It wasn’t a set plan to have an all-Astros edition of the deep league waiver wire. But judging by how many Astros players I own in Tout Wars (five), it’s clear that I think there’s some intrigue here. Heading into spring training, there was a plethora of first base/DH/outfield candidates, but those position battles have been somewhat sorted out at this point, leaving many of their players undervalued.
Week 1 is in the books, and with the tiny sample size comes the emergence of several deep league options, overlooked on draft day, who are providing hope that they can help owners in the immediate term.
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Welcome back to another year of ranking the American league outfielders! Prepare yourselves for awkwardly shoehorned pop culture references from years past and hopefully a bit of baseball analysis. To kick off the year in style, rather than “tier one, tier two” and boring things like that, I’ll present the tiers in order of my favorite fictional TV/film Presidents of the United States. If it weren’t for that fictional part, Daniel Day Lewis would run away with it for his performance in “Lincoln.”
President Josiah “Jed” Bartlet – “The West Wing“
You were expecting maybe, uhh, the Addams family? I don’t think I can add much on top of what has already been said, re-hashed, repeated and summarized already. Just know Trout is pretty okay at that baseball thing.
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It’s hard to believe that it’s that time of year again — the start of a new baseball season and the return of the deep league waiver wire. Ownership rates are sometimes dramatically different depending on the league site, so it’s always a little difficult to determine what pool of players to choose from for recommending. Just like in previous years, I will only consider players owned in 10% or less of leagues on CBS.
Platooning a left-hander and a right-hander is a fairly common practice for major league teams, but utilizing platoon partners on your fantasy team isn’t the best way to take advantage of platoon splits. This may seem super obvious to you, but it’s better to use two lefties on separate teams who are used as platoon players as opposed to using two players who are platoon partners on the same team. In other words it’s better to go with Matt Joyce and Daniel Nava than it is to go with Nava and Jonny Gomes. Read the rest of this entry »
One of my favorite stats to look at in Spring Training is plate appearances. Absolutely devoid of the whiff of results-based analysis in a small sample, plate appearances can tell us who the team likes, and who the team wants to run out there every day. So, despite the fact that he’s hitting .148/.209/.295 this spring, I’m excited about Abraham Almonte. He’s leading the Mariners in plate appearances!
Even if you buy the idea that Almonte is the starting center fielder for the Mariners in 2014, and that the team will score more runs this year so his counting stats won’t be horrid, there’s still the matter of deciding how much you like him. Do you like him in your 12-team AL-only? Sure. But do you like him in your twelve-team mixer?
The outfield edition of Pod’s Picks may help you find value or learn who to avoid at their current going rates. The bullish section will only include players from my top 64 (which assume four outfielders starting at the Util slot, in addition to the 60 starters at OF), while the bearish group will only include those whose RotoGraphs consensus is in the top 64.
OK, so not really. In fact, if you don’t know Brad Ausmus personally, then he probably doesn’t even know you have a fantasy team, let alone care about it. But the headline is a good attention-grabber and you all know how I love to lure you in with the headline. But while we all know that real-life managers don’t make their decisions based on how they’re going to impact the fantasy world, some times it feels like that when you own a player or two on that team and you don’t agree with a decision…or potential decision as the case may be here. I’m talking about the idea of Ian Kinsler batting leadoff for Detroit this year while Austin Jackson is moved down to the five-hole, or possibly even lower. Kinsler? Really? Read the rest of this entry »
Ordinarily, I like to focus on prospects, or at least relatively young major-leaguers. However, Eno recently suggested that everyone take a look at the RotoGraphs Consensus Rankings to find players we think are underrated/overrated, and I was surprised to see how low our experts have Shane Victorino in the outfield rankings, way down at No. 52, in between Chris Carter and Ben Revere.
Last year, despite playing in just 122 games, Victorino finished the season as the No. 21 outfielder in standard formats, between Mark Trumbo and Allen Craig. He put up a .294/.351/.451 slash line while hitting 15 homers and stealing 21 bases, and his weighted offense was 19% higher than league average. So why do our experts have him ranked so low?
Either I do way too many mock drafts and have personally skewed the ADP numbers everywhere or the word is out. Mark Trumbo is a hot commodity this season. Though his positioning found here in our “consensus rankings” at both first base and in the outfield doesn’t exactly scream, “You want Mark Trumbo,” I firmly believe that you do. Read the rest of this entry »
