Fantasy Baseball – FAAB Report, Wk.4

Oh those injuries. They can be a killer in fantasy baseball. Unfortunately, they are a fact of life. Injuries will happen. You have to able to adapt and work around that. Truthfully, these 2-3 week fill-in’s you add to your club will go a long way to determining whether or not you are in contention in September. Choose wisely young padawan.

TOUT WARS (15 team mixed): Just so you know that you aren’t the only one dealing with injuries, here are the players on my club that are currently on the disabled list: Zack Greinke, Joel Hanrahan, Cameron Maybin, Derek Jeter and Alex Rodriguez. And there are only 27 players rostered in this league, so that’s a pretty good chunk of them. So this week I had to make a couple of moves. I added Eric Sogard ($1) to take over for Ruben Tejada since I cannot afford to have a guy who is day-to-day given all my other injuries. I also added Jeremy Guthrie on the hill. I’m not expecting him to remain the hurler has been so far, but I will also note that since he joined the Royals last season, he’s been more effective than he should be (7-3, 3/32 ERA, 1.15 WHIP in 116.2 IP). I also added two start hurler Mike Leake (at home versus the Cubs and on the road versus the Nationals).

Notable bids: Edward Mujica ($19), Wade Davis ($7), Travis Snider ($6) and Jorge De La Rosa ($5).

LABR (12 team, AL-only): Here we go again. With the injuries I mean. Sergio Santos, Jeff Niemann and Michael Pineda are on the DL. I was able to make a move this week to add an arm to cover for Santos. I was the lucky, or unlucky depending how you look at it, winner of Aaron Harang for ($7). I know, I know, but sometimes you have to go for it in leagues that are this deep. With Joe Blanton and Ubaldo Jimenez really struggling, I had to take a shot on another starting arm.

Notable bids: Luis Jimenez ($13), Corey Kluber ($5), Brandon Laird ($4), Oswaldo Arcia ($4) and Allen Webster ($3 though he has since been demoted)

FSTA (13 team mixed): Back up the injury train cause Ray is ready to be the conductor! The following players are on the DL: Hanley Ramirez, Joel Hanrahan, Shaun Marcum, Sean Marshall and Sergio Santos (Kevin Youkilis and Asdrubal Cabrera are both injured too). I added Eric Sogard, noticing a theme here?, for $19. I really would have rather had Eric Young Jr. but I needed the help up the middle more than in the outfield (my bid on EYJ was $18, the same as the winning bid). I also came up short on Mujica (my bid was $77) so I ended up with David Hernandez ($17), and elite setup man who would likely excel if something were to happen to J.J. Putz. By the way, I’m the Putz owner in this league, so I gave myself a bit of a shelter. As I always say, be proactive with middle relievers. This week Hernandez costs less than $20. If Putz were to blow his arm out, he’d likely go for $200 or more next week.

Notable bids: Edward Mujica ($267), Tony Cingrani ($185), Didi Gregorius ($121), Anthony Rendon ($71), Garrett Richards ($56) and Andrew Cashner ($44).

SIRIUSXM EXPERTS (12 team mixed): Hanley Ramirez was going to be my ace at shortstop this season. For now, that plan is on hold. Luckily I have Martin Prado to fill in (he’s shortstop eligible in this league… even though he didn’t play 20 games there last season). With Andrelton Simmons struggling, I felt like I needed to do something up the middle. Luckily, Neil Walker was released, a huge mistake if you ask me. I likely overspent to get him, $37 of my $100, but I think he’s a top-10 second base option and with my weakness up the middle, I went for it.

Notable bids: Andrew Bailey ($24), Edward Mujica ($16), Carlos Marmol ($7), John Buck ($5) and Ross Detwiler ($5).

SIRIUSXM LISTENER LG (11 team mixed): This is the only league with an open waiver-wire, and I need it with the following fellas on the DL: Michael Saunders, Ryan Zimmerman, Jose Reyes and Joel Hanrahan. Oh, I also had Cameron Maybin hit the DL this past week, and with all the injuries I have, and the chance that his wrist issue keeps him out longer than 15 days, I felt like I had to make a move so I moved on from Maybin for Will Venable (I would like to hold Maybin in an ideal world, but I just have too many injuries right now to do that). I was also quick to the waiver-wire last Monday as I added Edward Mujica to bolster my bullpen.

