How do you know if you've drafted a great pitcher? If his name is [player]Clayton Kershaw[/player] or [player]Felix Hernandez[/player], you are on the right track. But what about everyone else that is not them? Well, in head-to-head points leagues, I like to look at points per start (PPS). This gives me an idea of approximately how many puntos (that's spanish for points) I am going to get, and is often a factor in helping me decide which pitchers to both draft and start.
Search Results for: latos
| Player Page Matches |
|---|
2015 Yahoo’s Fantasy Baseball Ranklings
February 19, 2015 | 2015 Fantasy Baseball Draft | 419 Commentsby: Grey
In past years, I’ve said the following analogy. There’s years of looking up to your father, whether you agree all the time or not. Then, one day, he takes a poop on your couch. You take him to the hospital; he’s in need of some sort of psychology examination. If the tests come back conclusive that he pooped the couch simply out of laziness, then that’s ESPN. If tests come back that he’s gone crazy, then that's Yahoo. That's inaccurate this year. It still holds true for ESPN, but Yahoo seems like it's taking steps to correct past mistakes. They've lost The Noise from the composite rankings, and he's always said baseball wasn't his thing. (What is his thing...well...) Funston, Behrens, Del Don and Pianowski do a conscientious job with their rankings. No, I don't agree with all of them, I'll get to that. But they do take the time to actually rank, which I'm 99.9% sure can't be said of ESPN. Yahoo could easily phone-in their rankings like ESPN, but they don't. That is, indeed, a point for them. Yahoo still seems to be in love the stolen base and guys that can be labeled as 'hot, unproven bats.' They don't rank nearly deep enough and they have some of the funkiest position eligibility decisions, but these all seem to be coming from places of conscious decisions and not, "Tristan, could you rank for everyone today? I just saw Stephen A. Smith in the elevator and he asked me to Au Bon Pain for lunch. Thanks." That's a voicemail message that Cockcroft gets every day. Anyway, here's where my 2015 fantasy baseball rankings differ from the 2015 Yahoo fantasy baseball rankings:
The Numbers Game: Finding the Next Corey Kluber (Part One)
February 17, 2015 | fantasy baseball strategy | 103 Commentsby: Big Magoo
Greetings all, and welcome to the first installment of The Numbers Game. "Boy, that title sounds about as exciting as it would be to draft Omar Infante in 2015." Hey, quiet in the peanut gallery! Fantasy baseball is, as the title of this series makes blatantly obvious, all about the numbers. The idea behind these posts is to identify players who fit a specific set of search criteria using statistics accumulated over the past three seasons. The various criteria that I'll be using will be established based on player comps and/or the MLB averages in key statistical categories. Some results will include data from 2014 only, while others will include some combination of the previous two seasons as well. The ultimate goal of these exercises is to provide a different perspective that will help to confirm your evaluations of certain players and perhaps reconsider your opinions of others. While I'll be providing my two cents from time to time, it'll be up to you to decide how valid the results truly are.
Hey, 2015 ESPN Fantasy Baseball Rankings, Imma Let You Finish But…
February 16, 2015 | 2015 Fantasy Baseball Draft | 335 Commentsby: Grey
Watch out, because I'm about to eviscerate someone, which Google tells me means to disembowel and I consider softening eviscerate, but decide to stick with it. That's how mad I am! I'm ready to disembowel after deliberations! Hey, ESPN, you best get your colostomy bag ready cause you're gonna need it. (By the by, I Googled colostomy bags for the holidays, and I couldn't find any. I may just invent some and go on Shark Tank and wow Robert Herjavec with my pitch. "Wait, there's more! A Passover colostomy bag because we know it doesn't stay unleavened forever." Don't steal my invention ideas.) Today, I take a knife and seppuku (I'm running out of thesaurus entries for disemboweling) ESPN's 2015 fantasy baseball rankings. To the tune of Jackin' For Beats by Ice Cube. Commence knife to belly:
Top 100 for 2015 Fantasy Baseball
February 4, 2015 | Fantasy Baseball Rankings | 423 Commentsby: Grey
