The past two years I have had a late draft position — 11th in 2007; 12th in 2008.

A late draft position means a high waiver position. This is an important asset. Sometime between April and June, some other owner will release a significant talent. This will likely be a high draft pick who has slumped out of the gate. If you’ve kept your high waiver slot, this player may be yours.

The important thing is not to jump too early. You’re looking for a player drafted in the first 10 rounds. Unless you’re playing with idiots, such a player will only be released after he plays so poorly for so long that your competitor drops him out of sheer frustration. Lots of “rest” days for the struggling star will help.

Sometimes it doesn’t happen. In 2007 I held off until June 14th to use my #2 waiver position to sign the unexceptional Jered Weaver, an 11th round pick.

This season looks more promising. I used my #1 waiver position to sign Paul Konerko, a 5th round pick, on April 29. When dropped he had an OPS of .685. Sadly, his two home-run game occurred while he was on waivers. Now, one game in for the Buckets he is 0 for 3 with a walk. Time will tell.

Comments (2)  |  Filed under: Fantasy Baseball, Strategy

The Wall Street Journal has an interested article on a few unorthodox tactics being tried in baseball (via Steven Dubner). It starts with the following anecdote and proceeds from there:

Braves manager Bobby Cox was desperate, and he was plotting an ingenious plan. He was nearly out of right-handed pitchers, and players can’t re-enter a game after they’ve been removed. If Mr. Resop, a righty, could play the outfield, that would allow Mr. Cox to replace him on the mound temporarily — and use a lefty specialist to pitch to Adam LaRoche — without losing him entirely. So after Mr. Resop pitched to three batters in the top of the 10th inning, Mr. Cox had him go to left field. When Mr. Resop returned to the pitcher’s mound one batter later, it marked the first time a pitcher had pitched, played the field and pitched again in the same game since Jeff Nelson of the Seattle Mariners in 1993, according to the Elias Sports Bureau.

Interesting reading.

Update: I’m not actually calling Bobby Cox stupid. I’m referencing this Weird Al Yankovic album. Genius starts with the willingness to look dumb. That’s what the article is about.

Comments (1)  |  Filed under: Baseball, Other teams

The uninjured, unslumping Willy Taveras is reduced to pinch-running. Three non-starts produce 1 stolen base,  1 run scored and 1 for 2 at the plate. Manager Clint Hurdle said, “Scott Podsednik happens not to be playing like crap just yet, and I want to enjoy the moment.” No, actually he said:

“I still think for us, at least as we move forward, Willy is going to get every opportunity to play. I’ve just got to find reps and at-bats for Ryan Spilborghs, who does what he does very well. I think Podsednik is going to bring a very nice dimension and dynamic to our club that’s going to play very well. They both happen to be able to play center field. I wouldn’t say it’s going to be a three-headed center fielder by any means. That’ll be the farthest thing from the truth.”

Aargh.

Comments (0)  |  Filed under: Baseball, Other teams

Andruw Jones may be my first reasonably-high draft pick (round 13) to get dropped. I have Shane Victorino coming off the DL next week and need to make a spot. Between Jones’ slump and the pile-on, like this Eric Karabell column, there’s zero trade interest. Karabell writes:

I wouldn’t trade for Jones, because again, I don’t think things are going to get much better. He’s hitting .159 with a token home run he mashed at Atlanta. That’s it. He batted second Wednesday, in an effort to get him better pitches, I suppose, and he raised his average three points by getting one single in five at-bats. You could call it a bad start and I wouldn’t disagree, but at what point is a bad start just, well, the real deal? His swing looks long, slow and robotic. His home park isn’t exactly friendly to the long ball. The Dodgers have three other outfielders worthy of everyday play. Jones might not be.

