Since 2009 when I started this whole “blogging” thing, I’ve had aspirations to write for FanGraphs. Now that I’m finally here, I don’t know what to say, so I’ll ramble for a bit and hopefully make some kind of point worth reading.

This is how LBJ must have felt when he finally became president: All those years of striving for something that seemed terribly elusive and just when you’re about quit on the whole endeavor, an opportunity arises. You are surrounded by “Harvards” and “Yales”—or in my case brilliant baseball minds—and you went to Southwest Texas State Teacher’s College—or in my case Dominican University of California—and you can’t help but imagine you are horribly inadequate and under-qualified. The good news is that, to the best of my knowledge, no one had to get assassinated for me to get here.

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I’m not ashamed to admit that I once had a love affair with Edinson Volquez. He was wild, unfaithful at times, but I was younger then. (That’s how time and the aging process work, as I understand them.) The willingness to live on the edge, the danger he brought, it was part of his allure.

We occasionally reconciled through the years, but for only brief periods. As I matured, I grew to know my boundaries, and too often, Volquez crossed them. Eventually, I understood that he was just no good for me. I taught myself not to answer the phone. Eventually, he stopped calling.

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At least not just deep leagues in the case of the first one. And they’re not just a couple of soft-tossing left-handers whose nicknames are spelled the same way, although that’s basically where the similarities end, besides the fact that both started out in Texas’ organization.

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Today’s deep league waiver wire might bring back memories of seasons yonder. Don’t rush over to the calendar, we haven’t time traveled back to the past. The two men in this week’s recommendations are the short-term beneficiaries of injuries to the incumbents. Often times, this is what a deep leaguer needs to do — follow injury situations closely and just play the carousel rotating in hitters getting full-time at-bats to fill a weak spot on your roster. Admittedly, I won both these players through FAAB in AL Tout Wars this week.

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You want deep? Then let’s drill, baby, drill, as injuries to a couple of established American League stars in Week 2 have opened up spots for some deep league fantasy options to get a chance to shine.
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There’s nothing I love more than a cliche for the title of a post.

Today I want to take a look at a few of the players who have seen some of the biggest drops in ownership percentage on ESPN.com so far this season. Because we’ve only played a few games this year, determining whether I think these guys should be snatched off the wire comes down to whether I liked them in the preseason. I put hundreds of hours into preseason prep work, so I might as well milk it for all it’s worth while I can.

Dillon Gee — 7-Day % Change: -27.6%

There was a point where four of the five most recent articles that showed up on Gee’s player page were written by yours truly. I loved what he did in 2012 when he saw a big spike in swinging strike rate which pushed his strikeout rate comfortably above league average. He also had a solid ground ball rate just over 50%, and he limited walks. But his ERA was north of 4.00 thanks to a strand rate that was in the lowest quantile among pitchers with at least as many innings as Gee. I was all over the guy with solid strikeout, walk and groundball rates going into 2013.

Gee delivered in a way with a 3.62 ERA last year. But he didn’t do it like I wanted him to. His swinging strike rate and strikeout rate fell back below league average to where they had been prior to 2012. His groundball rate also fell significantly as well, but his walk rate did hold. The main reason he was able to post a sub-4.00 ERA was a reversal of strand rate fortune. His strand rate went from 68.9% to 77.9%. To repeat his 2013 ERA he’ll either have to regain the above average strikeout and groundball rates or get lucky again. The good rates of 2012 seem to be the exception and not the rule, and you can’t own a guy banking on strand rate. Leave him on the wire, and use him as a streamer if the right matchup comes along. Read the rest of this entry »

It wasn’t a set plan to have an all-Astros edition of the deep league waiver wire. But judging by how many Astros players I own in Tout Wars (five), it’s clear that I think there’s some intrigue here. Heading into spring training, there was a plethora of first base/DH/outfield candidates, but those position battles have been somewhat sorted out at this point, leaving many of their players undervalued.

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Week 1 is in the books, and with the tiny sample size comes the emergence of several deep league options, overlooked on draft day, who are providing hope that they can help owners in the immediate term.
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It’s a tough time of year to start making waiver wire suggestions as these first few days of the season are all about managers tweaking their lineups to see what works best while fantasy owners are adding and dropping at a fairly rapid rate as they jockey for position within their leagues. Still, we like to try and steer you in the right direction as many of us who do these waiver articles are thinking more about the long-term. The deep-league waiver wire pieces are covering the players who ownership percentages are usually under 10-percent while the regular waiver pieces cover many of the rest. Figure the regular waiver articles are geared more towards leagues with 14 teams or fewer. So with that, here’s who I think is worth grabbing and holding onto for the year. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s hard to believe that it’s that time of year again — the start of a new baseball season and the return of the deep league waiver wire. Ownership rates are sometimes dramatically different depending on the league site, so it’s always a little difficult to determine what pool of players to choose from for recommending. Just like in previous years, I will only consider players owned in 10% or less of leagues on CBS.

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