Some Thoughts for the Last Two Weeks

Say it ain’t so! There’s only two weeks of the season left? Wow, how time flies. Hopefully you’re either already in a prize spot or fighting to reach one. The final two weeks are fun because you might decide to make roster moves you would never consider during the earlier part of the season. So here are some random pieces of advice and thoughts for these final two weeks.

Start Rockies All Week

The Rockies embark on a seven game home stand this week, playing host to the Pirates and Dodgers. As usual, the team has posted a significant home/away offensive split, having posted a Major League leading .360 wOBA at home, versus a baseball worst .281 mark away from Coors. The following Rockies hitters should receive ample playing time and are widely available in CBS leagues:

Justin Morneau | CBS 26% Owned
Dustin Garneau | 1% Owned
Wilin Rosario | 16% Owned

The team is expected to face four left-handed starting pitchers this week, which is good news for Rosario, though potentially bad for Morneau.

Bench Rockies Next Week

After their seven game home stand, the team hits the road for the final six games of the season. While I’m not necessarily advising you to actually drop or bench your star Rockies hitters, be aware of their home/away splits this year:

With the exception of Arenado who still remains better than league average in away parks, the others are slighty worse or significantly so. Rosario, in particular, is a play for this upcoming week only.

Category Focus – Start/Bench

I hope you have already been doing this, but if not, now is the time to start! On the offensive side, steals is usually a category that there are reasonable gaps between teams. There’s a decent chance your team can’t gain or lose a point in the standings, or could move up and down just one spot. If this is your situation, bench or outright drop all your hitters whose fantasy value is primarily driven by stolen bases. You don’t even have to worry about losing a batting average contributor, because in a two-week time span, anything could happen. Plus, one hitter is barely going to make a dent in the category. So, it’s a potential goodbye to Dee Gordon, Ben Revere and Billy Burns.

On the pitching side, it’s time to take a close look of where you sit in the saves category, compared to how you’re doing in wins and strikeouts. Can you move in saves at all? Like, by more than a point? If not, obviously there’s little sense in starting any closers. But, if you replace them with starting pitchers and their potential to boost your win and strikeout totals, could you afford a small hit to your ERA and WHIP if those extra starts from replacement level pitchers are of the poor variety?

Category Focus – Free Agent

Related to the above, your focus on the category standings won’t just affect your decisions for your current roster. You also will have to decide who to pick up. So if you don’t need steals and could use some additional power, then hello Colby Rasmus or Marcell Ozuna, two players available in more than half of CBS leagues.

And if you decide saves, and therefore closers, are of no more use to you, it’s time to start browsing through the two-start starters list. Jeff introduced his new weekly ranking list yesterday and you see a lot of two-start starters on the top of the list. While monitoring your ERA and WHIP is important to ensure you don’t lose points there while chasing the wins and strikeouts, you still might be interested in adding the likes of Robbie Ray, Henry Owens, Martin Perez, or, gulp, Matt Moore.

Injuries

–Brandon Belt is probably out for the season with a concussion. Go for a replacement.
–Ryan Braun has been in and out of the lineup due to lingering back problems. In a weekly league, it’s a difficult situation (and one that I have to deal with myself).
–Matt Holliday is supposedly ready to take the field this week, so perhaps he’s safe to start.
–Jimmy Rollins has been pinch hitting and Don Mattingly had said that he wouldn’t lose his starting shortstop job. But with top prospect Corey Seager hitting well, it’s probably safe to just drop Rollins at this point.
–Matt Harvey isn’t injured, but he was only allowed to pitch five innings last night and he’ll likely be on the same limit for the remainder of his starts. That will reduce his chances of getting the win and for those in quality starts leagues, make it impossible for him to record one of those. Feel free to bench him this week.