K-BAD (12 team mixed): Chris Getz is hitting under .250 and hadn’t stolen a base. Time to drop him (he was added cause Hanley Ramirez was DL’d then his MI replacement, Gordon Beckham, was also placed on the DL). I added Eric Sogard for $12 (out of $1,000. I bid $14 on Crawford, but as you can see another was more sold on the hot start than I was. I still think this hot start is just a hot start. Don’t love the skills). I wasn’t able to get Mujica (my bid was $77), but I rostered Joaquin Benoit instead ($42). Didn’t have room for Drew Smyly, but I really wish I did since it wouldn’t surprise me at all to see him inserted into that Tigers’ rotation soon since Rick Porcello continues to stink.

Notable bids: Anthony Rendon ($188), Tony Cingrani ($160), Edward Mujica ($133), Peter Bourjos ($100), Brandon Crawford ($50).

FANBALL (13 team mixed): In this $100 FAAB league, I failed to get Andrew Bailey ($17), but I was able to emerge with Edward Mujica ($16). Might turn out for the best cause I’m not certain Bailey is going to keep the closing job once Joel Hanrahan is healthy. I wasn’t getting much out of Kelly Johnson up the middle so I took the plunge on rookie/potential phenom Anthony Rendon ($4). Rendon doesn’t have much power to speak of, but he’s got an excellent approach and cap rap liners out with the best of them. It remains to be seen how long he will be in the daily lineup. He’s got two weeks, with Ryan Zimmerman on the DL, to prove he belongs.

Notable bids: Andrew Bailey ($25), Brandon Crawford ($9), Chris Johnson ($9), Lucas Duda ($5).

To see how others are evaluating players don’t forget to go to Fleaflicker.com where you can check out the owned percentages of all your favorite players.

By Ray Flowers

Fantasy Baseball: Bullpen Woes

It’s already started, and no one is pleased about it. I’m not talking about the fact that Kim Kardashian is wearing tight skirts and sexy outfits despite being pregnant and really showing (am I the only one that thinks that is a hideous look?). I’m talking about 9th inning woes. Last year two-thirds of closers changed from Opening Day on, and the turnover is usually in the 40-50 percent range on a yearly basis. It’s why I always preach going for the skills/talent over the role. Eventually the skills win out, and more often than not you can roster skills for a lot less on draft day than roles. With that, here are some situations to monitor.

NOTE: Don’t forget that the Reds have already moved on from Jonathan Broxton to Aroldis Chapman, so the merry go round actually started before the season even began.

BREWERS

John Axford is third in baseball the last two years with 81 saves. Still, he blew nine chances last year an in two outings this season he’s allowed four runs while recording five outs. Panic stricken owners are running for cover all over the place. You would have to think that his past success will give Axford some rope, but his fastball was down about four mph in his last outing, so perhaps his arm isn’t right. It would appear that Jim Henderson would be next in line a season after he produced a 13.21 K/9 mark and allowed one homer in 30.2 innings thanks to his 95 mph heater. Axford owners would be wise to add Henderson, and Jim is worthy of throwing a few FAAB bucks at this week.

CARDINALS

We still don’t know how long Jason Motte will be sidelined, it’s All Quiet on the Western Front with his progress, but it’s looking like it could be a significant situation. As such, Mitchell Boggs became the hottest pickup in many fantasy leagues in Week 1. Hopefully you didn’t go all in. Boggs blew his first save chance this season, and as I’ve been telling those that asked, he’s not an elite arm – he’s much more Jim Johnson than Jonathan Papelbon. Boggs has a strong 52 percent ground ball rate in his career, but he’s also a below average strikeout arm (6.68 per nine) and his K/BB ratio, even the last two years, isn’t great (2.52). On the other hand, Trevor Rosenthal is an elite arm who regularly blows 97 mph cheese past batters. In his young career he has a 12.00 K/9 mark, a 4.00 K/BB ratio and an even better ground ball rate than Boggs at 55 percent. I’d be targeting Rosenthal as a cheap pickup right now, one with huge upside and potentially a fantasy goldmine.

CUBS

Carlos Marmol has had a rough start. What a shock. In his outing he allowed a run, walked a batter, and got one out. Marmol has still blown only one of his last 20 save chances, and the Cubs won’t get much on the trade front if they demote him to middle relief and then try to deal him. Kyuji Fujikawa came in to save Marmol’s bacon and pick up the save, but he recorded all of one out. I know he’s had a ton of success as a professional, and that folks really like his makeup, but it’s far to early to bail on Marmol and go all in on Fujikawa. Now if Kyuji is on waivers right now… he’s a must add. What, you don’t think I’m devoid of a brain, do you?

