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Trade number two in the Fait Accompli Strategy--Using Propaganda to Target
2007-08-03 13:37:00
Analysis of the second of my trades this year in the high stakes league. I have talked about this deal before, but had some more to say about it. After making the McCann trade, I then needed to do something about my AL power. Given that I was a contender, and had a weak AL power offense, I had to get a power bat. As an aside, when going into the auction this year it was clear that there was
More About: Strategy , Propaganda , Trade , Target , Number Two

Is Kevin Towers Reading This Blog?? Looking at his excellent use of a Piec
2007-08-02 15:07:00
Kevin Towers made a series of small moves over the last few days, each of which made small but noticeable gains to the Padres. Sounds like he read up on this blog.... The Padres should be commended for their dealings over the last few days. In a close NL West race, they made a series of small moves, each of which noticeably improved the team, and each of which essentially cost nothing. This is a
More About: Reading , Blog , Kevin , Lent , Excellent

Fantasy All Stars--Outfielders
2007-07-03 02:29:00
The Generals' continuing look at All-Stars now turns to the OF. American League1. Ichiro Suzuki--He is one of my favorite players, and I have an autographed Ichiro ball even though I am a Yankee fan. One of my great memories is of sitting in the first row down the RF line at The Stadium, when a ball was hit into the corner. Ichiro picked it up and threw to second nailing the runner. Even from the stands you could hear the "whizzz" of the ball as it left his hand. For that alone he deserves the number one spot. Oh, that and his .348 BA with 19 SB. Ichiro is walking 8% of the time, making him even more dangerous; with his speed and 90% contact rate he is a cinch for a high BA. Amazingly, he hits only 26% of his balls in the air, a tremendous way for him to take advantage of his speed. As Bill James once said about Kenny Lofton, if you don't like him then you don't like baseball.2. Carl Crawford--Another one of my high stakes league studs; I think I spent more on him this year than ...
More About: Fantasy , All-Stars , Field

Fantasy All Stars--NL Starting Pitchers
2007-07-02 18:56:00
Our continuing look at our All-Stars .Continuing to hold my nose:It is a traditional truism that you would rather have an NL starter than an AL one. But not this year. Aside from the number one guy in the NL none of the others would crack the Al top five. As C.C. Sabathia said: "DH Schmee H." Feel free to look it up.1. Jake Peavy--The truest harbinger of things to come for him this year was the fact that I paid $30 for him in my high stakes auction, the first pitcher in ten years that I paid $30 for in an auction. He has been worth even more so far, but not a whole lot more, which is why you don't pay big money for pitchers. That will be another column. As an aside, the league has a 1400 IP minimum with an 11 man staff, so good innings can be tough to come by since it is 11 teams with 32 man rosters.Peavy so far probably is the best pitcher in baseball. 9-2 2.09 ERA 1.05 WHIP. 30% hit rate says he is for real, and his K/BB ratio of 3.8 with almost 10 K/9IP echoes this. I probably ta...
More About: Fantasy , All-Stars , Pitchers , Pitcher

The Generals' Fantasy All-Star Starting Pitchers AL
2007-07-02 17:33:00
A look at the top 8 AL pitchers for our All-Star team.It is a rule that all fantasy news sites and blogs must list their all-stars at this time of year. Though I really don't care for the process, as it is so subjective, it is a rule and our blogosphere credentials will be revoked if we don't do our own all-star list. Matt and I will be splitting duties for this, and I will be looking at Starting pitchers and Outfielders. So holding our collective noses, here are our picks for the Al starting pitchers, in order:1. C.C. Sabathia--clearly the class of the AL field in my view, though it helps his cause that he is the anchor of my high-stakes league staff. Forget the gaudy 12-2 record; his 8.1 K rate and 1.2 BB rate show he is at the top of the class, and with a 32% hit rate he actually should be a bit better. I sure hope for him to be even better in the second half. Cy Young, here he comes.2. Dan Haren--I know it is almost heresy to not have Johan number 2, but Haren deserves the spo...
More About: All Star , Fantasy , Pitchers , Pitcher