In poor performance, if not profile, Jones reminds me of a similiar player I drafted in the teens and dropped early a year ago: J.D. Drew. Both were coming off mediocre years but seemingly had great upside. They were changing teams, which suggested thoughts of a new start. In J.D. Drew’s case, he was coming to a great lineup and hitters park. In Jones’ case, he was coming to a team with some developing talent and leaving a terrible hitters park, one that was signficantly worse than Dodger Stadium in 2007. In fact, Karabell is factually wrong when he writes that “[h]is home park isn’t exactly friendly to the long ball.” Dodger Stadium has been better than the MLB average in home vs. away home-run production every year since 2003 and significantly better than Turner Field this millenium.

But when Karabell writes “long, slow and robotic” it just makes you want to drop the guy yesterday.

Update: On Sunday Jones goes 0-4 with three Ks and four men left on base. He’s released.

Comments (0)  |  Filed under: Fantasy Baseball, Player Analysis

Every year, Baseball Crank produces his established win shares. This evaluation of player capability as a factor of team win/loss record is not fantasy-focused. Great players on bad teams don’t evaluate well.

But it is still a good resource for strategic thinking. First, good teams make good players better. Hitters are more likely to hit with runners on base — and score once they make it on base. Pitchers are more likely to get wins if supported by good hitters and a good bullpen. So thinking of players in the context of the team provides a way to assess off-season moves and rookie call-ups. Second, Baseball Crank is a smart guy who has plenty to say about individual players.

Consider some of the comments from this year’s ESWL (just scroll down):

• Jeff Francis may be harder to replace than most teams’ aces, but he still will never contribute as much positively to the Rockies as a guy in another park who can throw 20 more innings and exert more influence on the game.
• Given that [Yadier] Molina is only 25, it may turn out that he will hit some after all; his brother Bengie didn’t hit until he was 28.
• [Derek] Jeter … seems on the path of slow, gradual decline, with age starting to eat away around the corners of several of his assets, breaking down his weak defense and stripping some of his speed and power. I expect Jeter to continue to be productive into his late 30s, like similar hitters like Paul Molitor and Pete Rose; just a little less like the Jeter of old.
• I can’t add much to the Joba [Chamberlain] saga except to note the obvious that his future path will probably be determined less by his own performance than by Mussina’s and by Mariano’s health.
• Dontrelle Willis has escaped the Marlins’ woeful defense (well, except for Cabrera) that contributed to a terrible .682 DER last year, but defense alone didn’t drive up Willis’ rates of homers, walks and line drives allowed (his HR rate nearly tripled since 2005), nor the decline in his K rate. This season will tell us a lot about whether Willis is healthy or not — if he is, he seems a good turnaround candidate, but the markers pointing to latent arm injuries have been flashing red for a while.

This is a resource most useful for draft preparation, but it is also a good filter for making mid-season adjustments.

Comments (0)  |  Filed under: Draft, Fantasy Baseball, Player Analysis, Resources

Among the Mynci, the number of transactions ranges from zero to 57.

At zero is the last place Canned Corn. At 57 is the eighth place Maniacs. Does this mean anything at all? Probably not. The first place Excelsiors have six transactions total.

What predicates a lot of movement, secondary to owner impatience, is a specific weakness at a particular position. The most likely problem, after a shallow starting pitching staff (a future topic), is a hole in the infield.

This point brings me to Brandon Funston’s Red Hot Corner skinny this week. Funston mentions two infielders to grab: Edwin Encarnacion and Ryan Theriot.

This won’t be much help for most fantasy owners. Both of these players are at over 50% ownership in Yahoo and ESPN leagues. In the Mynci both players were draft picks. In most leagues, likely free agent infielders (those below 50% ESPN ownership) range from the wildly inconsistent to the flat-out mediocre:

C. Ramon Hernandex (28.3%), Mike Napoli (27.4%), Jason Kendall (21.6%) 
1B. Richie Sexson (34.6%), Adam LaRoche (24.1%), Aubrey Huff (22.4%)
2B. Placido Polanco (43.8%), Mark Ellis (33.4%), Erick Aybar (29.7%)
3B. Troy Glaus (47.2%), Ty Wigginton (23.0%), Jorge Cantu (17.0%)
SS. J.J. Hardy (46.8%), Christian Guzman (42.8%), Erick Aybar (29.7%), Clint Barmes (23.4%)

The short story is that if you need help in the infield, especially the right side of the infield, you’re in trouble. If you don’t need help, you might want to consider an insurance policy, assuming players like Encarnacion and Theriot are still available. Do you really need that fifth outfielder?

