Archive for Brent Morel

Tiers seem to unearth the mighty wrath of fantasy baseball enthusiasts, but since we’ve already seen the third base consensus rankings and my general reactions to them thereafter, it’s time to categorize the gentlemen at the five into tidy little compartments of descending desirability.

As you well know, the tiers are not hard and fast — they change (sometimes dramatically) over the course of the first few months of the season. In fact, there’s been movement in these tiers even before I had a chance to publish them! It’s important to remember that these are not keeper tiers — they simply attempt to arrange rough approximations of value in standard 5×5 leagues as you prepare for what might be your final draft(s).

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OK, so the language in the title might be a bit inflammatory.  I can’t, with 100% certainty, say that I absolutely, positively won’t draft these guys, but based on the current chatter and their ADP rankings, they will not be targets for me.  Now, if they somehow slipped a few rounds and it looks like they could, potentially, be a bargain, then I might think otherwise, but that’s a pretty big “if” for me right now.  Here’s who I’m avoiding… Read the rest of this entry »

I used to date a girl whose father was a used car salesman – and he had an uncanny ability to apply his motto to just about every facet of everyday life – that is, “everybody likes to feel like they got a good deal.” The underlying message, however was that people might like to feel like they got a good deal whether they did or not.

To his credit, this even applies in fantasy baseball. You might suggest Mat Gamel at auction at a price of $4 dollars and someone feeling like they’re getting a good deal takes him for $5. Yay, Mat Gamel! And yet, they probably could have had him for $2 bucks.

But let’s focus attention on actually getting a good deal at third base instead. And there are deals to be had, if early indications hold.

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RotoGraphs asked me to post my first-ever column for the site with six days left in the season. That’s right, six days.

This can only mean one thing, of course – they firmly believe that I will bring such brilliant and insightful advice that I can swing a full season of fantasy baseball with 500 words, less than a week before the season ends.

Well, maybe that isn’t what they had in mind, but I am going to give it a shot anyway. So here are six guys who are a) available in at least 90% of leagues (according to Yahoo) and b) will give you a chance to pick up those last couple points to break into the money or take the title.

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Let’s say you blew all of your money on Albert Pujols, Michael Pineda, and Eric Hosmer, and need a super-cheap shortstop in an ottoneu fangraphs points league.  Or, maybe you’re scrambling because Stephen Drew is dealing with his day-to-day, negative-MRI, weeks-old abdominal injury.  You have $2 to spend, and you need a shortstop with a job.  Here are shortstops who have been going for two bucks in ottoneu points leagues:

Since it’s a FanGraphs Points league, we can get a good idea of value by simply ranking players based on your favorite offensive rate stat, be it wOBA here or at Hardball Times, or TAv at BPro.  I took a dumb average of the three projections just so we could get an overall ranking, but the average itself has no meaning in and of itself.

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This past week, Brent Morel was named the starter at third base for the Chicago White Sox, to the absolute delight of White Sox pitchers. While his glove is definitely a plus, fantasy baseball mavens want to know about the bat, and although Morel isn’t going to do an Evan Longoria rookie campaign impersonation, his bat isn’t something to completely ignore.

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I’ve done a fair amount of reading on third base rankings headed into the 2011 fantasy baseball season. While most prognosticators and enthusiasts recognize some elite talent at the tippy-top of the list, references such as “terrifying,” “black hole,” and, ahem, “talentless batch of hackers” have described the rest of the list, which I might venture to simply call not terribly deep. Third base will present many managers with a challenge, but I’m not so sure there aren’t some gems to be had in this list.

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