Fantasy All Stars - Infield (Continued)
2007-07-02 01:49:00
The Generals continue with their fantasy All Star awards for the first half. First BaseNL - The Fresh Prince of Miller Field AB R HR RBI OPS299 57 27 66 .982Right now, he's the second best (to ARod) fantasy hitter in baseball. No NL 1B comes close. He hits homers in bunches, and takes out unsuspecting second basemen with belly flops in the infield. This year, Pujols has some catching up to do (not that he's incapable). Fielder's hit % is only 28, so there's even some upside for a higher average in the second half. Will he hit 60? Pujols, Ryan Howard and Fielder makes for an exciting big 3 at 1B in the NL.AL - Justin Morneau MINAB R HR RBI OPS286 50 20 61 .903The AL crop is really thin this year, with Morneau's 20 home runs beating K Youklis BOS - (the greek god of obp - .416) and his 502 slg. Morneau's .279 avg is suppressed by a .27 hit rate, and his "Baseball HQ" xba is 313. HQ projects another 20 HR and 60 RBI's for the 2nd half, whic...
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Fantasy All Stars - Infield
2007-06-30 16:47:00
The Generals examine the Fantasy All Stars for the first half, and their prospects for the second half, beginning with Catchers. With the All Star break rapidly approaching, it's time to look at the best fantasy performers at each position. For purposes of this analysis, we will only look at this year's performance. No automatic bids for just showing up. To make this list, you need to be the best performer thus far.Catchers:NL: Russel Martin (LAD)This one is easy. Martin is having an amazing fantasy season:AB R HR RBI OPS271 45 9 51 .845 . . . AND 13 SBs!!A .300 hitting 20-20 catcher? Fantasy Gold. The Baseball HQ indicators of base performance indicate that his performance is sustainable. His xba is .303 vs. a "real" avg of .298. His power and speed ratings are at above average levels for an mlb hitter, let alone a catcher. There's a strong argument that powered by his lofty sb totals for a catcher, he is the best fantasy catcher in baseball right now. ...
More About: All-Stars , Field

Some Fallacious Thinking About "Second Half" Players
2007-06-29 19:24:00
Looking at how to analyze alleged "second-half" players". In a recent podcast, a fantasy baseball "expert" was discussing the expected rebound of certain alleged "second half" players. The podcaster listed certain pitchers that he thought would have second half rebounds. Why am I mentioning this as a fallacy?? Well, maybe it is true in some instances, but here, specifically are the players mentioned by this podcaster:Matt Cain, Erik Bedard, Kelvim Escobar, Jon Garland, Joe Nathan, Francisco Cordero, Francisco Rodriguez.These are all very talented pitchers; with the possible exception of Garland all have tremendous skills that needn't be addressed here; we all know them. The premise of the podcast was that these were all "second half" players, because they all performed appreciably better in the second half last year. Do you see the problem here? Just to look at one or two here (since the point is easily made) here is a look at Joe Nathan. As I am writing this he has a 2.59 ERA, 1.4...
More About: Players , Thinking , Econ , Fall , Half