Comments (0)  |  Filed under: Fantasy Baseball, Player Analysis

Hunter Pence has reached the point where it is painful to keep him on a fantasy roster.

Not because he isn’t hitting. Slumps never bother me. Good hitters don’t slump forever. Any game can be the game they start hitting again.

Last season Dustin Pedroia hit .182 in April. Then, on May 3, 2007, everything turned around. Pedroia came into the game on a 1 for 14 slide. His average had hit a season low .172. Five games later he was hitting .267:

May 3: 1 for 3, 1 R, RBI
May 5: 2 for 2, 1 RBI
May 6: 3 for 4, 1 R
May 8: 2 for 4, 1 R, 1 HR, 3RBI
May 9: 2 for 4, 2 R

So I’m not worried that Pence is hitting .161 and has gone 0 for 10 in his last three games. What worries me is the Astros giving up on him. He was benched on Sunday and again today. There’s nothing I hate more than a hole in the lineup. It is bad enough juggling catchers without having to worry about Hunter Pence.

Comments (0)  |  Filed under: Fantasy Baseball, Player Analysis

On the Mynci bulletin board, my brother proposes doing something about closers:

Someday I hope the Mynci has the epiphany and declares a team can only have a maximum of 2 closers on its active roster. In a 12 team league all teams would have 2 closers on their roster. The contest would then come down to who had the better closers (and luck) rather than who prioritized closers in the draft and got lucky with injuries ( BJ Ryan anyone?) This change would also place a greater emphasis on incorporating middle relievers on one’s roster since the remaining relief pitcher positions would have to be filled by non-closers.

My own preference would be to combine holds and saves into a single aggregate category. That would greatly expand the pool of pitchers that could profitably help a team, without requiring superhuman efforts from the league commissioner to keep teams from drafting (or signing) more than two closers.

The way it is now, when a closer goes down, an owner is out of luck:

It’s a given that every closer and likely closer will be drafted. This means one must decide in March whether or not he even wishes to compete for saves and then gamble that the closer(s) he drafts stay healthy….

Putting a quota on the number of closers per roster would ensure there was always a pool of undrafted closers, which would ensure that every team would be able to compete for this category. Some teams would still have better closers than others but it would no longer be a binary issue. The luck of getting save chances would be the same. What would be remedied is the catastrophic bad luck of having a highly drafted closer go down with an injury — which seems to happen all too often.

The result is a huge spread between the haves and have-nots. Three weeks into the season, the Mynci saves category ranges from 0 to 17:

0, 1, 1, 5, 6, 9, 9, 10, 10, 12, 15, 17

The bottom three teams have one active closer between them. The top three teams in saves have (respectively) five, three, and four closers. The luck of the draw is that the Bus (17) and Buckets (12) both used later picks to draft marginal closers that have (so far) succeeded, while the Juicers (15) drafted three studs that have (so far) avoided injury. Here’s how I ended up with a healthy, effective bullpen:

61. Billy Wagner, NYM (Round 6)
181. Brad Lidge, Phi (Round 16)
204. George Sherrill, Bal (Round 17)
228. C.J. Wilson, Tex (Round 19)

Update: Sometimes you can learn things just by checking. ESPN does have a Saves + Holds category. Make note for next year.

Comments (0)  |  Filed under: Draft, Fantasy Baseball, Strategy

Dodgers win 11-2 but Kuo can’t get the win. Six Ks in 4 innings. 75 pitches and he gets the hook.

Comments (0)  |  Filed under: Baseball, Other teams

Why no buzz for Hong-Chih Kuo this spring?

The answer lies partly in Kuo’s history, partly in the way baseball promotes prospects.

Signed as a teenager, Kuo blew out his elbow in his first professional start. He has had two Tommy John surgeries. His major league ERA over four seasons is 5.03. His major league record is 2 wins, 10 losses, and 1 blown save. 

Once a prospect fails to prosper, not once, but two or three times, there is no buzz left.

And yet. If you think of Kuo as a prospect, not a washed-up 26-year-old, the braille-like data points of Kuo’s intermittent minor-league career point to awsome potential: 

2.93 ERA
1.24 WHIP
12.34 K/9

The numbers also tell the other story: only 169.1 innings pitched over seven seasons.

Comments (0)  |  Filed under: Fantasy Baseball, Player Analysis

AJ Mass has a terribly wrongheaded column up at the moment. Like many misguided efforts, it starts with bad math:

In one of my recent chats, Sean from Los Angeles posed the following question to me: “Is it unwise to bench a player, thus leaving a position empty, in a head-to-head league?”

Bizarrely, Mass answers no, then, even more bizarrely, explains that being an innumerate is unethical:

Even though the mathematical answer probably is yes, the fact remains that such a move shouldn’t be allowed. And to his credit, Sean realized that such a move was unethical. Let’s face the facts, folks. If the rules of your league describe a starting lineup as having X number of players, including a catcher, then starting “X minus 1″ players, with no catchers, is illegal.

Assuming a default head-to-head league, the answer to Sean’s question is yes, it is unwise, and the answer to Mass is no, it is not unethical to play by fantasy rules.

On the math question, Mass buys into the gambler’s fallacy, assuming that Martin’s 0 for 4 yesterday means an 0 for 4 today. The problem is that no one knows when Martin will break out of his slump. When he does, he will put up numbers. Every time Sean sits his catcher, he loses an opportunity to add to his score in the cumulative fantasy categories. This is especially misguided for a catcher who actually steals bases.

On the ethical point, Mass argues by analogy. A real baseball manager can’t choose not to start a catcher, therefore it is an unethical tactic in fantasy. Of course, a real baseball manager has a backup catcher, an unlikely luxury for an owner with a 21-player fantasy roster. Mass also forgets that most commissioner use a service to run their leagues. A service like ESPN Fantasy Baseball. We expect our owners to play by preconfigured settings, not by the qualms of a fantasy Ford Frick. There are no asterisks in fantasy baseball.

Update: Mass responds to his critics in this week’s column.

Comments (0)  |  Filed under: Fantasy Baseball, Strategy

One big difference between the Rotisserie and Head-to-Head formats is the chase for Ks. In Rotisserie, with a season IP limit, it is very easy to be competitive in strikeouts. First, you never ever draft a Mark Buerhle or Chien-Ming Wang. Second, you stock your bullpen with guys like Carlos Marmol and Joba Chamberlain. It doesn’t matter if they don’t get saves; they’ll get you Ks. Third, you don’t let yourself fall behind the limit. Start playing matchups and you’ll have to hand the ball to a Jake Westbrook to catch up.

In a league with a weekly game start limit, the Ks competition is much more difficult. A starter with good K/IP ratio does nothing for you if he doesn’t last past three innings, like Rich Hill last week. A fastballer who has a great outing means nothing if you’ve reached your weekly start limit, as I had when Tim Lincecum pitched last Sunday.

Furthermore, you have no control over which pitchers will give you two starts in a particular week. Week One I got two starts out of Jake Peavy, but due to the oddities of opening week and Lincecum’s four-inning non-start, only six starts total. Week Two I got two starts and 14 innings out of Cole Hamels, but had the aforementioned Rich Hill fiasco and no other start past 6 innings. Both weeks I lost the Ks point.

Admittedly I lost the category to the two other Mynci managers who most aggressively work for strikeouts. But still, something more needs to be done.

So as a replacement for Shane Victorino on the DL (and after a one-game appearance by Luke Scott), I signed the inimitable Hong-Chih Kuo. He’s owned by 0% of ESPN fantasy owners, and the trend is down. There are more owners holding onto Daniel Cabrera! What’s wrong with these people?

Update: Today the trend is up. Kuo is at 15.4% ownership.

Comments (0)  |  Filed under: Fantasy Baseball, Player Analysis, Strategy

Here’s the first Mynci trade of the 2008 season:

MSOX traded Carlos Pena, TB 1B to Foul Poles
RFP traded Ben Sheets, Mil SP to Maroon Sox

This is a very interesting deal. In the Mynci draft Pena went high, in the 6th round, while Sheets went in the 11th (in my own draft list I had Pena in the 7th and Sheets in the 10th). Sheets should have gone higher, except for the fact that his right arm is held together with scotch tape and staples, like one of those rubber-band-driven balsa wood airplanes that kids throw into walls:

2005: 22 starts
2006: 17 starts
2007: 24 starts

Remember that the Mynci is a head-to-head league. Except for winning just enough to make the playoffs, nothing matters until September.

In 2005 Sheets didn’t even pitch in September. In 2007 he pitched two starts in July, one start in August, then “came back” to post a 7.88 ERA over four September starts. 2006 was the exception. Sheets was on and off the DL for most of the season, then showed up strong the last four weeks.

This season Sheets is looking healthy now, which does not project well for later.

Pena is also high risk. He’s coming off a career year and a repeat of similar numbers is very questionable. Considering how lonely those 2007 numbers look to me now, I wonder why I rated him as high as I did. I’m glad someone else drafted him. I’m surprised Sheets was dealt for him. But he might be the better choice in the end.

Comments (0)  |  Filed under: Fantasy Baseball, Player Analysis

As referenced in yesterday’s post, ESPN analyst Shawn Peters writes “don’t make deals this week.”

Then he outlines why to make deals anyway:

[A]re we looking at a bounce back candidate?

[Do] we have former top prospects who were forgotten about[?]

[Is] a guy’s playing time … all but assured?

He’s right on all counts. Don’t make deals unless you make a good deal.

What I will add is some strategic gloss. Every trade is a bet on the future. Early season trades simply place the bet on a longer future. In other words, a early season trade is like your draft. When you make the trade, consider where you projected the players involved in March. Would you want to have drafted the team you are trading for?

Sure, if your new acquisitions go south, you’ll be in agony all season, but that’s luck, not strategy.

Comments (0)  |  Filed under: Fantasy Baseball, Strategy

Now is the time for all fantasy experts to say, don’t panic. Don’t make deals. Don’t overreact. Be patient.

Here’s another piece of advice. Save your draft notes.

Later on this season when I start looking for free agents to replace draft-day duds I first scan the category leaders in the past month (who’s hot?). Then I look at the stats from the past week (are they still hot?). Then I double-check season and career numbers (how flukey is this hotness?).

But what I really need to know is whether or not the numbers project forward. And that’s where I’ve learned to go back to draft notes. The draft is all about projections. That’s the time your mind is focused on the whole season rather than the daily numbers. Maybe, back in March, you actually had a clue.

The easiest player to spot is the one you already drafted and released. In 2007 I drafted Troy Tulowitzki in the 22nd of 23 rounds. Great prospect. Potential breakout year. Tulowitzki started slow and I released him two weeks into the season. In mid-June I actually added him for one game, dropped him again, then added him for good on June 21.

In a deep league with no transaction limit you can do things like this — up until the point that some other owner grabs the guy you should have kept on your team. Just remember: you made those late round picks for a reason. Right?

Comments (1)  |  Filed under: Fantasy Baseball, Strategy

A good fantasy resource you never knew about is Yahoo’s Sabermetrics:

For batters (2007).

