Archive for Roto

You know when you don’t own a player on any of your fantasy teams and late in the season you’re browsing through box scores and you realize “Woah, Player X has XX homers?!?!?!”. Yes, as fantasy owners, especially for those in mixed leagues, we generally follow all of baseball. But I personally don’t pay as much attention to players I don’t own and know I am unlikely to own all season. So when spending the last 20 minutes trying to figure out what to write about, I noticed that Matt Carpenter had just hit his 19th homer of the season. Bingo! Something to write about.

Read the rest of this entry »

In 157 plate appearances, Kyle Schwarber has posted a .406 wOBA. He’s a rookie. And a catcher (well, half the time). If he qualified for the leaderboard, that wOBA mark would easily rank highest among catchers, while sitting sixth in all of baseball. He has certainly enjoyed quite the tremendous start to his Major League career and the Cubs have an embarrassing amount of young talent.

We haven’t even finished the month of August yet and I’m certainly not looking toward 2016 yet. But apparently some are. And in an article I read recently, the author discussed his early picks for the first two rounds of next year’s drafts. Schwarber wasn’t included, but was discussed at the end as a notable omission.

The fact that he was even mentioned as part of a small group of omissions shocked me. That’s typically the case when we start mock drafting for the following year and you see a new name in the first couple of rounds. It takes a while to get used to seeing a new name, so the knee-jerk reaction is to feel that it’s ridiculous and the player is severely overvalued after a breakout or career year. Is it fair to feel that way about Schwarber or is he rightfully zooming up 2016 lists?

Read the rest of this entry »

The title of the article is an allusion to Schott’s Miscellany, which you should definitely check out if you never have and feel compelled to know that a group of larks is called an exaltation or that a member of the 32nd degree of Freemasonry is known as a Sublime Prince of the Royal Secret.

–Julio Teheran May Have Found It Again–

Julio Teheran was not quite a star after the first two full seasons of his career in 2013 and 2014, but he was not far off. His 3.03 ERA was 15th best among qualified starters, just between Max Scherzer and Cole Hamels. His moderate 7.9 strikeouts per nine likely held him back from the top tier of pitchers, but his 2.1 walks per nine put him in the same category of effective yet underrated starters that Hisashi Iwakuma and Jose Quintana populate.

Meanwhile, Teheran was just 24 years old entering the 2015 season and coming off of consecutive 30-start seasons. While so many of the promising young Braves starters such as Tommy Hanson, Brandon Beachy, and Mike Minor had their ascents abruptly halted by injuries in recent seasons, Teheran seemed to have established himself as the staff anchor.

Read the rest of this entry »

Last week, I discussed the five starting pitchers whose fastball velocity had experienced the greatest surge over the previous two weeks. So today, I’ll check in on the decliners. Since velocity trends upward as the season rolls on, a significant decline in velocity at this time is concerning and could signal a serious issue.

Read the rest of this entry »

This is the time of year where you need things to go just right with your Fantasy squads but you know most times that simply won’t happen. At this late stage in the season, I’m sure you are well aware of the categories where you have a chance to gain points, but with trading deadlines over in most leagues, proper use of the waiver wire might be the only thing standing between you and a dirt nap for your squad.  Since I’m in the same situation, I took time to look at some players who have value and are owned in less than 35% of CBS Sports Leagues. I currently own three of them so I’m drinking the Kool-Aid as well.

Read the rest of this entry »

In just a couple of weeks, deep league waiver wires across the land will be overflowing with options as rosters expand. But you don’t have to wait until September as a pair of minor leaguers will be making their debut and are expected to get near regular at-bats for the time being!

Read the rest of this entry »

On June 9th, Starling Marte blasted his 12th home run of the season, leaving him just two shy of setting a new a career-high with 105 games left in the season. Marte has just one home run since June 10th so he is still one shy of that new high with 46 games left in the season. He hasn’t been bad during that stretch, not by a longshot, but the power has evaporated. In those 52 games, Marte is hitting .320 and has scored 29 runs with 12 stolen bases which would pace to 91 and 38 over a full season, respectively. But with just that one homer and a .091 ISO, he is no doubt disappointing some of his fantasy teams.

Honestly, the power outage shouldn’t surprise any of us.

Read the rest of this entry »

We’re just about ready to close the book on another season, and as we’re well into the throes of the 2015 stretch run, we need every bit of fantasy ammunition, each spare part we can scrounge from the waiver wire dumpster.

As a reminder, the players recommended in this space are best suited for mono formats, and the ownership percentages are by way of CBS.
Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday, I discussed four lightly owned hitters who could contribute positive value in stolen bases over the rest of the season in deep leagues. I inadvertently included all American Leaguers. Oops, my bad. Not again! So today, I’ll highlight six hitters who could be respectable sources of power for the deep league owner in need, half of which are National Leaguers!

Read the rest of this entry »

With just about a month and a half left in the season to go, it’s not automatically about choosing the most valuable offensive contributor for your active lineup. More important is where you sit in the various categories and which you could gain and lose the most points. For those in need of some speed, these four young men are almost certainly available in your league. All are owned in 10% or less in CBS leagues, though are probably better options in deeper leagues, rather than shallow mixers.

Read the rest of this entry »