My love for all things Tribe will probably be the death of my fantasy team but I’m out here not carin. I’m not sure if my Bauer post will come out first or if this one will but I’ve also at this point in late February already completed a draft in which I took Carrasco in the 9th and Salazar in the 16th. What I’m trying to say is Cleveland is going to win 155 games this year so I want every starter on that team. I’m joking of course…about that many wins for the Indians. Or maybe it wasn’t a joke more so than it was hyperbole? I don’t wanna get technical here, let’s just say I literally want every starter they have for various reasons and when you’re going deep like I am with these posts, you sometimes have to scratch beneath the depth chart to see what’s available and what do I see? I see a T.J. House party that just might blow up in the late rounds of your draft. So BYOB and get ready to groove as we see why T.J. might be a solid play by the end of the 2015 Fantasy Baseball season…
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Does anything feel as comforting, yet restricting as a pair of fuzzy handcuffs? They just lack the masculinity that a normal grown man would like to admit…But you sprinkle in the testosterone laced excitement of fantasy baseball, and BOOM. The fellas that we will be examining this week should be drafted in all leagues that speculate in the save department. Note to you, that is every league. You are basically looking for these few outliers to light your path to save endearment. First, pick a closer situation that has one clear cut guy as the fall back option. Second, find a team that looks to be on the right side of standings, which in theory is the left side, because that’s where wins go. Third, you want a team that utilizes a keen sense of relief inevitability, vis-à-vis a manager that likes guys in certain situations; for us, that’s the guys that will be the best shut down reliever not named “closer” in the bullpen. It’s pretty simple math there, no helmet needed or safety strapping cabinets, so you don’t pinch your digits. So let’s have at some of Smokey’s smorgasbord of top guys you should wanna be sniping from other purveyors of the save. Oh and by the way, I am ignoring guys like Wade Davis, Andrew Miller , and Ken Giles because if your league doesn’t draft them, then you should skip baseball and focus on Fantasy Soccer.
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I’ve been playing fantasy baseball since I was 15 back in 1992. If you have access to a calculator, that should tell you how old I am. Back then we had to gather the stats from newspapers, The Bergen Record to be precise, and compile the standings by hand. We had two guys in the league responsible for this awful task, and I was one of them. It wasn’t as bad as it sounds, but to look back at it from where we are today with all of the websites and mobile apps we now have that make it so easy, I wonder what fantasy sports will be like in another 20 years. What I’m hoping for is a button that I can press that will instantly taser a player on my team if he does something that I don’t like. Not likely? I didn’t think so, but a guy can dream.
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Perhaps your league is just forming, or has been around a few years and has an established core of owners, and you may be mulling some changes in rules. I’d like to suggest adding Quality Starts (QS) + Wins (W) over the simple Wins category in pitching. There are a few reasons for this, but first I would say the “Quality Start” is far from perfect, as it may devalue young pitching that would dominate a game, and the organization is looking to protect the young asset, then pulls the young phenom after 5 and 2/3 innings (a Quality Start requires 6 IP or more with 3 ER or less). There are also times when a pitcher is shelled and bailed out by errors. The “Wins” category can be less reflective of the pitcher’s effort in a positive or negative way depending on if his team scores two or more earned runs a night than league average, or has a bullpen like the 2014 Chicago White Sox. With the flaws in both categories (although I suggest QS as the better of the two on its own), combining the two makes for a more realistic category in my opinion, and let me show you why.
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Applying Spring Training Stats To Fantasy Baseball
March 6, 2015 | Fantasy Baseball Draft Strategy | 243 Commentsby: Grey
For my annual Spring Training trip, Sky and JayWrong are joining me in Arizona. Road trip! I leave today and return on Sunday. Of course, JayWrong’s already committed us to a Padres game, and standing outside the stadium to get Padres autographs, and standing outside their hotel to help them with their luggage, and sneaking in to pretend to be chefs at their favorite hibachi restaurant so we can flip a shrimp tail at Kemp. Don’t pull your latissimus dorsi reaching for that crustacean! I believe that was how Flipper injured itself. Any hoo! Baseball, like a flower, blooms in the spring. They also share equally effusive PR people. Just the other day I read about how a petunia’s branches gained 15 pounds and was in the best shape of its life. Sure, it’s always good to look at spring training numbers to give you an idea what you can expect from guys during the season — can I draft Kolten Wong yet?! Players in spring training are facing the top pitchers who are all displaying their best stuff. No one needs time to get warmed up. No one’s trying new pitches or getting a feel for the ball. They are at the height of their game in March. Our former commissioner, Bud, once doffed his toupee and tried to have the World Series played in March. Since these spring training numbers mean so much, I decided to look at some players stats so far:
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For the 4th straight year, Razzball is competing in CBSSports.com’s AL-only league (we also compete in NL-only – here’s Grey’s draft post). We won AL-only in 2012 but have struggled the past two years (8th and 9th). The big change for 2015 is that this will be my team exclusively where we co-managed in 2012-2014.
I enjoy the CBSSports leagues for two reasons: 1) We are in the mixed league versions of LABR and Tout Wars so this league lets us compete in an expert AL-only league and 2) There are daily pick-ups in this league with a $0 FAAB option – this hugely favors maniacal daily players like me.
Below is the team I drafted on Tuesday, February 24th. Here is the complete CBSSports AL-only draft. Notes below.
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The Numbers Game: Power and Discipline
March 5, 2015 | 2023 Fantasy Baseball | 39 Commentsby: Big Magoo
I should probably start off by apologizing to some of you as the title of this post might be somewhat misleading. This is not a Fifty Shades of Grey movie review. For those of you who arrived here with those expectations, I’m sorry. I’m not sure how it could have happened. Nothing in this post references BDSM, dominant/submissive tendencies, or bondage at any time. It’s all very confusing.
