We are now three full weeks into the season, and managers are starting to respond to players’ hot and cold starts. That gives the fantasy owners of players like Brian Dozier, Kyle Schwarber, and Ender Inciarte something more to think about, and owners of Yasmani Grandal and Manuel Margot something to feel good about.
Here are the lineup and batting order trends of note for each of the 15 teams in the senior circuit.
Read the rest of this entry »
In the last few days, much of the waiver wire frenzy has been focused on pitchers in general and on Michael Soroka, Nick Kingham and Fernando Romero specifically. If you were able to pick up one or more of these prospects who have just made their major league debuts, that’s a good feeling. If you acquired them without busting your FAAB budget, even better.
Yet while these young pitchers have been stealing the spotlight, a number of more established hitters have been toiling away beyond the gaze of most fantasy owners. Each of the five hitters featured below are owned in fewer than a third of the leagues on CBSSports.com and Fantrax, where deeper leagues are not in short supply. Some of them could provide an upgrade for your deep-league roster right now, while others may be more valuable in the coming weeks and, therefore, are worth a stash.
Read the rest of this entry »
We’ve started our annual Depth Chart Discussions, re-branded as Playing Time Battles for 2016. You can catch up on every team we’ve covered in the Playing Time Battles Summary post or following along using the Depth Chart Discussions tag.
The Cardinals starters — and even their reserves — are mostly set. Jedd Gyorko was acquired in return for Jon Jay and should serve as the primary backup to Matt Carpenter at third base, Jhonny Peralta at shortstop and Kolten Wong at second base. None of the starters ahead of Gyorko are in danger of losing their starting jobs, but should any of them suffer an injury, the former Padre could have modest deep-league value as a middle infielder with average to above average power (.158 ISO and 49 homers in 1,426 career plate appearances), albeit with an ugly average (.247 last year and .236 for his career). That said, there’s no playing time battle at second base, shortstop or third base. There is, however, a fierce battle to be waged at first base. The outfield is essentially settled, but there is one position worth monitoring during the year. Read the rest of this entry »
Last week, I reviewed my NFBC Draft Champions League results. I think some of my speculative saves (Joel Peralta early on; Adam Ottavino later on) could come to fruition, and I am pretty bullish on the depth of my rotation. I have a sundry of sleepers that could provide supplemental value: Daniel Norris, Randall Delgado, Jaime Garcia, Rafael Montero, Trevor Cahill and Robbie Erlin.
With that said, some of the feedback was helpful. I agree that based on my closing situation (among other things), I can’t possibly compete for the grand prize unless I get very lucky. I also do not have enough sure-thing starters to punt saves altogether to at least ensure a league win.
I don’t agree with a lack of depth on offense. I have CI/OF flexibility and a sundry of power (Justin Smoak, Travis Snider) and speed (Billy Burns, Jose Ramirez, Francisco Lindor) on the bench. My second catching slot is in question, but Caleb Joseph could provide some surprise value until Matt Wieters returns. I like Andrew Susac, but I need to hope for a Buster Posey or Brandon Belt injury.
You have seen some Tout and LABR reviews for the past few weeks here on the site. We all can’t be so lucky to participate in such glorious leagues. On the other hand, we can all take part in NFBC leagues.
NFBC’s $150 NFBC Draft Champions leagues are a perfect format for me:
a) I have impending time constraints including my first child in June!
b) I didn’t have to ask my wife for permission to use our mutual bank account.
c) I was able to dwell on each pick if/when needed (8 hours to make a pick) and
d) There are no trades or free agent pick-ups once the draft is complete. This feature is my wife’s favorite, and I appreciate the preventative collusion measures. I am also much more interested in draft strategy and player projections/rankings/draft position than I am jumping on small sample sizes in-season.
It’s official. 100% of my value is bothering @jeffwzimmerman to run data and then use that data for said content. I did just that this morning for updated shift data. I believe the last time he posted related content on RotoGraphs was here back in May looking at: Early Hitter Shift Data.
It was because of this post and his balls in play (groundball and pop-up rates) that led me to believe Albert Pujols was going to drop off/continue his downward trend. I guess I pushed out the fact that he was the best hitter of his generation. While the .375 BABIP (from the above link) against shifts did not last, he’s at a very respectable .284. Between this and additional discipline (best contact rate since 2008 and hacking less at stuff outside of the zone), he is able to hover around a .280 BA, which remains elite in conjunction with 30HR, 90R and 100+RBI.
The Cardinals infield returns three regulars from last year but only has two players manning the same position and has one completely new face. But regardless of whether they’re old or new, I probably like all five players less than the general public based on early ADP data.
One of the two guys manning the same position is a Cardinal stalwart, Yadier Molina. I looked into Molina earlier this off season and his value derived primarily from his batting average last year as he provided more fantasy value with his batting average than any other catcher thanks to the second highest average at the position and a relatively high number of plate appearances. But he didn’t do the things that made him great in 2012. His HR/FB rate returned to about his career rate, so he hit 12 home runs as opposed to 22. His speed went away as quickly as it appeared, so he stole 3 bases as opposed to 12.
Without the 2012 power/speed combo that is basically unheard of at his position, Molina absolutely must have his average remain high for his fantasy value to remain high. That’s a little scary because Molina’s BABIP was .338 last year. To be fair, his xBABIP was .331 thanks in large part to a 24.3% line drive rate. But it’s just a little nerve-wracking to be drafting a guy that is so BABIP dependent when BABIP is such a fickle stat. For example, Molina had a 24.8% line drive rate and .344 xBABIP in 2012, but his actual BABIP was only .316. 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
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: RSS
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 »
Do you have a case of the Mondays? If you do, you need to wake yourself up and get to work, because you’re not being paid to read this. Cyberslacking hurts everyone.