Changing Our Layout
2007-06-28 21:05:00
We will be changing the layout of the blog slightly to make it more user friendly. We are going to post the title of the article with a short summary, and to read the whole article just click on the "read more" link. We tend to have long posts and this will allow readers to browse a lot more easily. If any readres have thoughts I will consider them of course!! I hope this makes our blog a little more user friendly. this will be on a going forward basis, but i will try to amend the more recent posts. I hope you all like it .
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Is Eric Byrnes a "Lemon?"
2007-06-28 21:04:00
Taking a Look at whether Eric Byrnes is a "lemon" His owners can only say WOW at this point; what a first half of a season! In an earlier post I discussed the trading of "lemons" for "cherries." One type of lemon is a guy who is far outperforming his typical standards. So, is Eric Byrnes a "lemon?" As you may know from my prior posts, Byrnes' owner has been shopping him all around the league, and has just posted another trade for him (the prior one discussed in the post about Failing To Have a Plan was successfully countered.)His stats to date are tremendous; 12 HR 42 RBI 14 SB .313/.360/.510. He is in the Top Ten on playertrack.com (see Rob Reed's BaseballGeeks site). Clearly this is an outstanding performance. But it is not one that is likely to continue, at least in the "slash" stats.According to The Hardball Times, his BABIP is a lusty .343, the norm is .300. Career wise, his hit rates and contact rates are as follows:2003: 29% Hit Rate 81% Contact Rate2004: 32%-83%2005: 25%-8...
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What Happened to Matt Cain?
2007-06-27 23:44:00
I drafted Matt Cain in two shallow mixed leagues in the hopes that he would continue and build on last year's performance:IP W L ERA WHIP190 13 12 4.15 1.28Cain also struck out nearly a batter an inning, and the era was inflated by a 69% strand rate, which means that his relievers allowed 31% of Cain's baserunners to score (75% to 80% is the norm). Cain also had a strong second half in 2006, striking out over a batter an inning, with a 3.36 era and a 1.21 whip. Cain's hit rate was 29% (.290 batting average for balls in play) for both halves of the year, which means that the gains were attributable to skill, not luck. The main concern going into 2007 was the high walk rate: 4.1 per 9 inn.So far this year:IP W L ERA WHIP96.3 2 8 3.46 1.31Sure, the W-L record is disappointing, but the ERA is only .1 higher than his strong second half of 2006. This year, the relatively low ERA is more due to luck than skill: Cain has benefitted from a 26% hit rate and a 74% strand rate. Disturbingly,...
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Trade Posting Rules and Fair Trading
2007-06-27 15:06:00
Just to go back to my prior post on the owners in my high stakes league that have no apparent plan, and the story of Cortes, I wanted to make a point about "strategic moves" and commitment. In any strategic conflict or "game" to use game theory terminology, the eventual outcome of a game can often be discerned by the parameters. This happens because of the assumption that both parties are looking to maximize their return. So, in a game where the order in which participants act is determined beforehand, the party who acts first can usually divine what his opponent will do by looking forward and reasoning back.However, what might seem like a predetermined outcome can be changed, by the use of a "strategic move" by the party to act second. Essentially, he can signal to the other party that he will do X or Y even if it does not necessarily maximize his return. The only way this works, however, is if he is committed to it. Commitment is the key.The nuclear arms race is a perfect example,...
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DiceK and the Rookie of the Year
2007-06-25 19:51:00
There is a perception among the cognoscenti that Japanese players have a more difficult time winning the Rook ie of the Year (ROY) award, based upon the fact that many voters do not consider them to be true "rookies" because of their service time in Japan's Professional Baseball League. Will this "perception" affect (Andrew Dice K) Matsuzaka's ROY prospects for 2007. (Has Berman used this obvious permutation yet?) First, let's examine whether in recent history a deserving Japanese ROY candidate was denied:In 2000 and 2001, the AL ROY awards went to Kaz Sasaki (then age 32) and Ichiro (then age 28). Sasaki, with 37 saves, won by default, beating out a weak field headed by Terence Long, Mark Quinn (the Eskimo?) and Bengie Molina, who had a sneaky-good rookie campaign with .739 ops in 473 at bats. Ichiro romped in the ROY voting (27-1 1st place votes over CC Sabathia) and even won the MVP (over Giambi's 1.137 ops)!Most people think immediately of 2003, when Hideki Matsui (then age 29...
More About: Rookie of the Year , Rookie

