Fantasy Baseball Advice

Dallas McPherson reminds a lot of myself, if I hit 42 home runs in my last year of Triple-A, or if I played in the minors or any sort of organized sport.  I was a city checkers champion in 6th grade. Cust kayin’.  Speaking of striking out, Dallas McPherson just struckout. And again. Whenever you’re reading this, there’s a good chance McPherson is striking out somewhere.  He’s like Mr. Furley in the Regal Beagle.  McPherson struckout 168 times last year in the minors.  That’s a lot.  I don’t know who holds the record for most strikeouts in a minor league season, because I’m too lazy to Google it, but I have to think McPherson challenged that record last year.  Remember they play less games in the minors.  168 is a lot of strikeouts.  A real lot.  He only played in 127 games.  He also walked a lot.  They call these players, Three True Outcome players, because there’s three possible outcomes when they come to bat, strikeout, walk or home run.  Okay, Alice Cooper, school’s out!  So why is Dallas McPherson is a fantasy sleeper for 2009?

Very few guys will give you the possibility of 30 home runs in the 20th round for your corner infidel.  Think about how huge this could be.  Go ahead, I’ll wait.  You’re not thinking, you’re patronizing me.  Fine, I’ll continue anyway. Begrudingly.  Imagine you take Chone Figgins at 3rd — blech, I know, but bear with me — so now you have a major power outage from your 3rd baseman.  How do you make this up?  You grab McPherson real late.  Even in mixed leagues, McPherson should be drafted in the final rounds.  Some of the schmohawks that are being drafted around him are Bill “You Suck For Even Contemplating Drafting Me” Hall, Ronnie Belliard and Ty Wigginton.  None of those guys has the sweet, sweet upside of McPherson.  The Marlins GM has already said McPherson is penciled in at 3rd for 2009.  Pencils do have erasers, but unless something drastically changes, Dallas McPherson is going to be a solid fantasy sleeper for 2009.  If McPherson fails to land a full-time MLB job, he’s got a job waiting for him on one of T. Boone Pickens wind generator farms.

Brian Fuentes heads to the Angels, confirming some suspicions I had. The guy at Subway spit into your tuna? No, those weren’t suspicions, that was *spooky voice* paranoia.  While so many fantasy baseball ‘perts were appointing Arrendondo the closer of the Angels right after the K-Rod departure, I had my suspicions it was a bit premature.  Why couldn’t Scot Shields take over as the closer, I thought?  (Yes, when I think I do it in a Yoda-syntax. Deal with it!)  Just because Arrendondo was better didn’t mean he was going to be the closer.  Borowski and Todd Jones were the closers for too long when they weren’t the best men for the job.  Well, the Angels acquisition of Brian Fuentes made all of this moot.  (Sometimes I’m as bad as a Developmentally-Challenged Sandinista.)  Let’s look at Brian Fuentes for 2009 fantasy baseball:

Brian Fuentes - Becomes the closer in The Town that Bobby Grich Built as of right now.  Lest we forget, Fuentes is the same schmohawk that couldn’t hold off Manny Corpas, someone who then couldn’t keep the closing job.   Fuentes should be fine in SoCal, but Scioscia has no allegiance to Fuentes and he’s the type of manager that could let a $10 million/year guy pitch setup.   I think they call it ornery.

Jose Arrendondo - Arrendondo was the fourth best rookie pitcher in 2008. But with no closing job he has no value, right? (Not rhetorical, but it is a trick question.)  For anyone who has read this site for a while knows I’m a big time Mr. B.  So Arrendondo has value for me, even if I thought he’d be pitching the eighth inning only. If anything, fantasy owners should be rejoicing (Rejoice, ya’ll! We’re almost out of the naughts!). Now no one will want Arrendondo because they’ll think he has no value.  You know better, don’t you? (That’s a rhetorical.  Try to follow along.)

Next up, Mark DeRosa heads over to the Indians with his up and down staircase capitalization. (What is the deal with this up and down last name capitalization? Who started this? Can anyone do this? Can I just start writing Grey AlBright?) When I first heard about DeRosa going to the Indians, I yawned. Then I scratched my head. Then I wrote this:

Mark DeRosa - I’m glad he’s on the Indians now. I think people will see him out of Wrigley and a Cubs uniform and no longer overrate a player that was underrated. Let me explain, because I partially confused myself with that last sentence.  Going into 2008, Mark of the Roses was underrated and very useful.   Then in the winter, someone somewhere noticed that DeRosa had a good 2008 and he suddenly started getting hyped up.   Now that he’s moved to the Indians, people won’t know exactly what to think of him anymore and he’ll no longer be overrated.  He’ll simply be written off as a guy who had one good season.  Excellent, because it was a career year at 34.  Let’s be real, he’s not the second coming.  He’s barely a top ten 2nd baseman.  Think 15/65/.280. Speaking of 2nd base…

Asdrubal Cabrera/Jhonny Peralta - The Indians should have an Asdrubal Night where proctologists get in for half off. With the addition of DeRosa, Asdrubal will move to shortstop and Peralta will move to 3rd. This seemed to be happening anyway, as Peralta has been getting used to the hot corner in the winter leagues even before the trade, as I mentioned in the post on multiple position eligibility.

