Archive for Trade Possibilities

I’ve often stated that I was going to run a fantasy baseball team simply by rotating players in my lineup coming off of terrible offensive weeks. I’ve never spent enough time to actually formulate a plan (and frankly, when I spend any time on it at all, the whole thing blows up in my face) but you know where I’m going with this. The idea is simply to play the regression game, for better or for worse.

Would it work? Probably not, because as a dedicated reader, you know there’s a lot more behind a BABIP than whether a ball happened to be a frozen rope right at the third baseman or if a ball Texas-leagued itself in the Bermuda triangle between the 5, 6, and 7. Or if you get your hits like this.

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Trading deadlines loom across most of fantasy baseball, and let’s just assume your squad is still sniffing contention — or better yet, looking to pull away from the pack. Should third base be one of your glaring problems over these last seven weeks of baseball, I’ve got a few ideas for you. These are almost exclusively ideas for standard 5×5 leagues that are non-keepers.

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For those of you not looking to buy, the Seller’s Guide is right here. But for those of you still trying to make that run, still trying to claw your way into the money, still trying to hold off the late chargers behind you, the following a brief guide to buying for the ottoneu stretch run.

Whether you are filling a hole that you have had since April or trying to replace Jose Bautista’s production in case he isn’t back in time to help, there are a few things you should keep in mind.

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With the hours of July 31 ticking away, the MLB trade deadline is winding down and by the time you sit down to dinner tonight, you’ll know whether your favorite team has landed that arm/added that bat/moved that contract/restocked the farm. But you are not a GM (unless you are, in which case you have better things to do than read a fantasy column on deadline day) – you are an ottoneu owner and you still have the month of August to get something done.

Over the next two weeks, we’ll take a look at how the ottoneu trade deadline differs from the trade deadline in other keeper leagues and lay out some recommendations for how to handle the deadline. We’ll start with a sellers guide today.

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With the addition of a second wild card team for each league, the decision to be a buyer or seller at the trade deadline becomes a bit more difficult, despite it being just two weeks away. For the San Diego Padres, however, the decision is neither difficult nor complicated. Sitting 14 games out of both first place in the NL West and the final wild card slot, the Padres will most definitely be sellers over the next two weeks and while collectively, they can’t seem to put it all together, individually there’s some value to be had. It’s time to bring the jalopy to the chop shop and make some money selling off the parts. Read the rest of this entry »

With the July 31st non-waiver trade deadline approaching, you should be looking into possible MLB trade scenarios that could have a direct impact on your fantasy roster.  Maybe you own the player on the move, maybe you own a guy who is about to start losing playing time, or maybe you own a guy who will say bye-bye to a teammate and land some extra PT. Whatever the case may be, your league’s trade deadline is rapidly approaching as well, so staying alert and showing some foresight could help you land some much-need production from a relatively soft position. Read the rest of this entry »

In the FanGraphs Experts League (most recently discussed here), my team (Amateur Hour) has been in a free fall, sinking from first all the way to 8th and 15 points out of the top three.

But I am thinking of acquiring at least one rental, if not two or three, to try to make a push this year. Before doing so, I want to lay out my case here and explore why a team in the bottom half of the standings might decide the time is right to make a run.

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Stephen Strasburg is possibly the best starting pitcher so far this season. Here is a quick sampling of his stats:

11.6 K/9, 32% K%
2.6 BB/9, 7% BB%
2.82 ERA, 2.42 FIP, 2.60 xFIP, 2.60 SIERA

These numbers are good enough that I have him ranked as the best fantasy starting pitcher without taking the number of innings he pitches into account. The only knock against him is that he is not a ground ball pitcher with has led to a career BABIP 0.308. When he is on the mound, he is arguably the best fantasy pitcher in the in the game.

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On Saturday, I analyzed the five hitters whose HR/FB ratios have increased the most since last season and using various tools and metrics, tried to determine whether we might see a decline in the second half. Today I will look at the opposite end of the spectrum, those hitters whose HR/FB ratios have declined the most. Will they experience a second half power surge?

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For me personally, it feels like offensive surprises and busts are harder to evaluate during the year because we have fewer tools to analyze. Power is one skill that is difficult to decide how real a spike or drop is, but Jeff Zimmerman has been mentioning a tool at Baseball Heat Maps that gives you the distance of a hitter’s batted balls, which may really help in this type of analysis. In the past, I have used the ESPN Home Run Tracker site to help determine how flukey a change in HR/FB ratio is, but I think looking at the raw average distance is a less flawed method. I looked at the five hitters whose HR/FB ratio has increased the most this year and then added their 2011 and 2012 average home run plus fly ball distances to the table.

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