The Up and Down Year of Ian Kinsler
2007-06-25 17:54:00
(Ed Note: The day after this post BaseballHQ did their own look at Kinsler. I guess they are reading this blog!) It has been a roller coaster for Kinsler this year. After a very hot April, he has cooled down considerably. What can we expect going forward?? Here are his monthly splits:April: 9 HR 22 RBI 4 SB .298/.379/.667May: 1 HR 5 RBI 3 SB .174/.248/.278June: 3 HR 5 RBI 4 SB .242/.338/.452Forget Jekyll and Hyde, he has been Bonds and Neifi Perez. The surprise is that he was a model of consistency last year after May:June: .253/.322/.443July .293/.358/.434Aug: .273/.328/.373September: .267/.327/.444The difference?? Merely statistical variation, or "bad luck." In 2006 his contact rates ranged from 81% to 87% in the months above. In 2007, they have been 85%, 79% and 90% respectively. This variation in contact rate has led to a large swing in hit rate, which is currently at a piddling 23%, after being a lofty 35% in April.As it turns out, so far he has been very unlucky in this depa...
More About: Year , The U , Ian Kinsler

Looking at Save Percentages
2007-06-23 22:44:00
On a podcast recently one fantasy website maven was discussing the save percentage stat. The recommendation was to only view as secure in their jobs those closers that had 90% save percentages; namely they save 90% of the opportunities. Otherwise, they are to be considered vulnerable. Some specific targets were Jose Valverde, Todd Jones and a few others.Clearly this is lazy advice. 90% is way too high a standard and in any event save percentage should have very little to do with your evaluation of whether a closer is vulnerable or not. For reference here are the career save percentages for a few closers:Trevor Hoffman: 89%Mariano Rivera 88%Lee Smith 82%Jeff Reardon 77%John Franco 81%Troy Percival 86%Tom Henke 85%There are some obvious factors that are more important than save percentage that are not news to anyone, but just to point them out:Skills (K rate, BB rate, Hit rate etc)--this is probably 75% of the battle right here.Manager Usage/Opportunity--This is another 15-20% of the ...
More About: Save , Look , Ages

Has Justin Verlander Turned the Corner?
2007-06-21 13:13:00
Fresh off his no-hitter there has been a lot of buzz around Verlander. I thought it might be interesting to take a look and see if he has become the stud that fantasy owners have hoped for.Right now it appears he is still a step short of stud status. His numbers as of today look to all the world like he is a top 5 or ten pitcher:8-2 2.90 ERA 1.16 WHIP 7.4 K/9IP.However he has been helped by a low hit rate of 27%. BaseballHQ has his xERA (expected ERA)at 3.83. The Hardball Times has his xFIP (his expected ERA independent of fielding) at an even more pessimistic 4.40. I think the record here indicates that he has been lucky so far.His skills are very solid but not at elite status, confirming the somewhat pessimistic view of the HQ and Hardball Times metrics: 7.4 K/9IP, 3.2 BB/9IP, 2.3 K/BB ratio. These numbers reveal that he still has a bit of an issue with his control. However he has shown very nice gains over his short career, driven by an increased strikeout rate:2005: 5.7 K/ 9IP 4...
More About: Corner , Justin Verlander , Turn , Justin , Lander