What this post does intend to cover is the MLB hitters who displayed above average power and plate discipline during the 2013 and 2014 seasons. The main idea behind this exercise is to identify players who are power assets without being liabilities in the batting average category.
Let’s take a look at the search criteria that were used to identify these players:
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Looking over Shortstop in OBP leagues is not pretty. Even the top-5 gets ugly quick; Troy Tulowitzki (.432), Hanley Ramirez (.369), Ben Zobrist (.354), Danny Santana (.353), and Starlin Castro (.339) round out the top-5. The top guys tend to have good OBP numbers and will be a plus at the position while there are a few guys throughout the rankings that will kill your OBP…
Please, blog, may I have some more?I swear to you, they’re gonna drive me nuts. All of them. Mookie and Rusney and Victorino and Hanley and everyone in that dugout that gets a preseason talk from Schilling about all the good PR you can get from ketchup on a sock. I’m gonna go stand on a street corner with a cardboard sign that reads, “Will work for clarity on the Red Sox outfield situation.” Hey, H&R Block, can I write off clarity on my taxes? The Red Sox said early this week that Mookie Betts and Rusney Castillo will split time in center to see who will win the job. I originally placed Betts at a 10 to 1 long shot to win the job, pun intended and noted. Then Castillo strained his oblique. Oblique with no clarity is just perfect. As I mentioned in our first podcast of the year, the Red Sox are gonna be a mess for fantasy value vs. playing time. There’s so many scenarios that could happen — Hanley can’t play outfield, goes to short and Bogaerts goes to the bench; Rusney and Betts platoon; Betts looks great and Rusney gets benched; Rusney looks great and Betts goes to the minors; Rusney and Betts both look just okay and Nava plays well; Victorino gets hurt and Rusney and Betts both play; Allen Craig looks good and Betts and Rusney are benched. Okay, the last one has no chance, but you get the idea. Rusney’s health should be fine by Opening Day, but the oblique injury obviously puts him behind Mookie now. I’ve lowered Rusney into my top 60 outfielders and changed his projections. I’m sure this will change again by tomorrow. Brucely, I think the only one guaranteed playing time in the outfield is Hanley (assuming he can handle it, and doesn’t Hanley it), unless there’s injuries, which there likely will be. It’s a shituation of Old Testament, swarm of locust proportions. Anyway, here’s what else I saw in spring training for fantasy baseball:
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When Grey and Jay first approached me about doing some preseason posts about Two Start Pitchers “Strategy” I thought “uhhhh, play the best guy”. Problem is that doesn’t really make for intriguing content, now does it? So instead, I’m going to do 1500 words about soccer! Naw, I’m joking…if you wanted to be inundated with my footie ramblings, you’d be reading our soccer site…(shameless plug alert). So instead I’ll focus my post on the very things I look for when ranking my two-start pitchers from week-to-week. An overview of what to look for when scouring the wire for that pick up to tip the scales of your counting stats in your weekly head-to-head match-up. So we’ll break everything into sections; home vs. road splits, opposing lineup righty vs. lefty splits, K/BB ratio, and HR/9. To illustrate this we’ll use an example player to discuss each when appropriate. Sound good? Just say yes, I don’t care what you think! Muhahahaha!
Please, blog, may I have some more?Per the usual, I have to drop a caveat when it comes to Deep League Thoughts about pitchers: there’s no such thing as a deep league pitcher. Unless you’re talking 20 team leagues and then you’re calling some relievers deep league pitchers. I ain’t going there so let’s realize upfront before you feel affronted. Now that we have that settled, when does a young pitcher settle? Two years? Four years? Do they ever? It’s all hard to predict. As we’ve seen through our years as fantasy baseballers, growth isn’t a promise from a young kid, it’s a possibility. How many rookies came and went on your rosters in 2014 alone? I’m not asking you, Grey. You’d add and drop the same player five times in one day so you don’t count, you chronic rosterbator. That said, I’m sure Trevor Bauer hit your roster more than once. He had some good with some bad in 2014. Maybe you got the bad from him and won’t go near him again. Maybe you had more of the good like I did and you’re willing to look into him a bit further. If so, trudge on with me. We’re about to go deep inside the enigma that is Bauer and what he can do for you for the 2015 Fantasy Baseball season…
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2015 Minor League Preview: Texas Rangers
March 4, 2015 | Fantasy Baseball Prospects | 26 Commentsby: Mike
Organizational Talent Rankings via Baseball America
2014 (9) | 2013 (3) | 2012 (2) | 2011 (15) | 2010 (2)
2014 Affiliate Records
MLB: [67-95] AL West
AAA: [70-74] Pacific Coast League – Round Rock
AA: [80-59] Texas League – Frisco
A+: [82-56] Carolina League – Myrtle Beach (2015: High Desert)
A: [80-59] South Atlantic League – Hickory
A(ss): [40-36] Northwest League – Spokane
Graduated Prospects
Rougned Odor, 2B | Nick Martinez, RHP | Michael Choice, OF
The Gist
This system is full of risk/reward prospects with big ceilings. It’s also deep, and I had a hard time narrowing it down to just 10 to be honest. Fringe top ten guys like Keone Kela could help the major league bullpen as soon as 2016, and Kela’s triple-digit heater looks like the stuff of a closer. Then there’s Delino DeShields Jr. who was a Rule 5 selection from the Astros. DeShields hit 11 homers and stole 54 bases in Double-A last season. You can’t throw a stone without hitting a fantasy relevant prospect on this farm. Heading into 2015, Rougned Odor will get another extended look at second base while Jurickson Profar continues to battle shoulder issues. For what it’s worth, I still like Profar in dynasty leagues and at just 22 years old he still has plenty of time to get things back on track.
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