Roto Riteup — Presented by DraftKings: May 21, 2014
My barely noticeable beard has begun shedding, so please consider my plight as you read today’s Roto Riteup.
On today’s agenda:
1. Stephen Drew signs with Boston
2. Corey Hart out 4-6 weeks
3. Andrew Heaney gets promoted
4. Trevor Bauer replaces Danny Salazar
5. The Fickle Five
Stephen Drew signs with Boston
After sitting out the beginning of the 2014 season, Drew will be ready to join the Red Sox in a little more than a week. Xander Bogaerts will be shifting to third base upon Drew’s arrival, which will keep him eligible at both positions in 2015. Drew is a much better player in real-life than fantasy, but he did hit the crap out of right-handers last year to the tune of a .284/.377/.498 slash line. Getting reinforcements is good news for the value of every player in Boston not named Will Middlebrooks.
Corey Hart out 4-6 weeks
The Mariners DH will miss the next month or two after being diagnosed with a Grade 2 hamstring strain, which doesn’t sound like a whole lot of fun when you’re not that far removed from knee surgery. Nick Franklin is being called up to fill Hart’s roster spot, and he’ll play all over as manager Lloyd McLendon rotates players through the DH hole. Don’t be surprised if the Mariners make a run at Kendrys Morales now that the roster has a fairly obvious hole to fill.
Andrew Heaney gets promoted
The Marlins have taken a step in developing their best pitching prospect, promoting the left-handed Heaney to Triple-A. Heaney, featuring a solid but not spectacular three-pitch-mix, performed great in Double-A, so now he’ll get the chance to work on his game against slightly superior competition. If things go fine at his new level, Heaney could see the big leagues as soon as July 1.
Trevor Bauer replaces Danny Salazar
In echoing every other headline wrote on the subject, the Indians have decided to replace one volatile start for another, calling up Bauer to take Salazar’s spot in the rotation. Salazar already pitched a game in the minors and let’s just say it didn’t go too well, but I still have faith that he’ll somehow get it all together, dang it. Bauer has looked like the top prospect he used to be, and hopefully he’ll find some sustained success in the majors.
The Fickle Five
SP: Nathan Eovaldi, $8,800
Can we get Eovaldi’s page to be Nate Eovaldi, please. I like to call him Nate. Nate’s going against the Phillies in Miami.
SP: Brandon McCarthy, $8,000
McCarthy’s numbers are actually a tad encouraging, and getting him outset of Arizona is worth a shot.
1B: Adam Lind, $3,900
OF: Melky Cabrera, $4,700
Lind and Melky square off against Clay Buchholz, who has not been real good this year.
OF: Craig Gentry, $3,200
Gentry is in Tampa against Erik Bedard.
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Zach is the creator and co-author of RotoGraphs' Roto Riteup series, and RotoGraphs' second-longest tenured writer. You can follow him on twitter.
Any tips on what I should do with Desmond Jennings? I’m getting really frustrated with him, outside of his 9 steals he hasnt really contributed anything of value to my team this year and I’m tempted to move on. Do we see him bouncing back at all or is this a case where I should try and sell him, even if it’s low, to try and get something of value back while I still can?
I think Jennings is what he is going to be at this point – a good player but by no means a star. His overall numbers this year are in line with his career numbers, but as someone who owned him in a keeper league for 3 years, I a can attest that he is inconsistent week-to-week and frustrating to own. I chose to finally cut ties with him before this season but regret not trading him before his top-prospect smell wore off. It might be a good time to at least put out some feelers to see if anyone still sees a lot of potential in him.
Would you rather own Lowrie or Carl Crawford than Jennings?
