Ask Rotoman

ESPN.com: MLB – Lofton agrees to one-year deal with White Sox

There is something to be said for patience, and not getting too worked up about troublesome playing time issues this early.

Those of us who watched Lofton bounce back in the second half of 2000 haven’t given up hope. But his wheels are decidedly older than they once were, and his game looked decidedly uninspired last year. If long memories drive his price up into the twenties, it’s probably best to take a pass.

But in the low teens he’s still a steal. The man knows how to play baseball, at least when he wants to.

Rotoworld.com

One of the fantasy sports info providers with a more forgiving business model are these guys.

Because they started as a stat service (and have evolved into a very good one) they were already a going concern when they got into the info biz. The info biz is supported by their stat service, I would guess (they have fewer ads than RotoWire did when they were forced to go to the pay model), and in turn is added value that helps them keep customers. Logically, either they aren’t going to be able to afford that for long, or RotoWire is going to be able to sell their services to other stat services (they already do to USA Stats) for less than Rotoworld pays to maintain their site. Assuming both are run equally well.

A reader sent me an address to a news story he found on Rotoworld in which CWS GM Kenny Williams says that Jose Valentin will not play center field, he did it last year and poorly. But Williams doesn’t rule out anyone else, including Joe Borchard, who is coming off a good Double-A campaign but almost surely needs to spend more time in the minors.

And seems to indicate that the job is Rowand’s to lose right now. We’ll see. Just thought you might like to know.

MLB Depth Charts

It occurs to me that this link is probably to a password protected page: Namely, the Chicago White Sox depth chart at Rotowire.com.

So here’s another depth chart:

mlb.com isn’t a pay service, at least not yet, but they do use some funky Java stuff that doesn’t always work out. In this case, on my screen, I can just make out the top of the name of the guy in the first position in their depth chart at third base: Joe Crede.

That’s different than the Rotowire chart, which says Jose Valentin is the White Sox staring third baseman.

MLB has the newly acquired Willie Harris as the starting centerfielder, with Brian Simmons behind him. Rotowire has Aaron Rowand first, and the recently departed Chris Singleton second. The problem with asking people to pay, as RotoWire has done the last few months, is that you have to be better than everyone else. I think RotoWire this past year established themselves clearly as the best of the baseball news repackagers, at least for fantasy purposes. But to get people to keep forking over the big bucks they have to be close to perfect. In this case, they’re still working out some of the kinks.

I hope they succeed, because they invented this business and because at the end of the day us fantasy players will be willing to pay someone to provide the services RotoWire offers now. In fact, we’ll have to. The problem is right now they’re competing with the glorious dot-com days, when everything was always going to be free, as well as some companies with a slightly more forgiving business model.

In any case, I’m more interested in what is going to happen in Chicago this summer. The departure of Singleton opens the door for Rowand, who can probably hit enough, but doesn’t really field enough to play center. Simmons is a great fielder with little stick. Harris could be the answer, but it’s a little early to be giving him the job, I’d say. His BB/K ratio fell sharply when he stepped up from Single-A to Double-A last year. He’ll struggle in the majors his first time through, for sure.

I’d say it all hinges on Joe Crede. If he does the job in spring training, look for Ray Durham and Jose Valentin to spend their time in center field and at second base, and Harris to spend his time in Triple-A. If Crede fails again, Harris and/or Simmons may well get more of a shot than is warranted right now. At least for fantasy purposes. That is, these are guys with low batting averages who might steal a few bases.

Harris, of course, the youngest of the possibilities, has the best chance to surprise us. But I’m not going to hold my breath.

ESPN.com: MLB – Report: Contraction still possible this season

I like where Alderson says about contraction, “Once you start the season it would be a little tough.”

ESPN.com: MLB – Mariners round out rotation with free-agent Baldwin

Yes!

I know, you don’t want to hear about my good luck, but I have James Baldwin at $3 this year, and I’m tickled because there isn’t any place better for him to go than the American League (where I can keep him) and Seattle (which supressed run production last year more than any other AL park except Baltimore).

Now, I’m not saying Baldwin is sure to be a huge success in 2002. He’s always been the most erratic of pitchers, mostly because his big overhand curve isn’t an easy pitch to throw for strikes–especially when the strikezone is the size of a flyswatter.

Last year he again was inconsistent, but he showed no ill-effects from the arthroscopy that repaired a frayed labrum late in 2000. Perhaps most importantly for those of you who don’t have him as a cheap keep, he was just 3-6 with the Dodgers, though his ERA improved by 4/10ths of a run after moving to the NL. Meaning he might be overlooked.

