The Fantasy Baseball GeneralsThe Fantasy Baseball GeneralsA blog devoted to the underlying theory and strategic principles of Fantasy Baseball Articles
Chances of Making the Postseason from Baseball Prospectus
2007-09-24 14:42:00 Some interesting notes from the Baseball Prospect us Postseason Odds Report. With one week to go in the baseball season there isn't much left to do for the fantasy owner other than to sit back and let the chips fall where they may. I will be posting on some post-mortems for my teams and thinking about next year in the offseason. But for now there isn't much to do. So, I was looking at a very More About: Chances , Chan
Thoughts on Alex Gordon
2007-09-21 15:06:00 Some thoughts on his rookie year, and whether owners should be concerned. Is there anyone in the fantasy world who wasn't high on Alex Gordon coming into this year? Last year in my high stakes league I auctioned him for $5, and was able to trade him for Justin Morneau in the midseason as his speculative value was so high. That trade sure worked out for me. I was reviewing pre-season More About: Thoughts , Alex Gordon , Ordo
A Keeper Question--Ryan Braun vs. Miguel Cabrera
2007-09-19 15:53:00 My response to a question posed on a recent podcast--who would you rather have in 2008, Braun or Cabrera ? In a recent podcast, someone posed a theoretical question. Assuming you had to pick either Braun or Miguel Cabrera for 2008, who do you choose? This is about the easiest question to answer, surprisingly, and about the answer I believe there cannot be the slightest doubt among reasonable More About: Question , Ryan Braun , Ryan
Making Oneself Unassailable--The Power of a Defense-First Strategy
2007-09-18 15:29:00 Analysis of my final trade in the high stakes league. My penultimate trade for Rafael Furcal worked out like a charm. For my opponents that is. As the league stood now, I was at approximately 150 points in the AL and about 130 in the NL. I still had a 30 point lead at the time, but strongly felt my position was weak. After the failure of the Furcal trade, and David Ortiz' power outage I More About: Power , Strategy , Defense
Latest Hardball Times Columns
2007-09-18 15:10:00 Here are links for my latest Hardball Times Columns . Unorthodox Strategies Head to Head Strategies
What Happened to Derek Jeter?
2007-09-17 15:03:00 Jeter is about to finish up arguably his worst season. What happened? A superficial look at Derek Jeter 's overall stats makes it appear that this season is on the low side of his career norms, but not terrible. After all, how bad can a guy be if he bats .314/.385/.431? By more advanced metrics though this may be Jeter's worst season. According to Baseball Prospectus' BRAR and BRAA metrics,
The 1971 Wild Card-Jeremy has More Love for the Pirates
2007-09-17 01:03:00 Jeremy Looks at the 1871 season 1971 American League - #1 Baltimore vs. #4 Kansas City; #2 Oakland vs. #3 Detroit Orioles – For the third straight year, the Orioles won over 100 games and were the class of the American League. This was possibly the best overall team of all three and they eventually lost to the Pirates in the World Series. They had three players hit over 20 HR, led by Frank More About: Love , Card , Wild , Jeremy
The Wheels Come Off For Mike Mussina. But Will Kennedy Be Any Better?
