Archive for Brian McCann

Through the first 10 rounds of the RotoGraphs Ridiculously Early Mock Draft, a draft for a single-catcher league, we saw a total of eight backstops come off the board. In an effort to see how our picks matched up with public opinion, we’ve been comparing the results to ADP found on both Mock Draft Central (MDC) and the National Fantasy Baseball Championship (NFBC). However, given how unreliable MDC data is right now due to small sample sizes and the fact that they don’t differentiate between one and two-catcher league mocks, we’re basically casting that ADP data aside and just matching up with that from the NFBC, a two-catcher league draft. With the current depth at the position, it should have been safe to assume that the top backstops would go a bit earlier in our draft than in the NFBC, however, in looking back at the comparisons, that was not the case. In fact, save for everyone agreeing that Buster Posey was a consensus late-first round pick, nothing went as expected. Read the rest of this entry »

Just three weeks left to go in the regular season and all that hard work you’ve done over the last five-plus months will have finally paid off, so long as you’re staying on top of things.  And that means making the tough decisions at the end of the year.  Let’s face it…we’ve got great players that just aren’t producing right now and you need to make sure you fill in the blanks with guys who are.  Our own Michael Barr wrote a piece discussing the idea of cutting Brian McCann and then there are guys like Alex Avila who should have been cut even longer ago.  Even Matt Wieters is struggling to keep his average over the Mendoza line for the last 30 days.  If it’s a keeper league, you’ll probably have to bite the bullet.  But if it’s a re-draft league, it’s time to cut the dead weight and get a catcher in there that can help. Read the rest of this entry »

I can’t claim “killing your babies,” although I really wish I could. And before you go marching off with a fungo bat looking for your first born, please, put the bat down. ‘Killing your babies’ is a term/phrase/philosophy I’m stealing from an editor I worked with who used it to describe something difficult in writing. That is, sometimes you just have to get rid of entire chapters of your book, despite the fact that you think they’re brilliant — because they really just don’t work anymore. I like to apply this principle to fantasy baseball.

Admit it — you fall in love with players. To see certain names on your roster just warms the cockles of your heart. Even the sub-cockles. But there’s a point at which carrying your favorite beau is actually hurting your chances at winning. And although I actually know some managers who would rather lose with players they like (because, they say, they enjoy “rooting for them” – BAH!) — I refuse to believe that the good readers here want anything other than the final prize. If a player isn’t bringing your team closer to a championship, it’s high time to get out the hatchet. Kill your babies.

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Even though the positional rankings aren;t being updated monthly, the tiers are, so let’s take a look at some of the movement amongst the catchers.  We saw a few things happen with the May tiers but I held back any extreme movement because of sample sizes and questions surrounding performance sustainability.  This month, guys are moving… Read the rest of this entry »

In contrast to what we did last season, this year we’re doing monthly updates for our positional rankings as laid out by Eno Sarris and his minions.  In addition to that, we’re doing our monthly positional tier updates as well which should aid you in your waiver pick-ups and trade negotiations when you’re comparing values.  The rankings can be found over here and below is how I see them by tier… Read the rest of this entry »

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 »

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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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 »