Jonathan Lucroy, Yan Gomes, and Travis D’Arnaud all recently hit the disabled list. John Jaso was on the DL after just one plate appearance! Matt Wieters started the season on the DL and it seemed like Devin Mesoraco was headed there soon until a recent PH appearance. He hasn’t started a game since April 11th and he missed seven games in between PH appearances on the 12th and 21st. That is four of the top 10 drafted catchers, another within the top 15, and one of the most popular second catcher options in Jaso as he stood to get a ton of playing time as a non-catching catcher.

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The new high-strikeout, pitching-focused environment has changed the game in many ways, but one of the more significant ways is the rising value of middle relievers. For years I used to roster 2-3 middle relievers in an AL- or NL-only league to supplement my staff instead going with the fourth- or fifth-starter from some middling team. The linked article was done in 2011 when it was still kind of a niche strategy that maybe a couple of teams could pull off. There wasn’t the overwhelming volume of viable relievers that we see now with gaudy strikeout rates and microscopic ratios.

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This is a tough time of the year for fantasy baseball analysts. We’re not even at the end of week two meaning that in most cases the sample sizes are still too small to really be useful. The downside of this is that the fantasy analysis can become lazy as we wait for more data. Too often you see the vague, unhelpful “sell high” tag attached to any mid-rounder who is off to a high start or “buy low” on the star who has two rotten starts on his ledger thus far. But what does that even really mean? It’s so easy to say and so hard to actually execute.

Nobody who spent a top 20 pick on Stephen Strasburg (6.75 ERA in 10.7 IP) is going to move him for Nick Martinez (0.00 ERA in 14 IP). In fact, they probably aren’t going to move him at all (nor should they). You know what’s easy? Me telling you to go sell high on Chris Heston. But it’s also generic and frankly, shitty advice because it offers no insight into what selling high might be, especially because I know full well that unless Teresa Heston (that Chris’ mom, I looked it up) is in your league, you can’t really cash him in for some great return. The rest of your league is just as skeptical about his dubious 0.69 ERA as you are right now.

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If fantasy baseball were a marathon, we’d all have run about a mile and a half. Most races don’t even have their volunteers stand with trays of water cups this early on, so you’d better pace yourself if you’re already tired. I think I forgot to stretch.

Here’s an obligatory sentence reminding you about the caveats about small samples while attributing a shred of validity to them. OK, now that the formalities are out of the way, let’s talk ownership trends. National League outfielders are a promising bunch, especially in regard to the youth movement. I’ve been sold on a handful of them prior to the start of the season, and I’m surprised by their meager ownership numbers. They aren’t completely unowned, as my misleading title alleges, but they’re close enough.

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Last week, I identified potential stolen base streamers for daily fantasy leagues and weekly leagues with daily transactions and lineup changes. I used a pitcher’s career caught-stealing and pick-off rates as criteria to determine if a particular matchup was primed for streaming a speedster with the hope of him stealing a base (or two or four).

I like how it turned out, but it felt hastily constructed. A pitcher’s career rate seemed too broad a scope, especially considering the possibility that a pitcher can get better (or, perhaps, worse) at limiting steals and picking off runners over time.

With a little more time and care, I fleshed out everything a bit more and added an additional criterion: catcher effectiveness, which can be most obviously measured by caught-stealing rate. But I think there also is merit to calculating the frequency at which runners attempt to steal on a catcher. In a sense, it measure runners’ perception of a catcher’s skill, especially for those at the tails of the distribution.

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I play in a lot of fantasy baseball leagues. Like, a lot. I absolutely love the game, can’t resist a challenge, and have a tough time saying no when invited. All of that adds up to a 16-league portfolio when the dust settles. I’m sure some of you are thinking, “well doesn’t every result help and hurt you at this point?” Not quite. Part of that is because I’m a bulk drafter when it comes to “my guys”. There are certain players on both sides of the ball that I really focus on year-to-year and I end up trying to roster them as often as possible provided the format and pricetag are in line to do so.

I obviously can’t just copy the first team across the remaining 15, though, so I do have a shit-ton of different players. In fact, I have 244 different players at least once. A major part of this is because I’m in two NFBC 50-round draft-and-holds and I’ve got a lot of players on both of those teams that don’t show up anywhere else because of how deep we go in that league. As my league count ballooned, I began keeping track of who I have year-to-year to see how my investments shook out against what I believed coming into the season. We’re going to take a look at my portfolio today from the hitter side of things to see how it all turned out.

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Neftali Feliz and LaTroy Hawkins both picked up their first saves of the season last night. Per ESPN’s live draft results, Feliz was drafted as the 25th reliever off the board on average and just inside the top 200 overall. Hawkins was drafted 38th among relievers and went at pick 226 overall. These are a couple of the names you wound up with if you chose not to pay for saves.

Maybe I’m wrong about this, but I assume the plan if you own guys like Feliz and Hawkins is to ride them out as long as they hold on to the closer’s job and squeeze as many saves out of them as you can. I ascribe to the “don’t pay for saves” philosophy and scrounge around late in drafts and on the waiver wire to acquire my saves. Typically when I get a guy who has the ninth inning job, I ride it out until he loses the job. But it occurs to me, as it may have occurred to you, that maybe it’s better to cash in that asset after a string of un-blown saves. Read the rest of this entry »

Did you draft Dustin Pedroia, who is on pace for almost 300 home runs? Mookie Betts? In a fit of extreme homerism, the entire Red Sox lineup, which will surely score 1,296 runs? That must feel pretty good. Good for you, Pete. Give yourself a pat on the back.

Or, wait — you were the one who drafted Kyle Lohse, weren’t you? Threw a mid-round pick at Mat Latos? Wrote “stream Nate Karns” on your list of good Tuesday decisions? Do you regret it?

Man, there have been some truly brutal starts to kick off the season. It’s really easy to make a knee-jerk decision in reaction to such preposterous, ego-damaging, season-dooming starts, but you have to remember — and I think it goes without saying — that these guys will (probably) never be worse this year than they were today.

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This marks the fourth year of the Second FanGraphs Staff ottoneu league, and we are setting up for a highly competitive year. Before each season, I set up projected standings to help me understand where my team stands and what I need to do to improve.

This year, based on the FanGraphs Depth Charts projections, my team has its work cut out for it, sitting within striking distance of first, but chasing two teams.

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Playing time is the currency of today’s fantasy game. The more at-bats you can find, the better you’re going to do which is pretty obvious with four of the five categories in a standard being counting categories. The difference these days is that guys just don’t play as much as they used to due in large part to injuries, but also because teams are more willing to platoon guys perhaps in response to sharply declining offense.

Since 2000, an average of 87 players have logged at least 600 PA, but the league hasn’t reached or exceeded that average since 2010 (89). The following season saw just 68 players reach that mark, a 15-year low. From 2000-2009, the average was 92, but in the last five years it has tumbled to 78. This places an even bigger premium on the handful of stars who have shown stability year-to-year with their playing time.

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