Archive for Ryon Healy

Coming into the 2017 campaign, Ryon Healy was a popular topic of conversation on an Oakland Athletics squad that ultimately doesn’t have a lot to be said for it. A sleeper candidate before the year began, some of the shine has since fallen off of Healy thanks to a slow start. Ranking 19th out of 24 qualifying third basemen in WAR probably doesn’t help his case, either.

Having shaken off that rough start, however, and taking his questionable defense out of the equation, Healy is not only a player that stacks up well against his counterparts at the hot corner, but is meeting the expectations previously set forth for him. An offense-first, or perhaps an offense-only, type, Healy will continue to see time at third base, especially with the trade of Trevor Plouffe, while also filling in at first behind Yonder Alonso. And while he likely hasn’t done enough to establish himself as a fantasy starter outside of deeper leagues, he’s a versatile (in a fantasy sense) with a lot going for him at the plate. And by “a lot”, I mean a lot of power.

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Early Average Draft Position is such an astounding thing, as typical and interesting draft tendencies are widely reflected in it. Rookies and inexperienced players being taken too high, quality performers being limited because of a smaller market, etc. Also, Josh Donaldson as the fourth third baseman on average? Come on. With that in mind, it makes sense to look at some of those ADP figures and examine who could be a potential sleeper in drafts as the month of March continues to barrel toward the regular season. Those identified as “sleepers” here are based primarily off of their ADP more so than name recognition.

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Many times in life we convince ourselves to spend money on name brand items. The impact of this can be extremely wide ranging – look at the choices people make for where to attend college, what car to drive, what clothes to wear, or even what food to eat. Regardless of the area of life in which these choices are present, it is hard to ignore the impact that branding has had on our culture. While the choice to spend money on name brand items can be conscious or subconscious, it is usually extremely difficult to seperate out the inherent biases that people have toward specific products. (Try convincing a Pittsburgher they don’t need Heinz ketchup for example).

This brings me to Ottoneu. If someone asked me how to succeed at the format (besides knowing the rules well) I could go into any number of nuanced strategies that could helps someone be successful, but if I had to boil it down to an oversimplified piece of advice, I would probably tell them to “Buy the same things as other teams, while spending less money” or to rephrase, try to ignore the name brand items and buy generic instead.  Today, I want to look at a name brand item I see within Ottoneu, and a generic item I would be just as happy with.

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