Aaron Miles/Mike Fontenot - Fontenot…. Theriot…. They sound like they’re going to be a defensive pairing on the Blackhawks.  Or a cheese pairing with Merlot.  Miles and Fontenot will split time at 2nd base.  Miles will cover the weak side of the blahtoon.  Mike Fontenot seems like a decent endgame bargain.  Since we’re talking about 2nd base or MI, I’d even call him a 2009 fantasy sleeper.

We here at Razzball.com know that picking a fantasy baseball team name is never easy.  You want a funny fantasy baseball team name for 2009, but how crude do you go?   Do you insult everyone or just women and children?   Or maybe you come up a fantasy team name that is some type of (un)imaginative pun like Say It Ain’t Sosa or Put It In The Pujols.

There’s so many words in the English language - how do you pick a few to go together for the perfect fantasy baseball team name?  Great Scott, how!?

Don’t worry, we here at Razzball feel your pain.  So to help you choose a fantasy baseball team name for the 2009 season, we’ve come up with our own Razzball Fantasy Baseball Team Name Generator.  That’s right.  Now you can experience the excitement and whimsy that comes with thinking up a unique name without having to do any of the thinking!

Choose from standard PG categories as ‘Non-Pro Team Cities” and “War Terms” to random quirky categories like “Goofy Adjectives” and “Unimposing Sea Creatures.”  Or just hit ‘Feeling Lucky’ and see what the Razzball Gods come up with - maybe you could find your own ‘Tingly Finger Puppets’ or ‘Bedford Falls Crackers.’

With the click of your mouse, a fantasy baseball team name can be yours!  So act now!  Children under the age of 8 and adults over the age of “old” should probably find someone to help them.  Make sure to leave your best fantasy team name in the comments below.

I know; I’m a bad person for putting Josh Hamilton in the 2009 fantasy baseball overrated category.  Sorry.  I also don’t like soda.  It is what it is.  Don’t hate the player, hate the cola.  Last year, Josh Hamilton entered a 12 step program for fantasy relevance.  Step 1. Stay healthy.  Step 2.  Go into the All-Star Break with almost 100 RBIs.  Step 3.  Stop sucking people off for drugs.  Step 4.  Stop having your girlfriend/wife/whatever suck people off for drugs for you.  Step 5.  Seriously follow steps 3 and 4.  Step 6.  When pumping gas, don’t huff it.  Step 7.  Call your sponsor, Otis Nixon.  Step 8.  Admit you are powerless to Rum Raisin and don’t sample it.  Step 9.  Humbly ask Him to remove you from a lineup with Edwin Encarnacion and Scott Hatteberg and move you to Arlington and Kinsler and a career year Milton Bradley.  Step 10.  Win the hearts and minds of everyone at the All-Star Game’s Home Run Derby.  Step 11.  Somehow convince people that anything is possible including a 40/20 season.  Step 12.  Actually follow these steps.  So that’s all that was necessary for Josh Hamilton to get on your 1st and 2nd round radars for 2009 fantasy drafts.  Now what can we expect from him in 2009 for fantasy baseball?

Carlos Lee.  Wait, huh?  Weren’t you just talking about Josh Hamilton? I was, random italicized voice.  Chillax.  All I meant was, Carlos Lee has been doing for years what you can reasonably expect from Josh Hamilton in 2009.  When was the last time you considered Carlos Lee in the 1st round?  Never?  Yeah, me neither.  This is not to say Josh Hamilton is going to suck a giant bottle of Mediocre in 2009.  He’s a great talent.  I wouldn’t be surprised if he goes 35/110/.300/10, i.e., Carlos Lee’s numbers.  Also, don’t forget Hamilton wore down in the 2nd half last year and he’s injury-prone.  While some will be drafting Josh Hamilton in the 1st round of 2009 drafts, I’ll be shooting up on some Carlos Lee-infused smack at the end of the 2nd round.  Suck on that pipe, Pookie!

FTBOTR is For The Back Of The Room, that’s who this post is for.  Our 2009 fantasy baseball projections have been posted.  These 2009 fantasy baseball projections are not quite like every other site’s fantasy projections.  Ours come in the form of Point Shares. This is a very basic system to understand, this is our Player Rater.  Let’s look at David Wright, who comes in first on the 10-team 2009 projections list.  David Wright will give you 5.49 Points in your ten team league over the average third baseman.  So if you have Kevin Youkilis (.05 Point Shares) at 3rd and you trade him for David Wright, you’ve essentially gained a bit more than 5 points in the standings.  That’s not too hard to understand, right?

These specific 2009 fantasy baseball projections use Marcel’s stat projections from the site TangoTiger.net.  Rudy uses these projections because they are free. He will also be putting together 2009 projections for Point Shares using a few other free services. Then he will do one cumulative Point Shares spreadsheet using all the projections systems.  If you run a site and would like Rudy to use your projections, I’m sure there’s some way we can work this out.  Finally, a bit of good news for those in auction leagues.  Rudy added dollar amounts to the Point Shares spreadsheet, so go check it out.  For those who want projections in the form of stats and not Point Shares, I will personally be going over every single worthwhile player in my annual top twenty posts in January and giving you some of my own 2009 fantasy baseball projections.  Stay tuned for those.  In the meantime, have a great holiday and hopefully whereever you are the Heat Miser and the Snow Miser are on speaking terms.