2007-08-30 15:04:00 Mussina has been besieged by a perfect storm of misfortune and performance. As a Yankees fan it is simply killing me to watch Mussina get lit up. 19 ER in 9.2 IP while trying to snare the Wild Card will not endear him to Yankee fans. How has he fallen so far? After a surprisingly good 2006 (at least in my mind) he has regressed in his fortunes as well as his performance. To date he is 8-10 More About: Mike , Kennedy , Wheels , Heels , Mike Mussina
The Braves' Closer Situation
2007-08-29 15:17:00 The Braves ' closer situation after the surprise jettison of Wickman. Who knew Bob Wickman was such a bad clubhouse influence? I was genuinely surprised by this move, as I didn't really hear any chatter. After the fact I heard that he was complaining about not pitching is save situations, so I can't fault the Braves. On performance Wickman is no great closer, more in the Todd Jones and Joe More About: Closer , Situation , Aves
Ramon Hernandez--An Ill-Fated Pickup
2007-08-28 16:31:00 About a month ago I picked up Ramon Hern andez in a head-to-head league. That sure worked out great. In my head-to-head points league a few weeks ago I had John Buck at the catcher position. Ramon Hernandez was coming back and I took a chance and added Hernandez and dropped Buck. Oops. It was a reasonable decision at the time but it sure hasn't worked out. In the last month Hernandez has gone 9 More About: Pickup , Nand
Responding to the Trade Pipeline and the Second Half Player Fallacy
2007-08-28 08:39:00 With all of the nefarious dealings going on, clearly I couldn't sit on my hands. So here is the first of my two moves in response. Clearly after the slew of trades going on I had a few options. The first is to just cry about the whole thing and do nothing. Since I am not Bud Selig crying about stadium financing, this wasn't an option. I had to deal. There was no way for me to even respond to More About: Player , Trade , Half , Layer , Pipe
Trekking to Tampa to See The Rays
2007-08-27 15:46:00 Jeremy runs down his trip to Tampa to see the Rays in action. I think I may have found something that the Devil Rays lead the league in - scantily clad women. Now, I would imagine that there are very few fantasy leagues out there with SCW as one of the categories - although I would love to see Bill James take that one on. One would only imagine the formula - Cup Size+Leg length-Clothing Amount/ More About: Trekking
Did Thomas Bayes prove that Bonds' Performance was Actually Enhanced by Ste
2007-08-24 08:45:00 Some thoughts on Barry Bonds ' and the alleged lack of proof of PED use. When I was playing serious poker, my required reading list included the works of David Sklansky and Mason Malmuth. Sklansky first opened my eyes to the use of my math background and MIT education to gambling. Sklansky's writing inspired this article. But it isn't about poker. Sklansky came up with an idea for the use of More About: Performance , Thomas , Thom , Ally
The Trade Pipeline Between Collusive Traders--More Evidence of Cheating?
2007-08-22 15:50:00 It comes as no surprise that the collusive traders discussed in my prior article had a trade pipeline. This collusive trade was just the beginning. One item that became apparent in the aftermath of the collusive trade addressed previously was the continuation of a two year trade pipeline between two good friends. The problems this year were a continuation of last year. Last year they weren't as More About: Evidence , Cheating , Trade , Traders , Heating
Some Guest Commentary on the Marcum/Wilkerson Trade
2007-08-22 14:53:00 The owner who swindled me in the Marcum/Wilkerson trade asked me to post his thoughts. So here they are, with a few editorial notes. Being the erstwhile owner of the 'Bad' Wilkerson party, I thought it be would interesting to provide some color on the aforementioned trade. At the time of the proposal, I was in dire need of pitching as I only had Bedard, Burnett, Schilling and Loewen as my More About: Commentary , Trade , Guest , Some
A Baseball Smackdown--Ensberg vs. Kouzmanoff
2007-08-22 13:04:00 A baseball smackdown in real life, as the Padres pit Ensberg against Kouzmanoff. I thought this was an interesting trade, and was a big supporter. So were the guys at Ducksnorts, an excellent Padres blog. I don't have time to read tons of team specific blogs, so I have to pick and choose. I think it is the best of the Padres blogs, so if you are a Padres fan check it out. Here we have two More About: Baseball , Base , Smack , Smackdown , Berg
Jeremy Guthrie and Shaun Marcum--Which do You Trade?
2007-08-21 15:30:00 I had both players at one point, and traded one for Brad Wilkerson. Here is a look at these two surprising pitchers. Talk about trading lemons and cherries. Earlier this year due to two free agent acquisitions I found myself with both Jeremy Guthrie and Shaun Marcum. Certainly this was a happy problem. I felt that my AL offense still needed beefing up, but didn't have any real desire for a big More About: Trade , Jeremy Guthrie
Is it Cheating? Some Very Shady Dealings in the High Stakes League.
2007-08-20 12:15:00 Continuing my series on some of the trading principles and issues from my high stakes league, the next trade by two teams literally set off an avalanche that threatens the league's future. There will be a few posts on the various shady deals So, after my last deal, the comings and going on my roster looked like this: Gone: Stephen Drew, Tim Lincecum, Brian McCann, BJ Upton, Zack Greinke, More About: Cheating , League , High , High Stakes , Heating
John Maine and Jeremy Bonderman
2007-08-16 15:46:00 Both have had some recent ups and downs, to put it mildly. Here is what is going on. John Maine In the last month Maine has an ERA over 6 and a 1.32 WHIP. What is going on? First let's look at his overall season totals: 13-7 3.59 ERA 1.20 WHIP 26% hit rate 75% strand rate 7.8 K/9IP 3.4 BB/9IP This is a very good season, however one that is certainly the result of good fortune. Maine, in 153 IP More About: Jeremy
How Good Would Phil Rizzuto Have Been in Fantasy Baseball?
