Roto Riteup: May 15th, 2012
I’m happy with today’s Roto Riteup, but what matters is whether you are or not.
Just kidding. It’s all about me.
• With early rounds of interleague play starting soon, certainly DHs are going to be put in awkward positions, and Adam Dunn is one of them. The White Sox have said that Dunn will be playing in left field during interleague games in NL parks, adding an awesome wrinkle to his fantasy value. Dunn’s power resurgence while only maintaining eligibility at first base has been nice, but not nearly as nice as if you could also stick him in the outfield. Dunn will need five starts to become eligible in Yahoo! leagues, and those starts could have huge implications for 2013.
• Brandon McCarthy may have had to miss a start, but he came back with avengence and proved he could dominate a powerful Tigers lineup. McCarthy’s previous results left something to be desired, but the right-hander’s intelligence and sense of humor make him very fun to own through both bad times and good. If you dropped McCarthy for one reason or another, you shouldn’t have done that. If he’s available in anything deeper than a 12-team mixed league, he should certainly be owned.
• James McDonald may have started the season off slowly, but he’s really kicked things into gear lately. He struck out a combined six batters in his first three starts, but in his four starts since, he’s never struck out less than seven hitters. McDonald is still available in 75% of Yahoo! leagues, so go out and get him while you can.
For those of you who play daily fantasy games like FanGraphs: The Game, or just like to stream players, here are a couple matchups you may be able to exploit.
A Pitcher for Today: Paul Maholm at STL
Maholm has won four straight, and while that doesn’t really mean anything, it’s a fun fact to put here. He’s also not a terrible pitcher.
A Pitcher for Tomorrow: Rick Porcello vs MIN
Porcello’s had some rough outings, and he’s also had some good ones. There aren’t many freely available options today, so take what you can get.
A Hitter for Today: Shelley Duncan at MIN (Jason Marquis)
Marquis has been getting smashed, and Duncan can easily take him yard if he makes one mistake.
Zach is the creator and co-author of RotoGraphs' Roto Riteup series, and RotoGraphs' second-longest tenured writer. You can follow him on twitter.
Take a flyer onWei-Yin Chen or no? I mean, he was able to stifle the Rangers offense, which is far better than the Yankees.
Rangers wRC+ = 124
Yankees wRC+ = 123
Drop McCarthy? In one league I am in he is basically my ace.
Any chance Dunn gets eligibility on CBS in the of? That would be amazing….
Lahair and Dunn would be a pretty sick tandem out there….
What do you mean Dunn is not on track to retain 1B eligibility? That’s false – he’s already started 12 games at 1B, with Ventura expressly saying Dunn would play more 1B and Konerko DH to give him a break.
I was going to say the same thing. He will easily start 25-30 games at 1B this year.
Well then Zach made an oopsie-doodle.
Regarding Dunn’s positional eligibility for next season, when will the tyranny of making players eligible at a position because they fluked off a few starts there in the previous season be done away with?
It is patently ridiculous to treat as gospel the idea that Hanley Ramirez should have SS eligibility this year, or Bautista should be eligible at 3B. We all knew coming into the season what position these guys actually play, why do we build in a loophole giving them more positions? If a guy can earn eligibility within a season, he should also be able to lose it. At the beginning of the year players should be given the position they will be playing, and then you can go from there. It isn’t hard to do this, its just hard to wean ourselves from the archaic practice of using old irrelevant data to structure new fantasy seasons.
Bit of a rant, but there you go.
Players keep their eligibility because they’ve satisfied the arbitrary requirement in their most recent season. And, because the future is an unknown, many leagues are forced to use the most recent data that exists rather than listening to managers, media or our local fortune-teller.
And, I’m also pretty sure that others would argue the exact opposite of your rant. For example, if we can concede a player has a skill-set or past experience at a plethora of positions, including those he may have never logged an MLB game at. Then, to some it would be better to have increased flexibility to be able to use their players based on their perceived abilities, rather than on the whim of any particular professional GM or manager.
I’m sure there are leagues where you can customize you’re eligibility if you would like to. Fantasy baseball is supposed to be fun, I would suggest finding a league that caters directly to your wants.
Fun, yes, that’s what it’s supposed to be, but it seems to me that generally fantasy has been moving towards an attempt at more depth and, dare I say it, realism in how it chooses to portray the dilemma of constructing and maintaining a competitive roster. I think that using a mechanical rule based on previous-season games played at a given position is a vestigial remnant of when fantasy sports where played based on stats from a newspaper and we lacked the easy access to information and technology that would make a better system. It’s just that position eligibility has been done like this for so long that it’s taken as a given rather than questioned.
It doesn’t seem absurd to think that using intelligence and actual games played to determine positions in each season individually would decrease the fun of it all and it would definitely increase the value of true utility guys over players who just have multiple positions in fantasy that have no relevance to where they actually play.
Just noticed: Adam Dunn is still listed as an OF in fangraph’s profile page. He hasn’t played out there regularly since like 08?
*a vengeance, not avengence…you may have been watching too much Avengers.
Anyway, awesome personality aside, would you rather have McCarthy or Paulino?