Archive for allen craig

Allen Craig stunk in 2014. We all saw it. He stunk for the St. Louis Cardinals. He stunk even more for the Boston Red Sox. He stunk all season for fantasy baseball players, for whom he lost money, and ended up in the hundreds among outfielders. A regular. The only guy who accumulated 500-plus plate appearances this past season and finished ranked in the hundreds.

Is that it, then? Does he just stink now? It’s possible. Maybe even likely. Perhaps close to definite. But we don’t know. I don’t think that we can know. At least not yet.

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Earlier this week, Jeff Zimmerman presented Early 2015 Hitter Projections using Steamer and/or ZIPS averaged ROS projections. The main contingency at this time: all values are set to 600 plate appearances. If I had all the time in the world, I would go through the list and manually adjust the PA based on lineup position, career PA/G, etc, but I’m not that much of a Mensch.

The next day, Mike Podhorzer highlighted some of the surprises ranked in the top 30. Again the 600 PA contingency is clear as Rajai Davis, Jarrod Dyson and Corey Dickerson make the list although if Dickerson doesn’t get platooned, I (and Mike) think he’ll surpass expectations. His splits page tells us there is no good reason to platoon him.

In Mike’s intro, he also referenced that there is no adjustment for position in Jeff’s SGP rankings. That’s where this post comes in.

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Heading into the offseason, the Cardinals didn’t seem to have too much work to do with their outfield. Sure, they were set to lose Carlos Beltran, but they had depth within the organization and there hardly seemed to be a need to go fishing on the free agent market. A quick trade to maybe give themselves some improvement in center field happened early in the winter, but everything else was left alone. Now here we are with less than two weeks before pitchers and catcher report and less than a month before position players make their way and there’s still no room for potential rookie sensation, Oscar Taveras. Read the rest of this entry »

Episode 88

The latest episode of The Sleeper and the Bust is now live! Jason Collette joins Eno Sarris to preview the St. Louis Cardinals and the Chicago Cubs.

As usual, don’t hesitate to tweet us any fantasy questions you have that we may answer on our next episode.

You can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes or via the feed.

Thanks to Ian Miller aka Teen Archer, for the new intro music

Approximately 66 min of joyous analysis.

FSTA draft results mentioned several times in the show

I’m not really sure what is driving the obsession here, but count me in here for a third time discussing Cardinals 1B/OF Allen Craig. The first time I wrote about The Wrench, back in late January, I questioned the almost unbearable hype he was getting that pushed his ADP to a level that almost ensured he wasn’t going to live up to everyone’s expectations. As I said back then, I wasn’t dogging him as a player as much as I was criticizing the hype machine and those who mindlessly followed it, ultimately driving his ADP to somewhere between the late third and early fifth rounds. I just didn’t see him as a player worthy of such a high draft choice, and certainly not at a position as deep as first base or the outfield. Read the rest of this entry »

I can’t remember which of my fellow RotoGraphers it was who recommended the movie The Girl Next Door while we were baking in the Arizona sun back in February, but it was on the other night and I decided to give it a shot. What I realized first, after the obviously increasing level of hotness of Elisha Cuthbert, was that Hollywood would be dangerous if they ever had an original idea. But as I sat and watched this blatant knock-off of the 1983 coming-of-age classic Risky Business, the line in the title of this post was spoken and I found it quite apropos for the fantasy baseball world. Often times, we tend to overpay for certain players based on personal preferences or just basic preseason hype and it’s always important to take a step back later on down the road and ask yourself if it was worth it. Today we’ll do that with Cardinals first baseman Allen Craig. Read the rest of this entry »

We are entering year two of the post-Albert era in St. Louis and after an 88-win season that resulted in a wild card berth and a trip to the NLCS that fell just one win short of a World Series appearance, the Cardinals are returning with a largely unchanged infield configuration. For better or for worse, the St. Louis brass opted to leave things as is and let other teams play the free agent market this season. The “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” philosophy is in play here and for fantasy purposes, it’s not bad, but the upside is just as limited now as it was just a year ago. Read the rest of this entry »

Every year we develop fantasy crushes. We are all susceptible to them and no one can fault you for latching onto a player whom you think is going to have a breakout season. Usually it’s some highly-touted rookie ready to burst onto the scene who becomes everyone’s darling and sometimes it’s a third or fourth-year player whom you’ve watched as he learned the MLB ropes and things are, in your opinion, about to click. And then there’s Allen Craig. Read the rest of this entry »

I hit .307/.354/.522 with 22 home runs, 92 RBI, and 76 runs scored in just 469 at bats and yet ottoneu hates me.  I’m Allen Craig and I disapprove of this message.

But based on Zach Sanders and his magical ranking system, Allen Craig squeaks into the top ten rankings among first basemen in typical 5×5 leagues, ahead of the likes of Adrian Gonzalez and sometimes catcher Joe Mauer, which ain’t a terrible place to be for a guy that was going for a song when the 2012 season started.

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By true definition, at least by Aesop’s fables, the turtle represents the old adage, “slow and steady wins the race.” By our definition, at least how Eno laid it out, the fantasy turtle is the best buy-low/waiver pick-up that dominated in the second half of the season. While some of our awards were fairly unanimous, this one wasn’t, as nine players received votes. Again, the title of the piece tells you that Kris Medlen won, but let’s look a little further into it. Read the rest of this entry »