Surviving the V-Mart Injury

by
June 29, 2010

As if the Red Sox didn’t have enough injury issues with Josh Beckett, Dustin Pedroia, and basically their entire outfield on the disabled list, they lost Victor Martinez to a fractured thumb over the weekend. A top tier fantasy catcher is impossible to replace, so hopefully he’ll be back after the required 15 days and all you V-Mart owners won’t have to suffer too long.

In the meantime, here’s a few backstops you can find on the waiver wire to help keep your head above water, starting with Martinez’s replacement…

Jason Varitek | Red Sox | 6% owned

Varitek has a very strange stat line this season. He has only 23 hits in 98 PA (.258 AVG), but he’s got seven homers and a .303 ISO. Those seven bombs come with only 14 RBI too. Yeah, it’s just small sample size noise, but it’s still kinda funny. (R) ZiPS projects a .227 AVG with a .178 ISO, and realistically that’s about the best you can hope for out of Varitek for the next two weeks or so.

Ronny Paulino | Marlins | 16%

Very quietly, Paulino has posted a respectable .343 wOBA this season, though he’s hit .322/.373/.435 in his last 126 plate appearances. He’s an absolute horse behind the dish, perhaps to the point that you have to worry about him turning into a pumpkin in the second half. Paulino’s started the team’s last 19 (!!!) games, though he did have the benefit of three off days during that stretch. (R) ZiPS sees a regression back to .274/.332/.397 the rest of the way, but at least he won’t kill you in AVG during V-Mart’s absence.

You Aren't a FanGraphs Member
It looks like you aren't yet a FanGraphs Member (or aren't logged in). We aren't mad, just disappointed.
We get it. You want to read this article. But before we let you get back to it, we'd like to point out a few of the good reasons why you should become a Member.
1. Ad Free viewing! We won't bug you with this ad, or any other.
2. Unlimited articles! Non-Members only get to read 10 free articles a month. Members never get cut off.
3. Dark mode and Classic mode!
4. Custom player page dashboards! Choose the player cards you want, in the order you want them.
5. One-click data exports! Export our projections and leaderboards for your personal projects.
6. Remove the photos on the home page! (Honestly, this doesn't sound so great to us, but some people wanted it, and we like to give our Members what they want.)
7. Even more Steamer projections! We have handedness, percentile, and context neutral projections available for Members only.
8. Get FanGraphs Walk-Off, a customized year end review! Find out exactly how you used FanGraphs this year, and how that compares to other Members. Don't be a victim of FOMO.
9. A weekly mailbag column, exclusively for Members.
10. Help support FanGraphs and our entire staff! Our Members provide us with critical resources to improve the site and deliver new features!
We hope you'll consider a Membership today, for yourself or as a gift! And we realize this has been an awfully long sales pitch, so we've also removed all the other ads in this article. We didn't want to overdo it.

John Jaso | Rays | 6%

Tampa has been platooning Jaso with Kelly Shoppach ever since they decided to send Dioner Navarro to the minors, and six of Tampa’s next seven games come against righthanded pitchers. Jaso is a must own in OBP leagues (.398 OBP), but his .271 AVG and 25 RBI still have value elsewhere. I’m a sucker for guys who walk more than they strikeout, though (R) ZiPS seems him falling to .269/.354/.368 the rest of the way.

Ownership rates based on Yahoo! leagues.





 

Mike writes about the Yankees at River Ave. Blues and baseball in general at CBS Sports.

8 Comments
Oldest
Newest Most Voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
MikeM
15 years ago

Thanks for the advice. How about “Surviving the Troy Tulowitski Injury” next? Yes, I have both of them on my team. Teixeira, Tulo, V-Mart were my first 3 picks. Needless to say, I am not loving life right now.

-1
Mike AxisaMember since 2020
15 years ago
Reply to  MikeM

Already covered that, but it’s over a week old…

http://www.fangraphs.com/fantasy/index.php/the-tulowitzki-injury/

0