We’re back with another dive into the deep blue sea where we hunt for hidden treasures. Many owners are likely still hurting for a replacement for Jacoby Ellsbury and I have uncovered an outfielder and a possible outfielder (depending on your league’s eligibility rules) who may be worth a look.
It’s still too early to say whose hot starts are real and whose are going to evaporate like a puddle in the sun when the weather warms up, but there are injuries to account for and high risk draft plays that are clearly not going to pan out. In that spirit, here are a pair of outfielders that should be available in all but the very deepest leagues.
Cody Ross (ESPN: 10 percent owned, Yahoo!: 11 percent owned)
It isn’t as though Jacoby Ellsbury was keeping Ross out of the Red Sox’s lineup before he got hurt, but having one fewer body in the Sox’s outfield for the foreseeable future does make Ross a more appealing property. Carl Crawford is almost ready to rejoin Boston’s lineup, and it can be reasonably assumed that once he’s major league ready, he’s going to get his job in left field back full time. If Ellsbury were still available, that would leave Ross fighting with Darnell McDonald, Ryan Sweeney, and Jason Repko for the right field spot, and while I think he’d get the majority of the starts in that situation, it becomes much easier for Bobby Valentine to rest Ross more often when he has so many other workable options.
With Ellsbury on the shelf, Sweeney no longer threatens Ross’ playing time, since Sweeny can’t play center field. Repko is really a fourth outfielder and/or defensive replacement, and if Ross can’t outhit McDonald to keep the center field job, well, things will have taken a turn for the worse at Fenway. At this point, Crawford can take back his left field job when he’s ready without pushing Ross anywhere.
Ross’ upside is in both his power and his position in the Red Sox order. ZiPS has him down for 18 HR, which seems reasonable to me, though 83 of his 102 career home runs have gone to left field, meaning he’s going to be playing a lot of wall ball with the Monster. Hitting behind Kevin Youkilis and David Ortiz should give Ross plenty of RBI opportunities, even if he loses a HR or two to the Monster. He’s not worth shoehorning into a good outfield, but he’s definitely worth grabbing as either a bench option or as a backend starter in deep leagues. His walk rate — which has climbed steadily since 2009 — makes him an even better option in OBP leagues than he is in traditional leagues.
Nolan Reimold (ESPN: 2.5 percent owned, Yahoo!: 16 percent owned)
To call Reimold one of my sleepers would be disingenuous; he was one of my cicadas: very deep and very asleep, mostly due to playing time concerns. He has played in eight of the Orioles’ 10 games so far, though he came in late in two of those games, so those concerns may not be totally misplaced. That said, if he continues to hit .323/.323/.613 with home runs in three consecutive games, he shouldn’t have to worry about Endy Chavez continuing to take over his playing time.
He won’t, of course, continue to hit that well, but if he can hold the line for even a week or two more, it may make him a more permanent fixture in the Orioles’ lineup and relegate Chavez to a bench role. Unfortunately for Reimold, with Adam Jones and Nick Markakis locking down the O’s other two outfield spots, he may be battling Chavez constantly whether he hits well or not. For that reason, I don’t love him as a weekly league option for the time being. Daily players will obviously have the flexibility to move him in and out of the roster as necessary — this is one of those times where following beat writers on twitter becomes almost requisite — but I fear for the week where the O’s have six games and Reimold only starts four of them.
ZiPS likes Reimold’s power potential, listing 20 home runs as a reasonable total for him, and I tend to agree. He doesn’t bring a ton of other categories to the table, but if he can hit in the .265-.270 range instead of the .254 ZiPS projects him for, I think he brings enough to the table to be worth rostering for those in need.
Today’s Waiver Wire features one player trying to reestablish his fantasy worth and one hoping to take hold of some of his own.