2007-08-16 15:04:00 Phil was an MVP but how good would he have been for fantasy players? On the MLB.com Fantasy 411 podcast, Cory Schwartz and Joe Sheehan were discussing Rizzuto and how good he would have been. They thought that he would have been similar to David Eckstein. There is an easy way to at least get an estimate of his fantasy value; all that needs to be done is to apply a head to head league point More About: Baseball , Fantasy Baseball , Good , Phil
Using the Doomsday Argument to Predict The Future Lifespan of the Major Lea
2007-08-15 20:06:00 There is a famous conjecture called the Doomsday Argument, which will be discussed below. It can be used to predict the future remaining existence of the Major Leagues. Here's how. Before reading, come up with an off the cuff estimate for how long you think Major League Baseball will last. Think of it in terms of if you were betting, and you wanted to know how many years it had left, so that More About: Future , The Future , The D , Span
The Strange Case of Scott Kazmir--Solved by Tampa's Terrible Defense??
2007-08-15 15:58:00 There are some interesting anomalies in the case of Scott Kazmir. How can these be interpreted? A friend and reader of the blog asked me about his keeper list, and one name he brought up was Scott Kazmir. I took a look at Kazmir's overall record and found something quite surprising. Regular readers know that for the garden variety starting pitcher their hit rates and strand rates will generally More About: Defense , Case , Strange , Range
Following up on Matt Cain
2007-08-14 20:19:00 Previously Matt wrote about Matt Cain , and what has gone wrong. Since then have things gotten better or worse?? In a prior post, Matt wrote about Matt Cain's slide this year. Yesterday, his name came up on MLB.com's Fantasy 411 podcast, and then last night he had the misfortune to pitch against Paul Maholm, who I thankfully had active in a head-to-head league. At the time Matt wrote his post
Link to My Latest Hardball Times Column
2007-08-14 16:32:00 Here is the link. More About: Link , Column , Times
Managing Risk in Trading--Trade Three In The High Stakes League
2007-08-13 07:16:00 Continuing the series on the various trades from my high stakes league. After the first two trades, the next critical juncture for me was the loss of Salomon Torres. At the time the saves race was very close in the NL portion of the league. It still is. In a prior post I touched on the trade I made in response to the loss of Torres, so I won't repeat it here, but feel free to click on the link. More About: Trading , Trade , League , Risk , High
Jeremy's Tackles Baseball's Biggest Developments. Not Barry or Alex, but Jo
2007-08-10 13:32:00 Jeremy takes on baseball's current events, and the Yankees call-up of Joba Chamberlain. So I had a whole different plan for today’s column, but recent historic baseball events have prompted me to scrap that idea and address the importance of this occurrence. I speak of course of Joba the Hutt joining the Yankee bullpen. Of course not, although I will address that later on. And yes, he will More About: Alex , Barry , Develop , Base
An Interesting Fantasy Keeper Question
2007-08-09 13:18:00 Would you rather have a $1 keeper who hits 30 HR or gets 30 SB, with batting averages being equal?? This is an interesting theoretical question, and is right up our alley. Lenny Melnick and Paul Greco, on their podcast, raised an interesting fantasy thought experiment. Lenny asked whether, assuming batting average to be equal, would you rather have a $1 keeper who hits 30 HR or one who gets 30 More About: Interesting , Question , Fantasy , Keeper , Eres
Links to our latest Hardball Times Posts
2007-08-07 15:35:00 Here are links to my last two posts. Being Prepared The perils of bad advice More About: Links , Times , Posts
A Profile of Adam Jones
2007-08-07 15:01:00 What can be expected of top prospect Adam Jones ?? Well, it's about damn time. In one of my leagues, (previously addressed here)which allows a team to keep players essentially forever, a few years ago we drafted Adam Jones . We have been patiently waiting for him to get called up. Fantasy players all know that feeling; reading 800 different transaction sites and emails for even the slightest More About: Profile , Profil
Ichiro: Inching towards Immortality and possibly 4,000 hits??
More articles from this author:2007-08-06 15:20:00 What will Ichiro 's final career MLB numbers look like? Could Ichiro have gotten 4,000 hits had he played his entire career in the Majors?? The FantasyBaseballGenerals tinker with The Favorite Toy to attempt to answer these questions. To say that Ichiro is a unique, one of a kind ballplayer is merely stating the obvious. A model of consistency at a very high level, Ichiro has posted over 200 hits More About: Immortality , Hits , Ossi , Mortal 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 |
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