Is he worth a shot at $3 this year? You bet. Would I spend $8 on him if I didn’t already have him? Probably, but I wouldn’t go much higher. And if he gets off to a hot start, the way he did in 2000, I’m going to offer him around. The ballpark will help him, and the team will too, but I don’t trust his ability to throw strikes for a whole season.

ESPN.com: MLB – Mariners swap Bell for Giants utilityman Relaford

The Giants will be happy to get a few homers and hope he doesn’t kill too many rallies. The Mariners, apparently, were concerned about their offense. It is a good sign–labor strife-wise–when the lowest rank of starter is happy to sign for what he got last year. That is as it should be.

Relaford could take over the jobs of five or six recent Mariners. Given happy legs Lou Piniella gave Mark McLemore last year, don’t be surprised if Desi has his own kind of breakout season. Don’t get caught up in a bidding frenzy if someone else has the same idea, but if he’s going for just a few bucks, grab him.

hi rotoman…i was wondering if you can help me with a decision….i play fantasy baseball in a mixed, 12 team, draft, 5×5 league, with a 4 player keeper rule.

“Almost there”

Almost is right. Here are my comments…

Lo Duca never showed what he showed last year before last year. He’s a catcher and it would seem he has to be better than anyone expected, but it’s unlikely he’ll repeat. He’s not bad to have for a catcher, at all, but he’s not powerful enough to best the other guys.

Dunn is too young. He has great promise, but as we saw with the stalling of Sean Casey last year, potential needs to round into form. Dunn could be great, of course, but few players advance through their second ML tour without growing pains.

Klesko has established himself, his power and his stolen bases. He’s a reasonable keep, much as I fear that the SB could stop as abruptly as they started. It’s just too weird.

Which is why I like Foulke. He’s one of the Top Five closers in the game, and while closers in mixed leagues are of even more limited utility than they are in single-league leagues, getting one of the best players at a position is goal of a mixed-league freeze list.

You’ll have plenty of chances to take risky guys in the draft. Use your keeps to hold onto the best players you can.

Rotoman

The Thinking Fan: Baseball’s labor strife may be worst ever

There isn’t much new in Leonard Koppett’s analysis of the current labor situation, except he very simply explains why it is that what the players do during the current negotiations won’t help to solve baseball’s problems.

Koppett was the first guy I read who treated baseball as more than an exercise in hero worship. It seems he must be close to 100 years old now, but it’s good to see he’s still kicking.

I should also point out that his book The Thinking’s Fan Guide to Baseball, originally issued in 1966, is kind of a PBS version of baseball, which feels like it should be a dismissal but it isn’t. Maybe that’s because Koppett is my idea of a PBS guy, smart, funny, self-confident, inquiring, more philosopher than anything else, as oppossed to the sentimental aesthetes who seem to have taken over public television.

This is a fine book that has held up all these years and is a must for any thinking fan.

It’s out of print, apparently, but if you follow the link you might find a used version.

Dear Rotoman:

“Auctioneer”

Dear Auctioneer:

I stumbled across this site today. They have a matchmaker service: Rotoworld. Do I recommend it?

Nah, but I don’t not recommend it either. Caveat emptor.

I also know that some people post their needs at the Usenet group rec.sport.baseball.fantasy. Again, chances are there are some great leagues out there looking for great players. But it shouldn’t be hard to find some real crap, too.

Good luck,
Rotoman

I like Rob Neyer.

Yes, there are times he’s irritating, and even more irritating there are times he jumps onto some slim calculation that reinforces his larger point, and I just want to shake him…

But he’s got the best soapbox in the world to talk about anything of interest to baseball fans at all, and he does a pretty good job of mixing things up. This story ESPN.com: MLB – Big trade could work for all three teams is a bit of analysis about the deal, and I don’t like Rob’s take because he sort of agrees with me.

I like it because this notion of Defense Neutral Pitching Stats is important, for the very reason that this story makes so clear. A pitcher who has a bad ERA and a bad ratio of hits per balls put into play, is probably the victim of bad luck.

Unlike Dave Mlicki, who dug his own hole.

I still believe that Rusch creates his own problems, he did walk more batters in the frist half than the second half. But that difference pales beside the decrease in hits allowed, which Rob correctly points out is a fairly random pattern.

In the light of this evidence I guess I’d say that maybe Dave Stewart won’t have to work as hard as I thought he would.