TIGERS

The Tigers signed Jose Valverde to a minor league contract even though they continually said they had no interest in bringing back into the fold the majors saves leader the past three seasons. So much for that when Phil Coke is out there blowing leads in the 9th inning (I warned you not to get overly excited about Coke getting a long look in the 9th inning this season). Valverde is likely weeks away from being called to the big leagues, he’ll eventually report to Triple-A once the team is comfortable that his arm is right,m as he tries to prove that he is worthy of a roster spot. Valverde’s a 35 year old arm who struck out fewer than 6.50 batters per nine innings last season which is more than three an a half batters below his career 9.91 per nine mark (a total he last reached in 2008). I’d still say that Joaquin Benoit, Al Alburquerque and Octavio Dotel have better arms, I might even add in there Brayan Villarreal to be honest, but sometimes experience wins out over talent.

Oh, and finally there is this… Francisco Cordero can be ruled out for the entirety of the 2013 season as he was forced to undergo surgery on his non-throwing shoulder (he wasn’t able to convince anyone to sign him this offseason). The owner of seven 30 save seasons, tied for the 5th most in the history of the game, Cordero also owns 329 career saves, the 12th most in the history of the game.

By Ray Flowers

How to Evaluate Relievers

About two weeks ago I wrote How to Evaluate A Player in which I described a quick and easy way to evaluate players performance. That piece dealt only with hitters. In today’s article I’ll detail some of the key points you’ll want to consider when you are attempting to evaluate relief pitchers for the 2011 fantasy baseball season.

Target Skills not Roles.
This is the hardest idiom to abide by on draft day because though it inherently makes sense to target skills, it doesn’t always result in the most fantasy value. Let me address that “fantasy value” issue first.

There are five main categories in fantasy baseball for pitchers: wins, ERA, WHIP, Ks and saves. Obviously only reliever can pick up saves, and that marks “closers” as premium targets on draft day. However, there are many issues associated with this.

(1) Closers don’t hold their roles all season in many cases making it a volatile position to predict with any certainty.

(2) There are always a handful of guys who rack up large save totals that come completely out of nowhere (think John Axford who had 24 saves last year despite having only 7.2 innings of big league experience prior to the start of the season).

(3) Closers often rack up saves despite pedestrian results.

Francisco Cordero had 40 saves despite a 1.43 WHIP.
Bobby Jenks had 27 saves with a 4.44 ERA.
Ryan Franklin had 27 saves with a mere 5.82 K/9 mark.

(4) Having success closing games year-to-year is much harder than you would think. If a guy had 20 saves he’d probably be considered a low end second reliever, right? Do you know how many hurlers have saved 20 games in each of the past three seasons? The answer is only 12. Simply, it’s a very volatile, and variable, position – closing that is.

(5) Pitching the ninth inning to gain a save is a random event that is nearly impossible to predict. Factors that you have to take into account include:

* Did the offense score enough to gain the lead, without scoring too much to get past the limit for saves (3 run lead).

* Which reliever will be called on? Will the manager go with his best arm? Will he play the righty/lefty matchup game? Will he lean on the veteran who has been there and done that even though he hasn’t been pitching well? Will the manager give his reliever some rope and allow him to remain in the game if he lets people on base?

And that last point is really the main point of this whole exercise. In many cases its patently obvious which reliever a team should turn to in the 9th inning. However, that doesn’t always mean that team does the right thing and slots their most effective reliever in a 9th inning role. The bottom line is that there is no way to predict the opportunities than any reliever will be given, nor is there any way to get inside the head of a manager to understand how he will deploy his pitchers from game to game.

Therefore, this is what I recommend – target skills not roles.

Skills aren’t susceptible to the whim of a manager.
Skills aren’t dependent on the game situation.
Skills pay the bills.

What skills should you look for? A quick primer follows.

Target at least a 7.50 K/9 mark.
You need a reliever who can get out of a jam with a punchout. Also, the fewer balls that are put in play, the better the chance is that the batter won’t produce a hit (a brilliant statement I know).

Target a BB/9 mark below 3.00.
You can’t have a reliever come into a game searching for the strike zone.

Those two simply targets may not seem like much, but adhering to just those two categories and their benchmarks will likely help you from rostering relievers that will not hurt your ratios. Amongst relievers that tossed 60-innings last year, here are the only names that racked up a K/9 mark over 7.50 with a BB/9 mark under 3.00.

