Welcome to the fastball velocity edition of the deep league waiver wire. While fastball velocity obviously isn’t everything, it does highly correlate with strikeout rate and a spike in velocity often leads to a surge in strikeout rate. These two pitchers embody this theme perfectly.
How can you find value on the waiver wire in June? At this point, early breakout players are long gone, and hyped prospects get picked up far before their major-legue debuts. You’re basically stuck picking up injured players, but even the best of them are stashed on a team’s disabled list far before they are ready to return. John Danks and Logan Morrison were injured to begin the year, but have lacked the fantasy upside to have been picked up in most leagues. Both players are now back, and showing some encouraging signs.
The Kansas City Royals have been one of the most enigmatic teams in the last few years. Not because they’re small market or because they’ve been a perennial punching bag for the rest of the American League, but because expectations have been on the rise for some time now and they consistently fail to deliver. Once the worst farm system in baseball, the Royals were suddenly flush with all of this great, young talent. We saw the debuts of players like Eric Hosmer and Mike Moustakas and watched as they added key pieces like Lorenzo Cain and Alcides Escobar. They hadn’t quite put it all together over the last two seasons, but this year, with a revamped rotation, the Royals became darlings in the American League and some even thought they could compete for a wild card this year. But while James Shields and Jeremy Guthrie did their part early on, the hitters failed miserably. The young studs were a disaster and after a modest 14-10 April, things spun out of control as the Royals went 8-20 in May and opened June 1-2. Manager Ned Yost was at a loss. He shuffled the lineup dozens of times without success. They fired their hitting coach and replaced him with the legendary George Brett, hoping that some Royals royalty would jump start the offense. But instead, it was the nerds who got things going for the Royals. Yost put the lineup decision into the hands of the sabermetric boys and the next thing we knew, Kansas City was on a six-game winning streak. Read the rest of this entry »
Sometimes it’s a good thing to leave a draft with holes because then there is no need to think about who to drop when an attractive player appears on free agency. Of course, this is a situation I have never encountered, since all my fantasy teams are always perfect 🙂 But seriously, I literally dropped my starting middle infielder this week in my 12-team mixed league, with no healthy replacement to take his spot, because I simply had to add Hector Santiago for his start against the Astros this week.
There’s nothing like the threat of being sent down to light a fire under a player, and while Kyle Blanks had started his climb out of the depths before he was given his reprieve, Yonder Alonso’s broken hand may yet prove to be the turning point in Blanks’ season.
Simply put, Blanks doesn’t hit well when he doesn’t start. So far this season, Blanks has come into the game as a sub in 12 of the 41 games he has played in. In those 12 games, Blanks has hit .182/.250/.273 without a single home run or even an RBI; if he isn’t in the starting line up, he isn’t providing any type of fantasy value. If he does start, Blanks hits .311/.395/.538 with all six of his home runs, 21 RBI, and a stolen base for good measure, and this is where Alonso’s injury comes into play. Read the rest of this entry »
It’s a pair of J names in this week’s deep league waiver wire recommendations. But don’t worry if you are considering adding a hitter with a first name that does not begin with the letter J. I’m sure he’s just as worthy of joining your squad as these fine lads.
Rookies of the Year have a mixed record of success after their first season. Some, like Albert Pujols, Justin Verlander, and Ryan Braun, go on to have many productive seasons and great careers. Others, like Bobby Crosby, Dontrelle Willis, and Angel Berroa collect their trophy and promptly crater. It’s too early in Chris Coghlan’s career to unceremoniously drop him in that second category just yet, but his wRC+ in 2012 was five. That’s it, just five, or the equivalent of 95 percent below league average, so he was certainly headed in the direction of obscurity. Recently, however, not only has Coghlan (ESPN: 6.7 percent owned; Yahoo!: 3 percent owned) received consistent playing time in a way he hadn’t in previous seasons, he has been hitting the cover off the ball. Read the rest of this entry »
Among a slew of pitchers, there are three catchers whose names appear on the list of most auctioned players in the ottoneu world: Jason Castro, Chris Iannetta and Yan Gomes.
Catcher has been a bit of an odd position this year, with pre-season favorites like Salvador Perez and Miguel Montero struggling; unexpected contributions from the likes of Josh Donaldson and Evan Gattis; and the early season suspensions to Yasmani Grandal and Carlos Ruiz. It’s no surprise that so many owners are trying to get this position figured out.
This week I take a gander at a much hyped recent call-up, a former minor league strikeout leader and a man whose bad luck may finally be turning. It’s American League starting pitcher day, a time when we make no mention of those less exciting guys in that other league with names such as Clayton and Cole.
Back in February of 2012, as we were getting ready to start discussing potential sleepers for the upcoming season, I wrote a quick piece on Astros catcher Jason Castro that, for lack of a better way to say it, was unflattering. I discussed his run of injuries, his coma-inducing levels of offensive production, and of course, the question of whether he was even worthy of a one dollar pick-up in even the deepest of leagues. The only comment the article received was from someone asking me how I would feel if I were Castro’s wife or mother and saw this piece and my response was both snarky and apropos for the time. Well here we are a year and three months down the road and based on the first two months of the 2013 season, it’s about time I apologized to the women in Castro’s life.
