliability among relievers, why bother investing in relief prospects? Well, there are some arms out there who are just so filthy they demand your attention. Sure, you can make do finding the next Casey Janssen and get a solid solution for a year or two… but there’s also something to be said for finding the next K-Rod before he explodes on to the scene. Here are three of my favorite prospects who could be racking up Saves in the near future.

Bruce Rondon, RHP, Detroit Tigers

You all know the score here. Rondon shouldn’t be a new name to any of you, but all the same you can’t do a relief pitcher prospect article and not mention him, can you? The young Venezuelan fireballer had a shot to run away with the 9th inning job in Detroit this Spring but command lapses and inconsistency have him back at Toledo to start the year. Rondon began 2012 in the Florida State League but dominated minor league hitters with an overpowering fastball that hits triple digits. Read the rest of this entry »

Before I begin, I wanted to get something out of the way first. I have never played in a keeper league for more than a season (therefore never having the opportunity to make keeper selections), and so I might be wrong about my feelings on this strategy. But, I don’t think I am. On Saturday, I was asked to participate in an online auction for a FanGraphs reader who was unable to attend. Being the awesome person that I am and unwilling to pass on a chance to participate in another auction, the player selection format I enjoy significantly more than the snake draft, I said yes with little convincing necessary.

This was a 12-team 5×5 mixed rotisserie keeper league, where if an owner chooses to keep a player, his salary would increase $3. Standard roster size, except the league uses just one catcher instead of two. Oh, and you also use your auction budget ($270, instead of $260) to bid on your 5 reserves. Anyway, having had little experience in a keeper league auction to compare, this one seemed insane. Let me tell you how.

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Before you go thinking this is just another mock draft column, read the next sentence — your mouse will practically click “more” by itself.

At a time when every fantasy owner and their sister is prepping for the upcoming season by doing mock draft after mock auction…what if we threw a curveball at that concept by selecting only prospects for a mock dynasty league?

That, friends, is what the fine folks over at Fake Teams came up with, and they so graciously asked FanGraphers Mike Newman, J.D. Sussman and me to participate as part of a panel of a baker’s dozen’s worth of prospect pundits. What comes next are the results.

But that’s not all! To help keeper and dynasty league owners everywhere who get to partake in the always-exhilarating, often-painstaking process of drafting prospects, I’ll present my approach and strategy to this enlightening exercise — which when you think about it, was really just a make-believe draft of non-major leaguers for this made-up fantasy game we all love to play.

Yeah, like you’re not gonna click.

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The ottoneu keeper deadline was jam-packed this year, at least judging by the activity in my deadline chat, the questions popping up on Twitter and all the action in my leagues. Across the Original ottoneu league, the second FanGraphs Staff League, and the FanGraphs Experts League alone, 223 players were cut on January 31, and 29 more players changed hands via trade over the final couple days of roster action.

As you all recover from what I am sure was a similarly hectic deadline rush, I am going to try to provide some insights into what happened a) in my three leagues and b) across the universe of leagues to give you a sense of what the ottoneu-verse looks like today.

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Over the next three weeks, I am putting together three articles to help both existing and new ottoneu players (including one for those still thinking about ottoneu). Next week we’ll look at how the three scoring systems offered by ottoneu compare, and the week after I’ll offer some guidance for those venturing into their first ottoneu experience. In the midst of all that, expect to see a detailed breakdown of how I create projected auction values for my ottoneu leagues.

But this week, with just nine days until rosters freeze, I am going to focus on those of you in your second or third year in ottoneu, or those of you taking over abandoned teams. In many ways, the next nine days are some of the most important to your season – moves you make now can put you on the path to a title or start a downward spiral.

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