Archive for Chris Johnson

It took a special kind of player to be, on the whole, a useless regular position player in mixed fantasy baseball leagues of 10 or 12 teams in 2014. Offense is down. One’s offense is downright offensive against that backdrop when he manages to accrue 600 plate appearances and put up numbers that earn negative dollars.

Many players made a run at the honor of being unworthy of a roster spot for the duration of the season in standard mixed leagues. A dozen in all accumulated 500 or more PAs and returned negative value. Andrelton Simmons came up a couple of dozen PAs short of 600. But in the end, only two players reached the 600-PA plateau and were still bums, according to the Zach Sanders’ end-of-season rankings due to hit RotoGraphs shelves in the next week. Keep your eyes peeled.

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I don’t really like tiers, but it probably has something to do with the neatness of placing a player in a designated strata. I’ve never used tiers in fantasy baseball drafts because I think it tends to blind you to the nuances of each player and the specific needs your team might have. But now that the season has started, you should be all drafted up and it’s time to brand your cattle.

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I did this on Monday as well, but below you’ll find a chart showing how today’s probable starters have fared against hitters of each handedness this year. This chart is something I create in the leaderboard section of the site, and it’s extremely helpful when picking hitters for the day. Unfortunately, the list must be created manually as there isn’t a filter for the day’s probable starters. Because inputting all the names takes a little time, I figure I’ll just do that work for you. After the jump we’ll use the chart to pick some hitters for the day. And we’ll pick a couple of starters, too.

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In the aftermath of the Justin Upton trade lies the messy entrails of fantasy baseball detail. Relative to third base, since the end of the 2012 season, the Atlanta Braves have gone from future Hall of Famer Chipper Jones to steady Martin Prado to Juan Francisco and a current Hall of Famer. That’s right, Chris Johnson is in the Stetson University Hall of Fame, and don’t you forget it.

As fantasy baseball goes, this probably helps Martin Prado but it muddies the water quite a bit in Atlanta unless you think Juan Francisco is going to hit like he currently is in the Caribbean at .307/.369/.575. But with Johnson coming over with Upton, the situation draws the potential for the dreaded platoon, which can effectively murder any value a player might have at a position. With this in mind, should you have Chris Johnson (and?) or Juan Francisco on your draft radar screen?

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As we continue to examine Zach Sanders’ Third Base End of Season Rankings, let’s scroll down to number 22 where we find Arizona’s Chris Johnson who, according to the calculations, produced a $3 value for the 2012 season. The value is reflective of how Johnson compares to the rest of the third basemen out there and to be honest, that number could be a bit high. Sure, his final line of .281-48-15-76-5 might look pretty tasty on the surface, but outside of some deep, mixed leagues, Johnson is about as exciting as the flavor of buttered white bread. Read the rest of this entry »

Sitting just 4.5 games out of first place in the NL West (6.5 out of the wild card), it was just a matter of time before the Arizona Diamondbacks did something to fill that gaping hole they’ve had a third base all season. They came into the year with high hopes that Ryan Roberts would be able to duplicate his breakout 2011 numbers. When he failed, they turned to the underwhelming Cody Ransom. When that didn’t work, they tried bringing up Josh Bell. Another bust. They ultimately went back to Roberts, but for just a short time as he was soon demoted and traded and the D-Backs went with minor leaguer Ryan Wheeler while they regrouped and plotted their next move. That moved showed up on Sunday when Arizona announced they had traded minor leaguers Bobby Borchering and Marc Krauss to the Astros for third baseman Chris Johnson. While the move gives the Diamondbacks and improved situation at the hot corner, it may not be so great for fantasy owners. Read the rest of this entry »

Let’s face it, the waiver wire is looking pretty bleak these days.  Obviously if you’re in a real shallow league of eight to ten teams, there are always guys worthy of picking up even for just a week or so.  But the deeper your league gets the worse it looks out there and as writers trying to suggest a worthwhile pick-up, it can often be difficult.  So now that I threw that caveat out there, here are two guys that probably aren’t bad enough that they could contribute as a possible fill-in for you while your guy maybe nurses a sore hamstring or is mired in some sort of multi-week slump. Read the rest of this entry »

When he slid into second and immediately grabbed his knee, my heart dropped.  The sickening taste of bile crept up my throat and into my mouth as I anxiously awaited for him to stand up, dust himself off and signal to the trainers that he was fine.  When that didn’t happen and he gingerly limped off the field, immediate thoughts of a torn ACL raced through my head.  In three different leagues I grabbed Evan Longoria at the tail end of the first round and until that moment, I wasn’t giving third base another thought.  Now, with news of a partially torn hamstring and a six to eight week recovery period, I’m left here staring at my computer screen, feeling like Kramer when the Kenny Rogers Roasters sign was finally turned off. Read the rest of this entry »

I didn’t expect to do another post on recent developments at third base until after the season began, but there were several relevant (some more than others) circumstances that could impact any of you doing emergency, 12th-hour drafts the day before the season begins.

I’ve written far too much about Ryan Roberts over the past six months, and part of that is probably because I have a hard time figuring out if I like him in fantasy baseball, and in what kinds of formats he might be useful, if at all. Well, it turns out that Kirk Gibson might be having the same thoughts kicking around in his skull relative to real baseball as he’s given Geoff Blum quite a bit of praise recently and failed to commit to Roberts as his every day third basemen when questioned. I have to believe that Roberts will see the majority of the time at third and maybe this is the way a former “gritty” player rewards a player with “veteran savvy” who is having a decent spring. But if you own Roberts, take notice.

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Happy 4th of July weekend to you all…

So some of the boys and I decided to test out our waiver wire skills and ran a quick little Deep League Waiver Wire draft.  We had to pick those that we thought would be the most productive for fantasy teams THIS season but had less than a 10% ownership mark using ESPN Fantasy as a guideline.  Since the pick’ns were pretty slim, we left the positions as follows:  C, CI, MI, OF, SP, RP.  I had the first pick of the four of us, so here’s what I did… Read the rest of this entry »