Well, the 2013 fantasy baseball season has come to an end. I’ve raised a few flags (hope you did, too!), but now it’s time to go back to my preseason “bold predictions” and put my money where my mouth is (or was?).
Let’s see how I did:
10. Despite injury, Adam Eaton will still steal 40+ bases.
Read the rest of this entry »
At this point, we’ve run out of superlatives to describe the season Mike Trout put together last year. He had the best age-20 season in the history of baseball, and many considered him to be the AL MVP. Reflect on that for a moment. Many people argued Mike Trout was the best player in baseball last season. He was 20 years old. That’s not normal. We all got swept up in Puig-mania this summer and have basked in the glory of Matt Harvey, but we all witnessed something truly special in 2012.
Trout’s supremacy wasn’t limited to the WAR stat, though. In ESPN leagues, he was the number-one fantasy player in all of baseball — and he didn’t even play a big-league game until April 28. The young man essentially gave the entire league a month’s head start and still finished the season in the number-one slot.
Naturally, fantasy owners were left wondering if lightning could strike twice. Considering his price tag on draft day, would it be wise for owners to invest so heavily into a 21-year-old outfielder who may suffer from the dreaded sophomore slump? Opposing teams had ample time to make adjustments this offseason. Would he make the counter-adjustments and replicate his magical rookie season, or would he experience a dramatic year-two decline like Jason Heyward in 2011?
Whatever happened to the power of positive thinking? Obviously it’s a lost art form when you’re talking about a certain percentage of fantasy baseballers. If you recall a Kicking Rocks piece I did during the spring called Draft Characters, you’ll remember the outline I provided of the different types of people you’ll likely face in the war room on Draft Day. The first “person” discussed was the Know-It-All — the guy loaded with information and always willing to endow you with his wisdom. Well, what I didn’t tell you is what happens to this person once the season begins. The best way to describe it is to equate him to a petulant child who just learned the word ‘no.’ No player you like, does he like. No trade that you make, would he make, and heaven forbid you play with him in a league where you vote on trades. The transformation takes place shortly after the start of the season and your league know-it-all sadly becomes The Naysayer. Read the rest of this entry »
Like some of the other newer writers here at RotoGraphs, this is my first entry in the Bold Predictions.
Here’s to hoping .300 is still good enough for the Hall of Fame.
Feast up commenters!
10. Despite injury, Adam Eaton will still steal 40+ bases.
Not exactly BOLD, I know. Trying to ease y’all into this. But if Eaton returns by mid-May or earlier as advertised, he’ll still have enough time to wreak havoc on the basepaths.
9. Andrelton Simmons will score 80 runs, swipe 25 bags.
The Braves shortstop is more known for his leather, but with a full-season leading off in front of Heyward and the Upton brothers, Simmons should really flourish. In addition to the 80 runs and 25 swipes, Simmons could chip in a .275 or better batting average, giving those a nice return who selected him in the late-rounds of their fantasy drafts.
If you were to pick an area of the Angels that was their Achilles heel last season, you’d have to start with a look at the failures of their starting pitching. Yet during the offseason, the Angels made the biggest splash in the free agent market when they opted to throw another $125 million into their outfield and continued to transform their lineup into a premium offensive juggernaut. For fantasy owners looking for both power and speed in the outfield, the Halos have become a one-stop shop that can easily satisfy all of your needs. Read the rest of this entry »
Mike Trout is a stud. No question about it. At 20 years old, the Angels outfielder has taken MLB by storm with a .341/.397/.562 slash line that comes with 12 home runs, 40 RBI, 57 runs scored and 26 stolen bases. He’s delivered all of that and, mind you, he was in the minors for the first month of the season. The production has been phenomenal and as an owner of Trout in my primary keeper league, the smile is so wide, it makes the Kool-Aid guy look like a crying fool. But while the old adage is not being able to see the forest through the trees, so many keeper league owners are so hell-bent on building up their future that they fail to see the season at hand and are so willing to dismantle their entire squad simply to acquire Trout and hand me the league this year. Read the rest of this entry »
They say that, in life, timing is everything. Yes, success is often something you achieve when you put in the proper amount of work, but for many, it can simply be a matter of being in the right place at the right time. Sometimes, it can be an amazing occurrence in life, at least when it happens to you, and other times you just sit there and watch in complete disbelief, wondering how some people can catch such a break. It can be as big as randomly meeting someone who, in the end, offers you your dream job, or as small as simply flipping on the TV and catching a ballgame in the fourth inning that ends up being Matt Cain’s perfect game.
My primary keeper league is a 15-team, mixed roto league where we start two guys at each position with six outfielders and nine pitchers. We draft our starting roster and then have just two opportunities — the final week of April and mid-May — to fill out a 10-player bench from the free agent player pool. That’s it. No other time. There’s no streaming of pitchers throughout the year unless you roster a few on your bench and there’s no waiting to pounce on a rookie on the waiver wire once he gets called up. You need to know in March who is going to get called up, regardless of whether it’s mid-season or September. The first month and a half is all about knowledge and foresight. Read the rest of this entry »
• After sucking the life out of Detroit’s lineup for the past couple of years, Brandon Inge has somehow managed to find a starting job in Oakland after passing through waivers. If you pick Inge up in any league, you probably aren’t someone who reads RotoGraphs.
Continuing with our look at the RotoGraphs Reader Mock Draft, here’s a glance at Rounds 17-20. Since risk is much less of a concern this far down in the draft, I’ll just highlight my favorite pick in the round followed up with some thoughts on some of the other selections. Read the rest of this entry »