Archive for Carl Crawford

With trade deadlines well in the rear-view mirror, the only way to bolster fantasy teams at this point in the season is via the waiver wire. Fortunately, we here at Rotographs have you covered in this regard. A couple weeks ago, Adam McFadden wrote about a bunch of underowned players, which spawned my own column on the topic. Steven Shumansky expanded our list even further last week, and I’ve still managed to find four players — owned in 20% or fewer leagues on Yahoo! — to recommend for those of you trying to pad your power or speed numbers down the stretch.

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Our Mock Draft is complete.

Team Schwartz/rounds drafted:

C: Travis d’Arnaud/17 1B: Victor Martinez/4 2B: Arismendy Alcantara/18 3B: Josh Donaldson/3 SS: Hanley Ramirez/2 MI: Jean Segura/19 CI: Prince Fielder/6 OF: Mike Trout/1; Mookie Betts/7; Ryan Zimmerman/10; A.J. Pollock/14; Steven Souza/20; Carl Crawford/24 U: Pedro Alvarez/21

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Carl Crawford ranked #64 in our end-of-season outfield rankings, just above A.J. Pollock, who is only valuable for defense, Matt Joyce, who’s a mildly interesting platoon player, and Ichiro Suzuki, who retired in 2009.

Objectively, that’s not that great. In a 12 team league with three starting outfield spots, it’s well below starting-caliber. But in this specific situation, we can put objectivity on hold for just a second to acknowledge that Crawford actually managed to stay on the field long enough to even find a home in the rankings. Victory! A minor victory, perhaps, but a worthwhile one nonetheless. Read the rest of this entry »

If you play salary cap contests on daily fantasy sites like Draftstreet, you are fully aware that starting pitchers are more expensive than hitters. This is quite obviously because the scoring systems are such that starting pitchers score more points than hitters. I’m sure the goal of whoever does the pricing is to make hitting and pitching of equal value. But in my experience I’ve had more success in these contests when I spend more on pitching, which makes me think that’s where the value lies. Read the rest of this entry »

Four bullet points today? Merry Christmas, America.

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Between all of the injuries and slow starts, it’s expected that everyone in your league is scouring the waiver wire and looking for players to fill in the gaps.  The trick though, is to do it on the cheap this early in the season.  There are far too many people blowing their FAAB budget too soon or wasting a decent waiver priority on a quick-fix band-aid that won’t be playing in a month’s time, so while you need to stay active, you need to be smarter than the next guy in the way you do it. Read the rest of this entry »

If your memory works anything like mine, you have a small pocket of your brain specifically used for random, useless baseball trivia. For instance, I remember that Willie Bloomquist started the 2011 season with a 10 game hitting streak. I forgot my daughter’s date of birth yesterday, but I apparently made room in my skull for this.

Indeed – looking at his stats, Willie Boom-Boom was hitting .340/.360/.468 with seven RBI and he even hit a home run. It turns out, that was 33% of his home run total and 37% of his total RBI for the season. He finished at .254/.310/.320.

When the season starts, we try hard to not read much into small sample sizes – and if you’re a longtime reader, you know that the sample size is constantly referred to for the first couple months of the season, and for good reason. But in contrast to Spring training, these statistics actually matter to our fantasy baseball teams, so it’s hard to ignore when one guy is hitting out of his mind and another is barely doing anything. As logical as I try to be, I guarantee you that I’m disappointed when half my team doesn’t hit a home run on opening day.

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Well, since the last installment received so much attention — both positive and negative — I figured we should have another go-around here.  Only this time, in an effort to create more dialogue and draw even more of your ire, I took the advice from some of you and looked more towards the upper rounds of the draft.  Personally, I think telling you not to waste your time with a particular player in the lower rounds is a bit more helpful than this — sure, there’s less risk in the 19th round and you don’t care if you eventually drop the guy, but why waste the pick in the first place?  But alas, this is what you asked for my dear RotoGraphs readers and this is what you get… Read the rest of this entry »

Indeed, I’ve gazed deeply into my crystal ball to present to you yet another set of RotoGraphs bold predictions for 2012. I eagerly anticipate your commentary wrath.

1. Dan Haren wins 20 games. He had pretty rotten run support in 2011 and the Angels did a little something in the off-season that might affect run production. Haren had nine no decisions in which he posted a 2.90 ERA, 0.952 WHIP and an 8.0 K/9. There were 11 games in which the Angels scored two or fewer runs in and Haren won just three of them — but he posted a 2.12 ERA, 0.769 WHIP and a 7.8 K/9. Something’s gotta give, and I say he gets the better end of the wish bone in 2012.

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Boston’s right field just may have become a little more fantasy friendly as the club signed Cody Ross to a one year, $3M contract the other day.  Initial plans are likely to platoon Ross and Ryan Sweeney, but if both perform as they have done so in the past, Ross should end up with the lion’s share of starts while Sweeney is relegated to a late-inning defensive replacement-type role.  That would certainly put Ross on the map for both AL-only and deeper mixed leagues.

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