Archive for alex avila

If you’re looking for help at the catcher position, now is the perfect time to start looking at buying low on certain guys.  Regular backstops such as Russell Martin, Geovany Soto and even Brian McCann are struggling out of the gate and it’s probably time to start putting in a few offers and see what it would take.  But what about Alex Avila?  After struggling as a rookie, Avila turned things around last year and put up a tremendous stat line that vaulted him into this year’s preseason top ten and turned him into a highly coveted commodity on draft day.  Now here in his third full season, he’s posting a woeful slash line of .220/.303/.424 and people are starting to wonder if last season was for real or just a fluke.  Is he a good buy-low candidate? Read the rest of this entry »

With just about 10 games into the season and no one amassing more than 40 plate appearances, the Small Sample Size Police are in full force right now.  Hot starts, cold starts, nothing matters to these brazen fantasy owners who dismiss such meaningless statistics at this time of year.  But that doesn’t mean the rest of us can’t have a little fun and appreciate the good fortune bestowed upon us by the fantasy gods as our catchers come flying out of the gate, white-hot, and throw us some always helpful power stats.  I mean, would you rather be sitting there lamenting Russell Martin’s ice cold start and wonder if his batting average will actually be worse than 2011’s .237 mark or give in to your child-like giddiness over the fact that Alex Avila has picked right up where he left off last season?  Yeah, that’s what I thought… Read the rest of this entry »

In an effort to limit the number of times people use the phrase “sample size” in the comments section, a quick post on which minor league backstops to keep on your radar seems more appropriate than discussing Alex Avila’s .417-4-2-5 batting line through three games.  While most rosters are set, save for a few tweaks here and there, there are a number of catchers in the minors that are looking pretty darn good.  Dynasty league owners probably have them locked onto rosters already, but in other leagues, they should be known by you in case something goes wrong on the big league level.

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So we’ve decided to turn this 10 Bold Predictions thing into a friendly competition amongst the RotoGraphs writers. Here are mine… Read the rest of this entry »

If you’re using ADP to help guide you through your draft, it’s always good to see it in action.  The lists you see on Mock Draft Central are great because of the aggregate data, but you know how a lot of mocks go — sometimes you get guys that stay for the first 10 rounds and then leave, putting it on auto-pick the rest of the way.  That just skews the data towards the site’s rankings and becomes less helpful.  So while the sample size is tiny, let’s look at the RotoGraphs Reader Mock Draft and see how a group of informed and dedicated fantasy baseball citizens did with their catchers in comparison to the ADP data we see.

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All too often on draft day we find ourselves settling for a certain player at a certain position rather than walk away with someone we covet.  In auctions, sometimes the bidding just doesn’t go the way you expect and you have to bow out rather than overspend and in snake drafts, a run can come too early and before you know it, the top guys on your depth chart have been taken off the board.  When that happens, some people tend to overreact and just grab a guy to fill the spot before they find themselves scraping the bottom of the barrel.  It’s a panic move.  Unfortunately though, that usually leads to grabbing a guy too early at the expense of a better overall player or overspending on someone who should have gone for a cheaper price.  And in almost every case, the player is flawed and you end up having to convince yourself that you still made the right move.

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As we saw through last week’s series of articles, there’s been quite a lot of talk about the Fan/RotoGraphs Dynasty Mock Draft.  Yes, there seemed to be a bit of confusion — two people thought it was a regular keeper draft rather than a dynasty one — but lost in the mundane and repetitive critique of that aspect was the true meaning of a mock draft.  Its is a test.  It is a guideline.  It is a tool.  You use a mock draft to gauge where particular players are going; where certain positions come off the board in a run.  It certainly isn’t the gospel, but while the calendar hasn’t even flipped to January and offseason player movement has far from ceased, it’s definitely a useful piece of information from which to get started.  That being said, we’re going to wrap up its coverage with a listing of the catchers that went, where they came off the board, and a few notes along the way.

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Tracking average draft position (ADP) can be an incredibly useful tool in preparing for your upcoming fantasy drafts.  It’s most helpful in standard snake-style drafts as you’re able to see, on average, where a particular player is taken; whether you can wait a few rounds to grab him or if you have to act quicker than you thought to pick him up.  Obviously it’s less helpful if you’re in an auction, but it does help you see which players are, for the most part, off people’s radars and can be stolen late in your auction for a cheaper price tag.

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Before we continue with the catchers today, allow me to make a correction/clarification.  After much discussion behind the scenes and after some of the comments received, these rankings will be purely based on the players’ level of worth, much in the style of our regular in-season rankings.  Costs to protect and relative value are up to you as there are just too many nuances and cost variations for individual leagues that we are unable to accurately factor in.  That being said, please allow me to make one change to the first tier…. Read the rest of this entry »

At the end of each fantasy season, I always like to do what few fantasy sites/writers ever do for their readers.  I like to hold myself accountable.  You need to know whether you are getting sound advice and I need to know where I need to step up my game.  So with that, I like to go back throughout the year, both spring and in-season, and see just how successful I was in offering up advice.    When I saw Mike Podhorzer’s look back at his 20 Bold Predictions, I knew it was time to serve myself up as well.

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