Casey Janssen
Matt Thornton
Sean Burnett
Rafael Soriano
Joaquin Benoit
Luke Gregerson
Joakim Soria
Neftali Feliz
Darren Oliver
Kyle Farnsworth
Edward Mujica
Matt Belise
Billy Wagner
Sergio Romo
Rafael Betancourt
Hong-Chih Kuo
Joba Chamberlain

That’s a pretty darn small list isn’t it?

There is obviously more to pitching than this simply review, but in terms of relief pitchers this type of data is extremely relevant. Also make sure you keep an eye on the GB/FB column, I’d look for numbers of 1.25 or better there if you can (big flies are murder on relievers).

At the end of the day there are very few “locks” at the closers position. After the first 20 or so guys are off the board I think it makes more sense to roster high skill relievers with major upside versus slacker relievers who are lined up to begin the year as the closer for their team. Sooner or later the lack of skills will doom those guys to mediocrity while your “skills guys” should continue to have success no matter what role they are asked to fill .

By Ray Flowers

The Stange Case of Rafael Soriano

Rafael Soriano is still looking for work. There is no telling what his agent Scott Boras is asking for – my guess is that he is telling everyone that Soriano is the second best closer in baseball history behind Mariano Rivera – but the fire-balling righty is still looking for a job. Reports this week were that he would considering serving as the setup man for Rivera with the Yankees, but the Yanks quickly shot down that rumor and said they weren’t interested in dropping a ton of dough for a setup man (could that change if Andy Pettitte officially retires?). So where will Soriano end end? There aren’t too many openings to fill 9th inning roles left vacant, so perhaps Soriano will have to settle for a smaller money deal, something that seemed unlikely a few weeks back when guys like Jesse Crain and Matt Guerrier were getting 3-year deals. Has Mr. Boras finally failed one of his clients? You should know better than to doubt Mr. Boras at this point.

The real reason for the reluctance of teams to shed out major dinero for Soriano must be tied to his awful record of health since he has kept many a trainer/doctor in business over the years with a plethora of arm issues constantly slowing him down. Here are his innings pitched totals since he reached the big leagues.

47.1
53.0
3.1
7.1
60.0
72.0
14.0
75.2
62.1

Let me sum that up for you. In three of last eight seasons Soriano didn’t even toss 15 innings. Would you be comfortable giving a guy like that $10 million a year? Me neither. At the same time, Soriano has tossed 60-innings in back-to-back seasons for the second time (the first was in 2006-07), though it’s not as if he has been 100 percent healthy in that time. The fact of the matter is that all pitchers are at risk with every toss, though Soriano is clearly much more likely to come down with some ailment than your average hurler.

All of Soriano’s injuries have obscured the fact that he is an absolutely dynamic pill tosser. Check out his career numbers. They are scintillating.

2.73 ERA, 1.00 WHIP, 9.62 K/9, 3.58 K/BB, .193 BAA

You think those numbers are great? They are, but his 2010 effort made even those strong totals look average.

1.73 ERA, 0.80 WHIP, 8.23 K/9, 4.07 K/BB, .163 BAA

Wow is right.

I didn’t even mention that Soriano racked up a career best 45 saves to lead the AL (he entered the year with 43 career saves). Soriano also posted the fourth best ERA in baseball for any hurler with at least 60-innings pitched while his WHIP was second (Joaquin Benoit was first at 0.68). That’s some serious dealing folks.

Someone is going to end up with one hell of a reliever. The only question is will he be able to stay healthy long enough to reward that team for their investment in his golden arm?

All Free Agent Team

I’m scheduled to visit with Jeff Rickard on Saturday around 11 AM PST on MLB Network Radio to talk free agents. We’re actually going to discuss whether or not you could put together a fantasy worthy team of players still looking to find a home for 2011 (i.e. they are free agents). Here is my all free agent fantasy team.

C: Bengie Molina
1B: Russell Branyan
2B: Adam Kennedy
3B: Jorge Cantu
SS: Orlando Cabrera
OF: Manny Ramirez, Vladimir Guerrero, Johnny Damon
DH: Jim Thome
SP: Andy Pettitte, Carl Pavano, Bruce Chen, Kevin Millwood, Freddy Garcia, Brad Penny, Chris Young
RP: Mr. Soriano of course, Brian Fuentes, Jon Rauch, Chad Qualls

It’s not exactly a powerhouse team that would win any leagues, but I’ve also seen people put together worse teams.

By Ray Flowers