I Made a Trade!
2007-06-21 03:55:00
It's been too long since my last post. When I did, I was "taking stock" of my team, with the hopes of remaking my team for a run at the money spots. Well, life got in the way; some good (weekend in Atlantic City) and some bad (death in the family).Fortuitously, in my NL only league, an owner decided to dump, and posted a "fire sale" type email last Friday. I had responded that while I don't have the kind of keepers to net me a Ryan Howard, I did have three "B" list keepers in John Maine (at $6), Chris Duncan (at $3) and Alex Gonzalez at ($5).The email was ignored for a week, but the owner responded today by listing his remaining non-keeper players. Turns out, he had just completed a blockbuster-type deal in which he obtained an $8 Hanley Ramirez.My situation: I'm 6th in a tightly bunched race from 3rd to 8th in my 11 team NL only league. I'm solid in pitching, first in saves and near the top in whip/era. While I could use some wins, I really need hitting. I'm in the bottom 3rd ...
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Where Did All These Great Catchers Come From??
2007-06-20 21:16:00
Those of you who haven't been playing this game for a long time may not be aware of how bad this position used to be. If you were in an NL or AL only league there were years when there were only one or two good catchers in the entire league. I should point out, however, that though there are lots of good catchers out there, in my high stakes league I have Rod Barajas and Miguel Montero in the NL and Dioner Navarro in the AL (in addition to one of the guys below). Ugh. I cannot recall when there have been this many good fantasy catchers out there, and we are NOT even including Joe Mauer, Brian McCann, Ivan Rodriguez or John Buck, who do not merit this discussion at least so far this year.Here are the top contenders for this season:Russ Martin-.292/.361/.404 8HR 43RBI 11SB. Many analysts think he is the most valuable fantasy catcher, and it isn't hard to see why. 11 SB from the catcher position? He is John Wathan with actual hitting skills. It is hard to imagine that he will continu...
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Cristian Guzman is Actually Valuable??!! Not for Long...
2007-06-20 13:43:00
How could this happen?? Fantasy Owners are well aware of his history of execrable performance, so I won't repeat it here. Lets see what he has been up to this year:2007: 1 HR 10 RBI 2 SB .325/.379/.461 in 169 PA. Perhaps the most amazing stat is his walk rate of 8%. It is typically around 5%. Moreover, BaseballHQ has his xBA at a solid .285, and he has an 87% contact rate. Is this genuine improvement?At first glance it appears so. However, lets look a bit closer. He has a 37% hit rate and a .368 BABIP. These are unsustainable numbers. He has 50 hits in 169 PA, with 154 AB. At an 87% contact rate, that means he has put the ball in play 134 times, with 50 hits. But if we normalize his hit rate/BABIP to 30% or .300, he would have only 40 hits. So we have a difference of a mere ten hits. While significant in terms of his stats right now, ten hits should hardly negate years of terrible performance.Moreover, he is hitting ground balls 61% of the time, far more than he has historically. I...
More About: Long , Ally , Cris , Crist

The Perils of Failing to Have a Plan
2007-06-19 13:24:00
There is a new team in one of my leagues, and based on their recent trade postings it appears that they have little in the way of a cohesive plan.When he was charged with the duty of taking Mexico from the Aztecs, Hernan Cortes came up with a unique plan. He was faced with an army that was outnumbered, that was grousing about their plight, that was undercutting him to each other. Essentially, his army still had the hope that they would go home to Spain. Cortes had a problem; how could he galvanize this army into fighting a winning battle against a superior force? He started burning their ships, so that they had no choice but to fight. With no ships the army would have to abandon all hope of returning home and would now be forced to fight to win. This plan succeeded.There are two lessons for the Fantasy General from the story of Cortes, both of which were not followed by the owners mentioned above. The first is to actually have a plan. This is the simpler part; you need to decide wha...
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Rafael Furcal's Paradox of Reliability
2007-06-18 16:45:00
In my high stakes league a team posted a trade involving Rafael Furcal, so I took a closer look at Furcal. He was one of my main targets going into my auction; my auction plan involved me getting one of the group of Furcal, Reyes and Rollins as "Plan A" with various default positions depending on what happened. It just goes to show that you are better off being lucky than good. I got Rollins and not Furcal, but it could easily have gone the other way.To date, Furcal has hit 1 HR. However aside from power it appears that the rest of his season is in line with what could reasonably be expected from his hitting. His SB are down also, with only 7 to date, which appears at this point to be a function of his opportunities; a 20-25 SB season is still within the realm of possibility with some offensive improvement. But can this be expected?Currently, his line is as follows: 1 HR 25 RBI 7 SB .285/.352/.376, 89% contact rate, 9% BB rate, 32% hit rate, 0.93 walk/strikeout ratio. Shandle...
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Jon Daniels the "Boy Genius"
2007-06-18 13:47:00
Pete Pascarelli struck a blow for the old guard in his ESPN Baseball Today podcast on Wednesday. He was discussing the Rangers' foibles, and with obvious derision stated that their mistake was hiring a "boy genius" like Dani els, and that "like other boy geniuses he has had a problem making good decisions." I, like other statistically inclined Generals, immediately thought that Pascarelli was pulling a Murray Chass. But was he right??Daniels clearly got off to a bit of a rough start, making both the Soriano trade and the Adam Eaton trade. We can have our doubts about the Soriano trade, and perhaps in an alternate universe Soriano boarded an Oceanic Air flight and ended up on an island with Yunjin Kim and Evangeline Lilly (though that is my dream, not his), while Wilkerson ended up as a perennial All- Star. But it appears to me that, for now, Daniels has righted his ship.The Rangers' starting pitching stinks but none of those guys were brought in by Daniels. All pre-existed his tenu...
More About: Genius