With the 2015 fantasy baseball rankings for every position done, we turn our lazy eye towards the top 100 for 2015 fantasy baseball. These 2015 fantasy baseball rankings are one part fresh and two parts to def. They own a cat, a dog and a lizard in a two bedroom apartment where pets aren’t allowed. Know why? Cause they don’t care! None of this top 100 for 2015 fantasy baseball is meant to surprise. *jumping out of a closet* Boo! Now, that was meant to surprise. This top 100 is just taking my positional rankings and putting guys in The Big Picture. You really should read each ranking post because the blurbs in this top 100 are on the skimpy side because there’s so many of them, and I went over each one of these guys already. Obviously at a hundred players, some guys just didn’t make it. About 300, to be inexact. It’s okay; there will be a top 400 tomorrow. Shortly, Sloth, you’ll have your Baby Ruth. Not to get all biblical on you, but this is the gospel. Print it out and take it to Mt. Sinai and it will say, “Win your 2015 fantasy baseball league, young prematurely balding man.” Projections were done by me and a crack team of 100 monkeys fighting amongst themselves because there were only 99 typewriters. Somebody please buy Ling-Ling his own typewriter! Anyway, here's the top 100 for 2015 fantasy baseball:
Top 40 Starters for 2015 Fantasy Baseball
January 29, 2015 | Fantasy Baseball Rankings | 388 Commentsby: Grey
Yesterday, we went over the top 20 starters for 2015 fantasy baseball and today it's the top 40 starters for 2015 fantasy baseball. This is one of my favorite ranking posts because I usually end up with two starters from these twenty. They are the low end number one starters. To quote Lil Jon at his fantasy baseball draft, "Get low end number ones! To the Carrasco, to the Wheeler! Til Wood drop his base on balls! Til all these pitchers fall!" Is it weird I have a man crush on Lil Jon? He seems like he'd be a constant source of entertainment if you hung out with him on the day-to-day. Also, besides the low end number ones, there's number twos and high end number threes. These are going to be your fantasy staff linchpins. So, all the 2015 fantasy baseball rankings are right in there. As with all other ranking posts, my projections and tiers are included. Anyway, here's the top 40 starters for 2015 fantasy baseball:
Dodgers Say, “Adios Kemp, Padre.”
December 12, 2014 | Fantasy Baseball Daily Notes | 150 Commentsby: Grey
In Los Angeles, Matt Kemp played for one of the most popular sports franchises in the world in the 2nd largest city in the country. In San Diego, the Padre fans pride themselves not on wins and losses, but how well the Chablis goes with the brie while they watch the game from the picnic area. In Los Angeles, Matt Kemp went to all the hottest nightclubs. In San Diego, he'll be frequenting places that look like the bar where Jodie Foster was in The Accused. In Los Angeles, Matt Kemp hung out with the hottest celebrities. In San Diego, "Hey, is that Natalie from The Facts of Life?" In Los Angeles, Matt Kemp dated Rihanna. In San Diego, Kemp's dating Natalie. It's only a mere two and half hour drive, but the culture shock is going to hit Kemp as soon as he arrives because he's going to have to surrender his Lamborghini, there's a town ordinance that everyone must drive a Jeep with no doors that they put plastic bags over when it rains once a year. On the backside of the site, I'm currently churning through rankings that will be coming in January. I nearly ranked Kemp higher than I want to admit to now. I was believing the 150 games played, 25 HR, 8 SB, .287 season he had last year. Whether I believe it or not, going to San Diego is going to hurt his value. From hitting in the middle of an All-Star lineup to hitting in the middle of Yellowstone. Kemp said on his first day in Petco, "It took some time to get my bearings. In other parks, you can set yourself in the batter's box by using the outfield fences as a guide. Here, you have to assume the outfield fences are out there somewhere." Kemp has money coming to him either way, so if he became a 20 HR, 5 SB, .270 guy for a few years, it wouldn't surprise me. For 2015, I'll give him the projections of 72/22/81/.276/8. Oh, and, yes, I'm cautiously optimistic this means Joc Pederson will now be the starting center fielder in LA. For more, I already went over my Joc Pederson fantasy. Anyway, here's some more offseason moves for 2015 fantasy baseball:
Pitcher Profile: Recapping All Starting Pitching & JB’s 2014 Top 100 Starting Pitchers
November 6, 2014 | Fantasy Baseball Rankings, Pitcher Profiles | 50 Commentsby: JB Gilpin
Razzball Nation! Hopefully the musings and GIFfings (man that sounds dirty) of this friendly, big-ol baseball nerd helped bring you low ERAs and WHIPs in 2014. And shameless plug, if you need some JB love-n-rubbin' and/or looking for Fantasy Basketball talk, come over and join us at Hoops!
