The Daily Grind: Ottoneu Conundrum, Godley, Tillman
Agenda
- Ottoneu Conundrum
- Daily DFS – Price, Godley
- GB / FB Splits
- Tomorrow’s Targets – Tillman, DeSclafani, Byrd, Gose
- Factor Grid
1. Ottoneu Conundrum
Ottoneu is a fantasy platform hosted by FanGraphs. For the purposes of keeping this brief, I’m going to assume you know certain details about the format that you may not actually know. Feel free to ask questions in the comments.
Last year, I inherited a team from Summer Anne Burton in the ottoneu league FanGraphs Staff Two. The team had finished deep in last place and lacked keeper talent. After a year of overhauling the roster, I’m now in position to win the league. The standings lists Chad Young as two points ahead of me, but I have 40 innings in hand. Another team is quietly neck-and-neck with us because he has about 100 innings in hand. Two other owners are close enough to contention to put pressure on us.
My weakest position is middle infield. Soon, Anthony Rendon will return to bolster a group that includes Justin Turner, Danny Espinosa, Jonathan Schoop, Luis Valbuena, Jimmy Rollins, and Wilmer Flores. I also own a $5 George Springer who isn’t doing anything for me at the moment. I let it be known that I’d be open to swapping Springer to solve my infield problem.
I have one offer on the table for Springer that includes a stud middle infielder under $20, a cheap closer, and a pricey platoon veteran. Two of the players would be keepers. If/when Springer returns, he replaces my platoon of Brandon Moss, Rajai Davis, and Melky Cabrera. He’s a much more modest upgrade than I’d receive from the middle infielder.
In a vacuum, I’d take the deal. However, my roster is financially constrained. Mike Trout, Paul Goldschmidt, and Clayton Kershaw combine to cost about $150 of the $400 budget. I’d like to keep them. That means I need big value assets like Springer and $3 Charlie Blackmon. If I take the deal, I’ll improve this season. I’ll also be forced to trade Kershaw or Trout over the offseason.
So, what to do? I estimate the net gain from the swap is between 100 and 150 points. The league winner generally finishes with around 19,000 points. At this point, two to five owners could finish within 800 points of first place. The chance that this deal is the difference between winning and losing is greater than zero. It may also have no effect on the outcome. And here’s the hard question – at what point does it become worthwhile to hamstring my 2016 team to win this year?
2. Daily DFS – Price, Godley
Early: There are four early games. Do yourself a favor and make budget for David Price on DraftKings. On FanDuel, it’s at least plausible to gamble on Ervin Santana or Garrett Richards. None of the pitchers are liable to implode, but R.A. Dickey is the weakest of the bunch
Late: The late slate is comprised of seven games headlined by a Clayton Kershaw start. If I have time to build a lineup, I’ll be going all-in against Diamondbacks spot starter Zach Godley. The right-hander’s success has come in Single-A. A three start audition at Double-A did not go well – 5.14 ERA, 5.14 K/9, 3.86 BB/9. The Brewers lineup features a couple expensive studs like Ryan Braun and Carlos Gomez. Additionally, Adam Lind, Gerardo Parra, and Scooter Gennett will have the platoon advantage.
Stack Targets: Dickey, Doug Fister, Bartolo Colon, Jeremy Guthrie, Wade Miley
3. GB / FB Splits
The following hitters are recommended based on the works of Shane Tourtellotte and Dan Fansworth. They show ground ball hitters perform better against fly ball pitchers and vice versa. Using three-year values for hitter OPS and pitcher GB%, here are today’s top recommendations. Use this link for Jeff’s full list.
We only have 17 names to work with today. Really it’s 14 because Drew Hutchison has been scratched from his start. Here are the most meaningful…
Tyler Moore v Francisco Liriano
Derek Dietrich v Tyson Ross
Nick Castellanos v Hisashi Iwakuma
Chris Carter v Wade Miley
Jose Abreu, Adam LaRoche, Adam Eaton, and Geovany Soto v Trevor Bauer
4. Tomorrow’s Targets – Tillman, DeSclafani, Byrd, Gose
Pitchers to Start: Chris Tillman has been in the exploit column all season. However, he’s worth considering at Tropicana Field tomorrow. In his last four starts, Tillman has a 1.40 ERA (1.55 FIP) with 24 strikeouts and three walks in 25.2 innings. He’s still a risky play, but the recent performance suggests that his command has improved. The start prior to this four game streak was a six run, 1.1 inning clunker.
Also consider: Erasmo Ramirez, Patrick Corbin, Nick Tropeano
Pitchers to Exploit: Anthony DeSclafani visits Coors Field. As a changeup specialist, he’s not automatically doomed to struggle. It’s possible that he’ll keep the Rockies off balance. However, nearly all pitchers perform worse at Coors. I’m expect multiple extra base hits.
Also consider: Jerome Williams, Jeff Locke, Justin Verlander, Rick Porcello, Scott Feldman, Danny Duffy, Manny Banuelos, Eddie Butler, Colby Lewis,
Hitters (power): Marlon Byrd is a solid pickup for the rest of the week. He’s playing at Coors Field. Byrd has continued to exhibit excellent power, batting .247/.299/.465. Obviously there are some downsides, but that’s why he’s on the waiver wire. He has a .277 BABIP this season after posting a .341 or better rate over the last two seasons. His batted ball data shows a fairly high soft contact rate, so it’s hard to tell where his BABIP should land.
Also consider: Derek Dietrich, Yonder Alonso, Seth Smith, Khris Davis, Ben Paulsen, Randal Grichuk, Stephen Piscotty, David DeJesus, Scott Van Slyke, Chris Coghlan, Wilson Ramos
Hitters (speed): Anthony Gose doesn’t actually have a good matchup against Rick Porcello. They’re both ground ball guys which favors the pitcher. However, there aren’t many freely available speed plays for tomorrow.
I do have a new guy to add to the speed club, I just have to wait for him to face somebody easier than Corey Kluber.
Also consider: Angel Pagan, Danny Espinosa
5. The Factor Grid
The table below indicates which stadiums have the best conditions for hitters today. The color coding is a classic stoplight where green equals go for hitters. The weather conditions are from SI Weather’s home run app. A 10/10 means great atmospheric conditions for home runs. A 1/10 means lousy atmospheric conditions.
It’s a dry day full of pitcher friendly parks.
This post is about fantasy baseball and not Carson Cistulli’s handlebar mustache. Those looking for Cistulli mustache analysis should look for a Fringe Five post.
You can follow me on twitter @BaseballATeam
I think you take the deal. Winning is winning, and I for one don’t care about second place.
Even though you say you’d have to trade Trout or Kershaw during the offseason, I don’t think that would be a disaster. Even if everyone knows you have to trade one of them, I think enough people would be interested in one or the other that you would still receive plenty of value in return.
Flags fly forever. You take the deal.
(Also, I don’t get why you’re worried about next year when you can say things like “The team had finished deep in last place< and lacked keeper talent. After a year of overhauling the roster, I’m now in position to win the league.")
I put a TON of time into the roster of a free league. Probably over 100 hours of trade talks and tinkering. I don’t want to do that again. It was fun rebuilding somebody else’s wreck, but it wouldn’t be fun rebuilding it a second time.
But you won’t be starting over with a train-wreck next year. You’d have whatever you kept from your Championship roster, plus the assets you get from moving Trout or Kershaw. That’s not an unenviable position to be in.
(To somewhat contradict myself: my guess is that you personally enjoy owning those three on the same team. I know I would. Fantasy baseball is supposed to be about fun. So if you’d get more enjoyment from keeping those three while still being competitive than breaking them up and winning, by all means, don’t break up the band. I think the eight year-old in all of us gets it.)
I found myself in this situation with 2 teams this year. I chose to sell, my goal is to win year after year, I don’t want to be the Marlins.
I say take the deal. You never know what happens in baseball. Last year, I traded a valuable asset in Goldy for Strasburg and a closer. Goldy got hurt a week later and with Strasburg, i was able to improve my pitching and won the Ship. I then traded Strasburg for Archer.
This year, I cry everyday thinking about not having Goldy on my team but the sheer joy of seeing my name as a champion overcomes my grief. The extra cash doesn’t hurt either.
Fun fact. Tillman has made four starts against the Blue Jays this year. He gave up 7 earned runs, 7 ER, 5 ER and 6 ER in those starts. Wei-Yin Chen has faced the Blue Jays 0 times this year.
Hooray for Showalter if you are a Chen owner. Boo if you’re a Tillman owner.
Tyler Moore has career reverse-platoon splits (I know it’s only about 600 PA at the MLB level, but that’s not nothing and it’s consistent year to year). He also isn’t very good.
Yea, but GB/FB splits!
Touche!
My initial knee jerk is to say “take the deal” and you can probably recapture some cheap players by trading Trout or Kershaw in the offseason.
However, I’m also in the thick of a race in Ottoneu and faced with a roughly similar offer (I would send Springer out plus others), I turned it down. The players I would receive would definitely not be keepers for me, or else would be keepers at full price. They also would likely only be moderate upgrades on the players they’d be replacing and there’s something like a maybe 20% chance my current guys would perform just as well through the last couple months of the season.
In your example, you said you would get a stud infielder under $20 and a cheap closer. Those sound like better keeper values than I was offered. In my deal, I estimate that there is around $0 worth of surplus value for 2016 coming back since all of the players I would receive (while good) are either overpriced or appropriately priced. I’d prefer to get at least a little 2016 value to make a deal like that. It sounds like you would be getting that. If the infielder in your deal is maybe worth $30 retail value but is currently at $15 and the closer is maybe worth $10 but is priced at $5, I’d say you get around $20 of surplus value on them in 2016. Maybe Springer would be a $30-35 value in the draft but is currently priced at $5, so around $25-30 worth of surplus value. That’s probably close enough for me to buy the 2015 upgrade, but it’s tight.
Also, if those guys you are getting back are truly a good value themselves, you might also trade them in the offseason for a player similar in price to Springer so that you can keep your 3 studs if that’s what you’ve got your heart set on.
The whole point is to win so why you’re even asking the question is silly.
Make the deal and trade Kershaw in the offseason.
This sentiment is a little bit reductionist. We’ll talk about it tomorrow. In short, the chance those 150 expect points matter is small. And it could be probably anything from -500 to 500 net gain with a profit more likely than a loss.
Earlier this year, I traded Kershaw for Stanton. 4 days later, Stanton broke his hand. That could happen again to my target MI. Or Springer could never return like last season. Or the full price platoon veteran I glossed over could be a top 10 player RoS. There are a wide range of possibilities, and it’s unclear if any of them will actually affect my final place.
Right, all you can do is improve your odds.
Don’t do the trade. Keep the team competitive for years. Thats the way to go.