Luke Scott: 7% Yahoo!, 3.2% ESPN
Before injuring his shoulder last season, Scott was one of the more consistent players in fantasy. After being traded to Baltimore in the Miguel Tejada deal he averaged 25 home runs and 71 runs batted in from 2008-2010. In fact, his home runs, average, and on base percentage increased in each of those years. Unfortunately he couldn’t do it for a fourth year as a torn labrum in his shoulder ended his season in late July. Always willing to bounce on a buy low candidate, the Rays signed Scott over this offseason. A minor hamstring issue has kept him out of a few games but that seems to be behind him now. In the seven games (out of 10) he’s played he’s hit quite well, with two home runs, two doubles and eight runs knocked in to go with a .368 average. Will he be able to maintain a .421 ISO? No. A .333 BABIP? Likely not. However, if his shoulder is healthy, and it’s certainly looked like it is, there’s no reason he shouldn’t come close to replicating his ’08-’10 numbers.
I’ve got two early-season waiver wire adds for you, one to help your outfield and one to help your bullpen…
One of the most interesting things about playing across multiple fantasy sites is just how different ownership rates can be. As a postscript to yesterday’s piece, I noted that Chad Billingsley — who pitched well again last night, not walking a single Pirate over six innings — was available in 22 percent more Yahoo! leagues than he was ESPN leagues. In 2010, Jeff Zimmerman took a look at ownership rates across the two sites and concluded that ownership rates are slightly higher for Yahoo! leagues on average. Slightly larger leagues combined with difference in how the staff preranks players can lead to gulfs in ownership rates in the neighborhood of 50 percent. Read the rest of this entry »
Lots of roster tweaking going on right now as fantasy owners everywhere are trying to put together the perfect squad. But while most of your league has scooped up the top post-draft talent remaining, there are obviously a few strays lying around that could serve as quality bench guys for you to plug in when needed. With the middle infield positions sitting so thin, you might want to start there. Read the rest of this entry »
Welcome back to a new season of deep league waiver wire gold. Come dive into the vast ocean of free agency with me and let’s see if we can spot some hidden treasure. I believe last year I used 10% as the ownership maximum in CBS leagues, but that sometimes hamstrung me into recommending really crappy players. So this year I am giving myself a bit more leeway and expanding that ceiling to 15%. We open our first edition with a pair of starting pitchers.
Through the first weekend of the season, a whole bunch of questions have been totally and permanently answered. The Braves and Red Sox are both terrible, the Twins are going to score 243 runs this season, and the NL Cy Young is going to be a tight horse race between Chad Billingsley and Jeff Samardzija.
As laughable as some of those things sound, looking over the most common transfers they’re the type of judgments it seems that some owners are willing to make. I can’t argue much with the most dropped player this week, Alfredo Aceves, not because I think his performance this weekend was indicative of what he’ll do the rest of the season, but because I think Bobby Valentine has lost confidence in him. I’m of two minds about both Jason Hammel and Kyle Lohse, nowhere near sold on either enough to drop someone like Max Scherzer or Daniel Hudson to pick one of them up, but both were added in over 2000 Yahoo! leagues yesterday alone. Read the rest of this entry »
Adam LaRoche: 16% Yahoo!, 11.8% ESPN
There are those types of players in fantasy that everyone has owned at one point or another. I’m not talking about the Albert Pujolses of the world. The player I’m talking about is good, but not great. He won’t win you a league but he’ll contribute in enough places to be a valuable asset. One such player is Adam LaRoche. In his ninth season, the 32-year-old has carved out a nice career. While he’s been overshadowed by the bigger, better, slugging first basemen in the National League (Howard,Votto, Pujols, Fielder, etc) he’s managed to put up solid numbers year in and year out. From 2005-2010 he averaged 24 home runs and 87 runs batted in, including a 100 RBI season two years ago. With Pujols and Fielder in the American League and Howard on the disabled list, first base has been weakened significantly, especially in the NL, upping LaRoche’s value.
The fantasy baseball season has finally begun. Only a few days of games have been played, but there are already some owners who are scouring the waiver wires, looking to dump their hitless players and pitchers who gave up five earned runs in their one start. This early in the season, it’s usually smart to stand pat and put faith in the players you drafted. Just ask any Michael Morse owner from last season, patience pays off. But if you’re looking to make an early move, or you have a player that recently hit the DL, here are some players whose performances might be worth an early pickup.
