Playing a little catch-up from the holidays, here are the fantasy implications from the latest impact moves and they aren’t all former Cincinnati Reds:

(Remember, you can follow all the move analysis here)

Johnny Cueto signs with SF

If a pitcher who struggled mightily like Jeff Samardzija gets a major boost by joining the Giants, then you can only imagine what it could do for Cueto. Overall, he had a fantastic season and has been  one of the best pitchers in baseball for the last five seasons. He sputtered some with KC, allowing a ton more hits while striking out two fewer batters per nine innings. He closed strong with a World Series complete game, but he’s likely thrilled to return to the Senior Circuit.

Homers usually get Cueto when he’s off. He had a 1.1 HR/9 with KC including outings of 4 and 3 HR. AT&T Park is the spot to stifle homers. That’s something Fangraphs, Statcorner, and ESPN can all agree upon when it comes to measuring park factors. This is a great move for the Giants to solidify their rotation with a big three in Madison Bumgarner, Cueto, and then Samardzija. All of a sudden, the burden on Jake Peavy and Matt Cain is much lower and Chris Heston is now the fill-in if one of them fails.

Impact: ++ for Cueto, – for Heston

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My headline would’ve been way better if Todd Frazier was traded somewhere south of Cincinnati. It’s pretty dope, though, right? RIGHT? He was the centerpiece to a three-team trade with the Dodgers, White Sox, and of course the Reds. The Dodgers and Reds each got a three-pack of prospects which we’ll get to shortly, but first let’s focus on Frazier with the White Sox.

Third base has long been an issue for the White Sox. In fact, when they first hired Robin Ventura it was to be the third baseman again, but after informed them that he was 44 years old and wouldn’t be any better than the dregs they were running out there already, he shifted into the manager’s role and they went with Orlando Hudson (50 wRC+ in 51 games) and Brent Morel (11 in 35) before getting the last bit of juice out of Kevin Youkilis for the second half of the season (110 in 80 and then he was done after just 28 games with NYY the following season).

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Jeff and I will be covering the fantasy implications of key transactions all winter long here at Rotographs. You can catch up on past deals here. The Winter Meetings wrap up early today with the Rule 5 Draft, but the last full day of action gave us a couple more high-impact trades:

To HOU: Ken Giles

To PHI: Vincent Velasquez, Brett Oberholtzer, Derek Fisher, and Thomas Eshelman

Primary piece(s): It seemed pretty clear that it was a “when” not “if” situation regarding the Astros acquiring a closer. They have been tied to all the available big-time closers and finally landed their guy in Giles. This might actually work out best as others they were targeting either lacked long-term control (Aroldis Chapman – I’m not ignoring his awfulness off the field, but that came to pass when Houston was already out of the running) or cost a pretty penny for said control (Andrew Miller).

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Jeff and I will be covering the fantasy implications of the Winter Meetings moves all week long here at Rotographs. You can catch up on past deals here. Tuesday night offered up two nice fantasy-relevant deals and then a Wednesday morning deal came in as I was finishing this up!

To NYY: Starlin Castro

To CHC: Adam Warren

Primary piece(s): Warren performed better last year, but he is unlikely to have a role relevant to all fantasy leagues making Castro the piece that matters most here. Castro enters his age-26 with six full MLB seasons – four good, two bad. Unfortunately, the two bad have come within the last three, including 2015. Castro hasn’t really run since 2012 with just a 55% success rate in 33 attempts. His path to resurgent fantasy value is with the bat.

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Jeff and I will be covering the fantasy implications of the Winter Meetings moves all week long here at Rotographs. Jeff has already done some pieces on earlier signings including his most recent on the huge pitching deals made this weekend. Let’s take a look at the three most recent deals of note, chronologically which happens to put them in order of least-to-most impactful for fantasy purposes, too.

–The Chapman deal isn’t done yet, so I’m holding off, especially since we don’t even have a general idea of the returns for Cincy–

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We have been a concentrating on our positional reviews here at RotoGraphs and have missed covering the fantasy ramifications of some offseason trades. It is time to catch up on the major players in each trade.

Arizona Diamondbacks traded RHP Jeremy Hellickson to Philadelphia Phillies for RHP Sam McWilliams

Jeremy Hellickson: The 29-year-old righty got a second lease on life with this trade. The Phillies will just start him every few days and live with the results. They really don’t have any other options.

I don’t see the move as a positive for Hellickson’s production. He is going from a one home run park to another so his heavy flyball nature will still generate home runs. The Phillies aren’t going to win a ton of games so he won’t get a bunch of wins. I see him as a matchup pitcher in NL-only or 20-team or deeper leagues.

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Last week, Brandon Warne reviewed his FanGraphs Staff League ottoneu team, and noted my second place team (man, I hate typing that) was a hard-to-explain $295 over the cap, pre-arbitration.

A commenter wondered “how badly CY mortgaged the future with that payroll.” I responded that I didn’t, really – but the question is, how? Every year, ottoneu owners go for broke, swapping their farm for elite talent, assuming the next step is a rebuild. This is my look at how spent big but feel set to reload rather than rebuild.

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Last year, my new year’s resolution was to join a dynasty league. I’ve always been fascinated by the concept, but it’s challenging to find the right league. Generally, you need 20 very competitive, knowledgeable owners. Too often, attempts to form dynasty leagues include too many weak links and fall apart.

Luckily for me, fellow RotoGraphist Chad Young wanted a partner in his league – The Devil’s Rejects. Other owners include Eno Sarris and representatives from a variety of the top fantasy services.  The majority of teams are run by at least two owners.

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This is an updated version of an article posted in 2013.

As we get closer to our league trade deadlines and the effect any individual player will have on our place in the standings gradually diminishes, this time of year represents a final chance to improve our teams. It probably doesn’t need to be stated, but it’s important to reiterate for those still clinging to preseason values. At this point, you need to essentially throw player values out the window and trade for needs based on your position in the various statistical categories. Don’t worry about overpaying if you still expect the trade to net you positive points. Obviously, you want to make a trade that brings back the greatest value in return and gain you the most standings points. But if the best return available to you is a so-called $15 player for your $25 player, it’s still easily worth accepting if you expect that it gains you points.

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As I so often do, I ran some numbers through the z-score method yesterday. I ran each player’s 2015 numbers through as well as the Steamer rest-of-season projections and compared the results. Given the cumulative nature of fantasy production, I looked at each player’s production, actual and projected, on a per plate appearance basis to get an idea about who the projection system thinks is going to bounce back in the second half. Read the rest of this entry »