Jennings has just been really bad the last 2-3 weeks, but other than that his stats look fine. Homers are where they should be, runs and RBIs a bit low I’ll give you that, his AVG isn’t great either but nothing disastrous. You have to wait until he gets out of his slump if you want to sell him…
What do you make of Dexter Fowler? He’s been a top OF over the past month, and, while the projections are all pessimistic, looks like about the same guy he’s been the past few seasons, albeit with the expected power decline. His walk rate is fantastic and his BABIP is about where it should be. That he’s hitting more ground balls actually seems like a good post-Coors strategy for a guy like him. Since he’s eliminating some of those projected fly ball outs, do you think his BA could be in the .260-.270 range ROS?
Has anyone pursued the weird strategy of punting ERA and WHIP mid-season? It may be too soon to make this decision, but I am at 4.24 and 1.41 in a MIXED league. It’s almost hard to be that bad. But my offense is very strong.
Should I consider (in a few weeks) abandoning the hope of making a charge up these categories and trade Verlander and Latos to strengthen my offense? I would be able to finish near the top in saves, and I could use streaming SP’s, the schlubs I don’t trade away, and relievers to finish middle of the pack in W’s and possibly K’s.
i have a couple disaster ERA/WHIP teams like that too. I took the not drafting big name pitching approach b/c I could go with lesser ones & planned on being mediocre. Of course in this new age of pitching is great and plentiful I have managed to start my speculation plays on their bad days….consistantly! I keep figuring this can’t last forever & I’m bound to start getting better results. I still believe I can get back in the middle of ERA/WHIP. Trade Verlander/Latos? I’d say go for it! I’m not sure what you will get for Latos coming off the DL & personally I wouldn’t pay a premium for Verlander any more but someone else might. I play on a few different sites & formats and all 5 leagues have pretty good pitching on the FA list. You may not get much for those pitchers for that reason though. But if someone is going to give you a better than free agent acquistion type hitter I say do it.
Nothing about Cliff Lee in the Riteup?
We’re pretending it didn’t happen and that everything is all better now and no one will get hurt again.
Don’t I wish that was the case…
I think it is just hard to win a 10-category league when you are taking a 1 or a 2 in two separate categories. On the other hand, if your league doesn’t have a starts/innings/transactions limit, you could potentially win strikeouts and wins just by starting literally nothing but 2-start pitchers… if you are willing to start Edwin Jackson, Kyle Kendrick, Rienzo, Chris Young, Tom Koehler, or *anyone* with two starts, you can probably average 7-12 strikeouts per starting slot per week, and you will end up bumbling into a lot of wins with that many more starts than your competition. Still, I don’t know if winning 2 pitching categories while coming in last in two others is a good strategy. In a 12-team league, assuming, say, a fourth-place finish in saves, that would be 35 roto points, which is an average of 7 per category. Maybe, if your offense was awesome, you could win the league that way, but I doubt it.
But then again, if you are really convinced that you will be near the bottom of ERA/WHIP no matter what you do, then maybe it does make sense. If you don’t think you can score more than 3 or 4 points in each of those categories, you may be better off overall just using streamers to get the absolute maximum starts/innings and more or less guaranteeing that you win strikeouts and wins. That would probably net you more points than you lose by dropping your points in the ratios from 3 or 4 to 1.
Thanks. We have an innings cap, but not a transactions one.
As you say, I would really have to be sure that my ERA/WHIP were hopeless to consider it. So, If I do this strategy it will be after Latos proves himself healthy, because it’s not worth pursuing unless I get something back in trade. Hopefully, I can make some progress between now and then so that this all is moot.
RE: Hart. I know people think Seattle should go after Morales and that is not a terrible idea. However, I think it would be smart to bring up Jesus Montero who is hitting pretty well at Tacoma right now. 8 HR and 32 RBI with a .268 BA. in 2012 he hit .260 with 15 HR and 60 RBI in 120 games. Last season, Morales hit 22 HR and had 83 RBI in 135 games hitting .277. Going by what Boston paid Drew, Morales would cost about $10 mil the rest of the season. Montero? $500.000. Morales is more of a sure thing but he will take several weeks to get into playing shape. Montero is still overweight but no longer fat, and has been in Tacoma all year. I’d take the chance with him, personally.