As I always like to do with rankings, it's fun to go back and see what went right. What went wrong. Especially when you get to say "Member in preseason when Grey wanted everyone to get [player]Justin Masterson[/player] Top 25? Yeah, no fun to make fun of wrong ranks/calls to everyone, is it Grey?! Hell, everyone knows I'm only writing this since I've been talking about [player]Corey Kluber[/player] since May 2013! (True story, I watched these two innings and had him in my line-up in a ton of leagues while either 0 or 1% owned, game went into a 2 or 3 hour rain delay, but those two innings got me hooked on the firebeard!)
So what I've put together are my 2014 Preseason Starting Pitcher Ranks (be sure to look at my 5 sleeper picks in the intro - saucy! Better than last year, HUH GREY?!) in the order I had them mid-March, followed by Grey's rank, ESPN's pre-season rank (since RCL Baseball was played there and using this list), and the Razzball Player Rater Final SP Value to establish the final rank. Here's how Big Biscuit did:
These types of posts can devolve quickly into bragging about good teams (or, in my case, good team) or whining about the bad luck on poor teams. I will do my best to stave off that devolution and hope to write another post in the offseason that digs in deeper to find some insights that may help for 2015 draft strategy.
The Royals are in the World Series, and it's going to be mentioned at some point that the organization moved a big prospect in [player]Wil Myers[/player] to acquire two of the pieces that brought them so much success this year. Last season, it looked like the Rays were going to be the ones that ran away with the trade. Myers won Rookie of the Year. He hit .293/.354/.478 with 13 homers and drove in 53 runs in just over half a season. At 23, he came into 2014 with high expectations and a high preseason rank on most fantasy sites. Then they actually played the 2014 season. Myers ended up playing only 87 games thanks to a wrist fracture, and when he was on the field he looked lost at the plate. So what can we expect from the young Rays' outfielder going forward in keeper leagues?
Top 40 Starters for 2014 Fantasy Baseball
October 16, 2014 | Fantasy Baseball Rankings | 240 Commentsby: Grey
So, how’s everyone holding up without fantasy baseball every day? I don’t know what to do with myself! This weekend I wandered into a Starbucks and told the coffeerista about Chris Tillman for 2015. Then I laughed hysterically for a good twenty minutes until someone asked me to leave. We’ve gone over the final 2014 fantasy baseball rankings for hitters and the top 20 starters. There’s no more of these godforsaken recap posts left before we’re into 2015 fantasy baseball. You’re welcome. Well, there are Rudy’s recaps of every fantasy sites projections that are coming eventually and Sky's "Is pitching that deep?" posts. I, my over-the-internet friend, will be talking about 2015 rookies next. Anyway, here’s the top 40 starters for 2014 fantasy baseball and how they compare to where I originally ranked them:
Yesterday, Wilmer Flores went 3-for-4, 2 runs, 6 RBIs with his 5th and 6th homers. With David Wright hurt, Flores has been playing every day. The Mets are thankfully still able to get Ruben Tejada into their lineup. The Mets said, "We've wanted to drop Tejada, send down Tejada or trade Tejada for a nickel on a dollar, but since we can't figure out the paperwork, we're playing him every day for the last three years." No Met in particular said that; all of them did. Why do I care about Flores playing? In Triple-A in 2013, he hit 15 homers and .321 in 107 games. That was when he was 22 years old. Maybe he's not God's answer to Bac-Os and able to make every game better, but I bet he could've been as good as David Wright this year. The reason why baseball people and the media doesn't like Wilmer is he fields like he has a golden glove. Not that he won a golden glove. Like he's literally trying to catch grounders with a metal statue. If he gets a job out of spring training in fifteen after twenty, this won't be the last time you hear me try to convince people Wilmer Flores isn't bad. For now, he's only viable in very deep leagues as we watch Flores's stock bloom. Flores's stock bloom! Flores's stock bloom! Springtime for Wilmer, and the Mets... (BTW, when did this site become so pro-Mets? I feel dirty. Though, that could be because I haven't showered since March.) Anyway, here's what else I saw yesterday in fantasy baseball: