I decided to pick up Manny Corpas for the few save chances he might get this week. The question was which of my end-of-bench relievers to drop — Jose Veras or Jose Arredondo?

I see Veras and Arredondo as about equal, both in abilty and in their slim-to-none chance of picking up any actual saves (thus the justification for dropping one of them for the less talented Corpas). Veras pitches behind the ageless Mariano Rivera while Arredondo waits for his moment behind 50-save-man Francisco Rodriguez.

So it’s really a toss-up. What sold me was one thing. Veras and Arredondo will get rocked eventually. If it’s going to happen to Veras, I expect the Red Sox to do it. This week.

Update: Wow.

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

Joe Castiglione was talking to Dustin Pedroia about his three-run blast in Toronto off a rising 96 MPH fastball from A.J. Burnett and reported this reponse:

My philosophy is when it’s high, let ‘em fly. When it’s low, let ‘em fly. It’s all part of the laser show.

Heard on tonight’s Red Sox broadcast.

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Another flyer on my team is minor league pitcher Max Scherzer, who has been dominate for AAA Tucson. He pitched for Arizona earlier in the season, so he was available as a free agent, but I can’t expect him to make any major league starts until September.

Despite the Mynci’s deep benches, we do have a limit of seven starting pitchers, so holding Scherzer has impacted my flexibility. I only managed six starts this week, and made the rare (for me) tactical decision to aim for ERA and WHIP rather than the more predictables Ks. Thanks to Eddie Guardado this strategy didn’t pan out, but so it goes.

I will end the Mynci regular season in either first or second place and I want Scherzer on hand for the playoffs.

Comments (1)  |  Filed under: Fantasy Baseball, Player Analysis

This is today’s Scouts Inc. note for John Maine:

Despite growing concerns with Billy Wagner’s elbow, Maine is not being considered for the closer’s role, manager Jerry Manuel told Newsday.

Thanks Jerry. Anything else Maine isn’t being considered for?

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

It’s really hard to pull the trigger on big lineup changes after July. By this time of year you’ve already gone to the free agent market enough times to have examined every pretender to fantasy significance. Furthermore, the players on your roster each have more than half season of stats to back up their selection. All have either proved themselves by now or ran out of chances. Paul Konerko, who I grabbed with my number 1 waiver position on April 29, is gone as of August 2nd.

And yet, some players performing perfectly well through August will tank the rest of the year. And some players who tanked early — perhaps even Paul Konerko — will recover their stuff in September. The question is which ones.

This week I took a flyer on Fred Lewis, letting go Adam Lind who had replaced Kelly Johnson. In this process I gave up a good backup second baseman, then a great hitting prospect who seems primed to produce, and settled on a base stealer. In mind was my Wins by Category analysis of the first half. In the upcoming playoffs, currently with the top seed, I need five points a round. No more than that. Steals are worth a flyer.

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I turned on the game briefly around 8:30 when the score was 12-2. Just before going to bed, I decided to check the final. The game was still in the seventh. I listened long enough to hear the Sox tie it at 15.

All sorts of records were tied or broken, including this 90-year-old oddity:

Rangers starter Scott Feldman became the first major league pitcher to allow 12 runs and not take the loss since Gene Packard of the St. Louis Cardinals got the win in a 16-12 victory over the Philadelphia Phillies on Aug. 3, 1918.

I feel for Charlie Zink. The boy wonder of Boston’s “Project Knuckleball” has been pitching great for Pawtucket – a 2.89 ERA and 13 wins in 25 starts. Though he lost his stuff in the fifth inning, above, the six (of eight) runs he gave up were greatly assisted by the ineptitude of Javier Lopez and David Aardsma.

This is what the New Yorker wrote about Zink back in 2004 when his major-league-ready knuckleball was still a gleam in Theo Epstein’s eye:

Zink was twelve when he first saw [Tim] Wakefield—then a rookie with the Pittsburgh Pirates—pitching in the National League playoffs, in 1992. Now, although he is capable of throwing standard-issue jock heat, Zink was trying to mimic the Wakefield delivery as well as he could, right down to the apparent lack of exertion and the junior-varsity speed. From a side view, there was nothing at all remarkable about Zink’s pitches, except that occasionally the catcher didn’t catch them… Zink, who went undrafted as a fastball pitcher, is, at the Red Sox’ urging, reinventing himself as a rare specialist: a knuckleballer. With Wakefield, one of only two knuckleball pitchers currently on a major-league roster, and now Zink, the Red Sox are cornering the market on low-grade weaponry. Project Knuckleball is only just beginning its second year, but, according to Baseball Prospectus, a leading baseball-analysis Web site, Zink is already the Red Sox’ top-rated prospect.

Comments (0)  |  Filed under: Baseball, Boston Red Sox

Interesting column in The New York Times today by Doug Glanville, recalling his trade from the Texas Rangers to the Chicago Cubs in 2003. Glanville mentions the emotional element of the event, but also the practical logistics:

I had my moving plan: I would pack as much as I could possibly carry on the flight to Chicago, then clear out my apartment and jam everything I could into my car. Then, on the Cubs next trip to Houston, I would catch a plane to Dallas, meet up with an auto shipping company and have my car shipped to Chicago. Amazingly, it all went off without a glitch.

I assume he was single at the time.

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

I commented over at Baseball Crank about the Manny Ramirez for Jason Bay (&etc.) trade:

I’m relieved. Manny had the air of a man about to develop a limp and take September off. I’ve seen that season and once was enough.

This trade is an interesting illustration of how the rich clubs get richer. Not only did the Red Sox have a few prospects to deal — evidence of a fully developed farm system — but they could afford to eat a huge chunk of Manny’s contract. Everyone knows that the Yankees, Mets, Red Sox and Dodgers have the bucks to sign big name free agents. They also have the bucks to make them go away.

The sad thing for the Pirates is not they lost Jason Bay a year ahead of schedule, but that they had to go begging other teams for prospects.

Comments (0)  |  Filed under: Baseball, Boston Red Sox

For the last few weeks I’ve been crunching numbers from the first half of the Mynci season. My goal has been to find out which categories are most predictable in determining head-to-head points.

In our 12-team league I used the data from the first 11 matchups, a single round-robin. At the end of the regular season I will use the data from matchups 12 – 22 to double the data set.

From this data I calculated how many points each team generated in each category, with ties worth 1/2 point. I then  calculated the win ratio for each team in each category using the formula (wins + 1/2 ties) / matchups. The formed one matrix.

In another matrix I used each team’s 11-week averages to rank from one to 12 within each category.

Then I cross-indexed category rank with win percentage.

In the charts below, the x-axis is the category rank for the 12 teams in the league. The y-axis is the win ratio corresponding to each rank.

There’s a lot of information to consider here. I’ll start with two points.

First, investment in saves and steals generates the best return in head-to-head wins (and ties). This is not just a case of haves and have-nots. There are fewer outliers even among the top half of each category.

Compare this to wins. If you dropped the bottom three teams from the wins category, the trendline would be almost flat. Teams that accumulate more wins over many weeks do not have much advantage in any given matchup.

These are the category fantasy owners hate the most. The unforgiving and the arbitrary.

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