Lidge and Furcal: Waiver Wire
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.
Brad Lidge (ESPN: 21 percent owned; Yahoo!: 39 percent owned)
I hate recommending closers that don’t have the job nailed down, but I think Lidge will be worth the grab for those who need saves. The Nationals’ preferred choice at the end of games, Drew Storen, is already on the shelf and appears to be facing a longer-than-expected layoff, which means the saves will be up for grabs for the foreseeable future. The only thing standing between Lidge and a huge batch of saves is the young flamethrower, Henry Rodriguez. Lidge got the first save chance in Chicago and Rodriguez got the second, leading many to believe they’ll simply share the closer’s slot, rendering both far less valuable in a fantasy context.
To be frank, I’m surprised Nats manager Davey Johnson isn’t going with the three-headed monster of Lidge, Rodriguez, and Tyler Clippard, but Clippard hasn’t gotten a save opportunity yet, so it looks like Lidge’s only competition will be Rodriguez. The two are very similar statistically: Both strike out about a quarter of the hitters they face and both walked about 15 percent of the hitters last year, though they get there in very different ways.
My hunch is that Rodriguez’s notoriously shaky control ends up costing him the job, because while they walked about the same percentage of hitters last year, that was an aberration for Lidge. I can’t see Lidge doing worse than maintaining the current job share, which is far from ideal, but better than nothing for those hurting for saves. Once Storen’s timetable is clearer, I believe Johnson will opt to end the closer-by-committee and will stick Lidge with the job with Clippard and Rodriguez back in their normal set-up roles.
Rafael Furcal (ESPN: 60 percent owned; Yahoo!: 54 percent owned)
Furcal is absolutely flying off the shelves right now, as he went from 5 percent ownership on ESPN to 60 percent almost overnight, so while I typically recommend the wait-and-see approach, that option isn’t really available now. His .435 batting average is going to come down — sorry to be the bearer of bad news here — but what intrigues me about his first few games is his pair of steals. Furcal isn’t Dee Gordon or vintage Juan Pierre, but under new manager Mike Matheny, it looks like he’s going to get a chance to run.
I’m certainly aware of just how lousy Furcal was for the Dodgers last year, but a goodly part of those struggles came from his broken thumb and strained oblique, two injuries that can linger even after the player returns from the DL. I love Furcal as an MI option this year, just don’t get irrationally exuberant and trade Starlin Castro for him. At 34, his days of 10-15 HR and 30-40 SB are behind him; he’ll still be valuable this year, but don’t break the FAAB bank to get him.
Dan enjoys black tea, imperial IPAs, and any competition that can be loosely judged a sport. Follow him on Twitter.
Lidge for now.
Furcal no.
Did someone post a poll?
Davey Johnson already announced that he won’t use Clippard in anything other than his set up role. For two reasons, first he doesn’t want to get Clippard out of the awesome rut he’s been in for the last two years. Second, Davey listened to the sabermetricians who say you don’t have to use your best reliever in the 9th all the time. He’ll continue to deploy Clippard at the most high leverage late game situations.
Also, Johnson doesn’t like bringing H. Rodriguez into games with runners on base. Even though he did it last night and it worked out better than when he started a clean inning.
But the most high leverage situations also occur in the 9th inning and I bet Johnson won’t pitch him in the 9th when the Nats grab a 1 run lead.
Who would you prefer for overall value in a standard 5×5 league. Furcal or Yunel Escobar?
The latter.
I don’t understand this fascination with Lidge. He’s coming off of major surgery and has shown diminishing skills (averaging about a 3.80 xFIP last three years). Well ok…so then you want to talk about “shaky control”? Why no mention then of Lidge’s BB/9 escalating from 5.22, 4.73, to the scary 6.05 the last three years? And of course Rodriguez beats Lidge in velocity hands down. With Lidge, you’re talking about a guy who throws a 89.9 mph fastball, down from the mid-90s heat he used to throw. And finally, what about just actual results (albeit limited sample size)? Sure, Lidge saved the game…but just barely. From Rotoworld: “Ian Stewart’s bomb with one out would have left most parks, including Wrigley had it been a foot to the left. But with the wind blowing in, it dropped for a triple today. Joe Mather pinch-ran for him and then got thrown out at home on the contact play for the second out from the ninth. Marlon Byrd then struck out to end it.” Meanwhile, Rodriguez was far more impressive. Again from Rotoworld: “And boy, was he impressive. While Rodriguez walked Ian Stewart to lead off the inning, he struck out the next three batters he faced and topped out at 101 mph on the radar gun.” You tell me which one you’d rather have.
You sound like you’ve never actually seen Henry Rodriguez pitch. Let me tell you, you have no idea where the ball is going after he winds up. Just because he can throw hard doesn’t make him great. Also, Lidge isn’t in a high-pressure environment like he was in Philly. I know the numbers say to take the chance on Rodriguez, but he is just not a guy you want as your closer.
In what parallel universe would you consider dropping Daniel Hudson for Kyle Lohse?
Furcal’s days of 10-15 he and 30-40 sbs have already been long behind him. Last year’s injury had nothing to do with that.
While true, those totals would make him a top-5 shortstop almost any year. We’re talking about a waiver guy in some leagues who was excellent offensively as recently as 2010. In fact, if you pro-rate his numbers from that season to 600 PA, you get 11 HR and 31 SB.
Maybe those skills are gone due to age/injury, but I’ll bet he can hit .275 with 20 SB given reasonable health.
I waited on SS in my draft and wound up with Aviles as my top option. However, I recently picked up Furcal to supplement Aviles and it’s worked out well.
Cozart is still sitting on my league’s WW and I’m sure that won’t last long. Would you swap out either of these options for Cozart or do you think Furcal/Aviles is the right pair?