For pitchers (2007).

The tables aren’t sortable (A.J. Pierzynski is not the best of anything) but they are easy enough to copy off the screen and paste into Excel.

If you don’t have Excel, get it. Or an equivalent. It’s what Bill James uses.

Comments (0)  |  Filed under: Fantasy Baseball, Resources

Last week ESPN columnist AJ Mass posted a column on pitcher streaming in which he identifies a fantasy-strategy loophole, discounts an obvious remedy, and totally avoids the proximate problem.

Mass explains the loophole with a scenario. You set your pitching lineup on Monday morning, check back a week later, and discover that you’ve been overwhelmed in Wins and Ks:

How could a nine-man pitching staff put up those kinds of numbers in one week? That’s when you notice that your opponent doesn’t have a nine-man pitching staff. He has what amounts to a 63-man pitching staff: each day, he drops all of his pitchers and replaces them with ones who are going to start later that day. And then, once the games are over, rather than have no pitchers starting the next day, he drops them all again and picks up a fresh batch of scheduled starters. This is streaming.

There are several obvious remedies: A league transaction limit, weekly instead of daily roster changes, a starts or innings-pitched limit. I dislike transaction limits; they make the dog-days of August even more grim for non-contenders. And I’m in agreement with Mass that a league shouldn’t have to change roster and acquisition rules just to close the loophole.

But Mass is wrong on starts limits. He writes:

Some leagues like to have a maximum number of innings pitched or starts per week. That’s all well and good, but again this may penalize an otherwise innocent owner who just happens to have all of his pitchers making two starts that week.

A owner who just happens to have all his pitchers making two starts a particular week may be innocent, but that doesn’t make the outcome fair. Imagine you’re in your league playoffs and you lose decisively in Wins and Ks when your opponent runs out 11 starts to your 7. Sound fair to you?

A starts limit (mostly) kills pitcher streaming, encourages owners to actively manage their teams, and keeps matters of luck to the numbers in the field, not the calendar.

But there’s still a problem. And its author is ESPN.

This is the “Sunday Starts” bug. In ESPN, in any fantasy baseball format with a starts or innings-pitched limit, all pitcher statistics count the day the limit is reached. This means that in a weekly head-to-head league with a starts limit of seven (my league, for example), an owner can call up free agent starters for that last day and jump from six starts to ten or more.

During the regular season, most owners won’t want to drop more than a few players to gamble for an extra K or W point. But it does happen. And during a survive-and-advance single elimination playoff, owners are going to go for broke, even if it messes up their roster for the next round.

Once you select a starts limit, ESPN needs to offer the choice between the current fuzzy rule and a hard stop. The latter would cut off over-the-limit starts based on game time; ties could be decided by chance. Or each pitching slot could be ranked (SP1, SP2, SP3, SP4, P5, P6, RP7, RP8, etc.) with the cut-off determined by ascending order.

Comments (0)  |  Filed under: Fantasy Baseball, Strategy

Bill James is featured on Stephen J. Dubner and Steven D. Levitt’s Freakonomics blog today answering readers’ questions. The beauty of Bill James thinking, as Dubner describes it, is “his reality-based view of the world”.

Here’s a typical question and answer in which James innocuously subverts the thesis of Moneyball:

Q: Generally, who should have a larger role in evaluating college and minor league players: scouts or stat guys?

A: Ninety-five percent scouts, five percent stats. The thing is that — with the exception of a very few players like Ryan Braun — college players are so far away from the major leagues that even the best of them will have to improve tremendously in order to survive as major league players — thus, the knowledge of who will improve is vastly more important than the knowledge of who is good. Stats can tell you who is good, but they’re almost 100 percent useless when it comes to who will improve.

In addition to that, college baseball is substantially different from pro baseball, because of the non-wooden bats and because of the scheduling of games. So … you have to pretty much let the scouts do that.

Comments (1)  |  Filed under: Baseball, Boston Red Sox, New York Yankees