Some of My Favorite Baseball Quotes
2007-06-14 19:38:00
With Generals Finkelstein and Tomasulo on my back about writing too much and too seriously, I thought I would lighten it up a bit by naming my favorite baseball quotes.1. Lenn Sakata, after a game winning hit, was asked by a reporter "what were you looking for in that situation." Answered Sakata, "Something white, coming through."2. "I would love to have a guy that always gets the key hit, a pitcher that always makes his best pitch and a manager that can always make the right decision. The problem is getting him to put down his beer, come out of the stands and do those things."--Danny Murtaugh3. "Being up all night with a girl never hurt no professional baseball player. It's staying up all night looking for that girl that does him in"--Casey Stengel, (not, apparently, speaking to A-Rod about his strip club visit).4. You know it's summertime at Candlestick when the fog rolls in, the wind kicks up, and you see the center fielder slicing open a caribou to survive the ninth inning." -...
More About: Baseball , Quotes , Favorite , Ball , Quote

Looking at Torii Hunter
2007-06-14 15:18:00
Needless to say Hunt er has been a huge surprise, one of the top five fantasy players this year. As of this moment he is at 14 HR 53 RBI 10 SB .312/.351/.571. I must have missed it when he turned into Justin Morneau. I was listening to the Baseball Geeks podcast (which is one of the very few worth listening to) and they were mentioning the Player Track rankings, with which I am not familiar. So I took a look and sure enough Hunter was ranked at number 2 (!) Can he maintain this pace or anything close to it?He has a 34% hit rate. This should, in theory, revert back to his career norm, and he has almost always been in the 29% or 30% range. However, unlike is the case for pitchers (who in most instances will revert to form) a great hitter can maintain a hit rate above 30%; they are simply talented enough to do it. Hunter though seems unlikely to maintain his .312 BA. 34% is out of the normal range for him and well outside of the normal "noise" one would expect from a statistical perspec...
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A Note on "Strategy" versus "Tactics"
2007-06-13 20:59:00
One thing I notice in my daily reading is that there are many many sites and blogs devoted to tactics, but very little devoted to strategy. There is a distinction between the two that I think many people miss, and i is why we hope that this blog will be valuable to its' readers.The term "Tactics " pertains to the everyday moves that you make. It could be the trade of a player, moving guys up or down, taking advantage of roster moves and news etc. Most of what you read on fantasy baseball pertains to tactics. Anything that helps you in the management of your team in the short term is basically an issue of tactics. These are obviously of vital importance, and we do address tactics here on occasion, though not to the degree of most fantasy sites of blogs. This is because there is no shortage of this information.Strategy , on the other hand, pertains to your long term view of your team, and the overall plan that your tactics are meant to put into action. Here, there is a decided dearth o...
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Follow The Leader Strategies and A Recent High Stakes Trade
2007-06-13 15:21:00
In the America's Cup in 1983, Dennis Conner committed a fatal blunder, based on his failure to use a "follow the leader" strategy, leading to the first loss by America in that event. Essentially, the basic strategy in sailboat racing when you are the leader is to follow whatever the trailing boat does. In this way the trailing boat can never gain on you; if he has the wind you will also, if he doesn't well neither will you, but he still cannot gain. This is a dominant strategy in game theory parlance. In that event, Conner had a 3-1 lead and in what should have been the final race, he kept his boat to the right of the course. The opposing captain, hoping to get lucky by gambling on a wind shift, sailed to the left. The rest is history.I always thought this was a fascinating story and a good lesson to any strategist. When you have a dominant strategy or a simple strategy that will work, then you are making a blunder in failing to use it. If you have a dominant strategy you...
More About: Strategies , Trade , Recent , High , High Stakes

