Arismendy Alcantara & Ezequiel Carrera: Deep League Waiver Wire
June 22, 2016
I have nothing clever to say. Let’s get right to it.
Archive for Roto
The Hottest Pickups This Week: Yay or Nay?
June 21, 2016
Last year, I would regularly look at the Roster Trends page on my CBS sports league site and discuss the players who were most added and dropped over the last week, ultimately concluding whether the moves were justified. I have yet to publish such an exercise this year, so figured we were overdue. Today I’ll check in on the top pickups, defined as the players whose ownership percentage in CBS leagues have increased by the highest rates.
Shockingly Low Home Run Totals
June 20, 2016
Last week, I discussed a multitude of players who have hit a shocking number of home runs so far this season. So today let’s check in on those on the opposite end of the spectrum, the players that beg the question…what the heck happened to your home run power?!?!?!
Spectrum Thinking with James Loney and Ike Davis
I currently work in education and one of the subjects I used to teach was fifth-grade social studies. Something I would work on with my students is spectrum thinking. The idea behind this is that there are multiple perspectives when it comes to historical events. Instead of simply telling my students an event from one singular perspective, I tried to provide for them the multiple perspectives in the hopes they could draw their own conclusions about why certain events occurred and which positions were more justified. Admittedly, this was not always effective with all my fifth-graders as some of my students were not developmentally ready for this type of critical thinking. I imagine this would be more effective at a high school level.
The point of bringing this up is not to reminisce about my days as a teacher. In history, things are rarely black or white: there is a lot of gray. When evaluating players, the same can be true. Even when we are right about our predictions, this doesn’t mean that the prediction had an absolute certainty of happening or not happening. There are probabilities for certain things happening and nobody is 100% correct when making their pre-evaluations. I imagine this is not a new concept to those reading this. And even if it is, hopefully you will learn something new from this perspective.
Today, I am going to look at two first basemen who may become relevant depending on how deep your league is. It would be easy for me to dismiss their recent performances, which would make the point of this article pretty useless. I am going to attempt to go through some spectrum thinking by looking at the highs and lows of both hitters. More likely than not, I won’t be able to make any concrete conclusions, but you will hopefully be able to gain some additional perspectives on what values these players could potentially provide. Read the rest of this entry »
Ottoneu 101: How Loans Work in Ottoneu
As mentioned in the past, Ottoneu is a deep but enjoyable game of fantasy baseball economics perfectly suited for the FanGraphs reader. However, the learning curve in year one can be steep, so consider this point a primer on how “loans” work in Ottoneu leagues.
All Ottoneu teams, regardless of the format (5×5, 4×4, FGPTS, SABR) are bound by both a 40 player roster cap and a $400 salary cap applied between the annual league player auction and the end of the MLB regular season (these caps do not apply in the off-season). Exceeding either of these caps will result in a “frozen” roster thereby preventing the owner from bidding on players, making trades, or even setting lineups until the issue is resolved, per Rule 1b. In other words, your only option when faced with an illegal (“over-cap”) roster is to cut players until you get to 40 or fewer players or $400 or less in total salary. For new Ottoneu players, keep in mind you should never willingly exceed these limits (per Rule 1c), and each of your 40 roster spots inherently costs $1 each, so you really only have $360 in “free” roster salary to play with (see Rule 1bi) at any given time (including during the annual auction).
Trevor Bauer and Critical Strikes
Trevor Bauer’s performance in 2016 has not jumped off the page, but after nine starts and a handful of relief appearances, he is enjoying a career best 3.69 ERA and 3.70 FIP. His strikeout rate has declined somewhat from 8.7 to 7.9 per nine innings, but his walk rate has declined more significantly from 4.0 to 3.0 per nine and is palatable for fantasy owners for the first time. If this is what Bauer is now, then he can finally be a fantasy asset, even if not quite in the form that many expected from him when he struck out more than a batter per inning in the upper levels of the Diamondbacks’ farm system.
10 AL SP SwStk% Surgers
June 16, 2016
Who’s inducing more swings and misses? Let’s take a gander at the American League starting pitchers whose SwStk% marks have most surged versus last year. Perhaps it’s added velocity, a new pitch, or change in pitch mix driving the spike. Let’s find out.
Ike Davis & Jason Motte: Deep League Waiver Wire
June 15, 2016
Injury replacements is the theme of this week’s waiver wire. It was probably the theme of last week’s too. And the week prior. Basically, if you don’t own the guy who got injured, injuries are good! Opportunities!
Bullpen Report: June 14, 2016
I was mistaken yesterday in thinking this version of the Bullpen Report would come out early the next morning. Sorry if this caused any confusion, but this is good news for those night owls who will get the BR earlier than expected. Read the rest of this entry »
More Shocking Home Run Totals
June 14, 2016
Yesterday, I discussed five players whose early season home run totals have like totally shocked the world. Clearly, I missed a couple of obvious names and some of you commented reminding me of such. So let’s get to the rest of those shocking hitters sitting on home run totals we never expected at this point in the season.