Looking at the Diamondbacks' Young Players
2007-06-13 01:59:00
Going into my high stakes league auction I was enamored, as were many others, at the potential of the Arizona young players. I traded a $13 Ervin Santana for a $7 Stephen Drew, I kept a $7 Carlos Quentin, traded a $4 Reed Johnson for Jose Valverde, auctioned Miguel Montero for $5, Edgar Gonzalez for $2 and Juan Cruz for $1. After my auction I "invested" in a Diamond backs hat, and have watched a good portion of their games on Extra Innings. Have they rewarded my faith?? In a word, no. Here is how they all look so far:1. Stephen Drew--I talked about him in a prior post, namely that he was overrated, most likely, based on his actual performance. I took a chance on him, and figured that I would be able to dump him if he didn't pan out. But going into the auction I must admit that I was swayed off of my opinion by all the stuff I read (so much for the "independence" prong of expertise). To date, he still hasn't improved much, if at all, since my trade. He is at .240/.302/.346. At least...
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Evaluating some OFs in a Mixed League
2007-06-11 17:06:00
In my 12 team, non-keeper mixed league I needed to pick up an outfielder. Below are the main guys that were under consideration. Of course there were more but these were the only guys with serious consideration. For background here is the offensive point structure:1B - Singles1 point2B - Doubles2 points3B - Triples3 pointsBB - Walks (Batters)1 pointE - Errors-1 pointHP - Hit by Pitch1 pointHR - Home Runs4 pointsR - Runs1 pointRBI - Runs Batted In1 pointSB - Stolen Bases2 pointsThe guys under consideration:Chris YoungRyan ChurchMark TeahenRandy WinnHere were my thoughts on each guy:Chris Young--Clearly he will not be hitting for a high batting average this year. He is batting .253, and his xBA is only .255. That OBP hurts in traditional roto, but in a head to head points league, his combo of power and skill is valuable. With the above point structure a power hitter with low OBP is likely to be more valuable than a singles hitter. Young has above average power and only a 27% hit rate ...
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Taking Stock - 2b/ss/3b
2007-06-10 21:00:00
In the past week, my NL only team caught fire, nosing into 4th place, only 4 points out of first. All of those gains were given back by Oliver Perez, Francisco Cordero and batters going 6 for 41 on Saturday. I'm not worried about Perez/Cordero, but I am worried about my hitting. If I'm going to compete this year, now's my time to make a move, so I intend to complete "taking stock" this week, and to try to get a deal done within two weeks.I'm not thrilled with my 1B situation, which I analyzed in a post a few days ago. Moving right along, the rest of my infield situation is ok at best:Second BaseJs. Valentin, Mets, 5 s2I auctioned Valentin as a source of cheap power, and understood that he could be a drag on average; with 25 hr potential, getting him for 5 at the auction seemed like a steal. He started off well, then got hurt, and has now returned to the lineup. I missed a chance to get Damien Easley in the FAAB draft the Wednesday after Valentin's injury. I bid 8; Easley went f...
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Offense and Defense as a Fantasy General
2007-06-08 20:34:00
"Those who excel at defense bury themselves away below the lowest depths of the Earth. Those who excel at offense move from above the greatest heights of Heaven. Thus they are able to preserve themselves and attain victory."This is one of my favorite Sun-Tzu quotes and has surprisingly profound applications. But since we are Fantasy General s, we must look at how this applies to fantasy baseball.The import of the quote is clear; the road to success lies in knowing yourself and then taking advantage of your strengths in the best possible way. One who excels at defense will bury themselves below the earth; from what better position can such a person defend themselves?? You avoid defeat and disaster by taking advantage of your peculiar skills. One who excels at offense moves from the heights of Heaven; how better to take advantage of your offensive skills. The army that moves like this will be like a ton against an ounce.How to take advantage? Well, as a Fantasy General you must of cour...
More About: Defense