Answers to fantasy baseball questions (and much more) since 1996
peter Major League Baseball : Fantasy : Ask Rotoman
Is it Bay or Abreu for you? BJ Upton, Delmon Young or Travis Lee: Why Ray are you going to catch? Will Josh Willingham? Hattie or Jamey Carroll? And Who’ll be burned by AJ Burnett? This week’s column is posted.
The Baseball Analysts: A Look at Unearned Runs by Pitcher Type
For various reasons we’ve been looking at the issue of unearned runs and how they affect our perceptions of a pitcher. This Rich Lederer article digs in and gets more specific, which may help savvy fantasy players identify guys who might get lucky. (And reveal why it hurts more when they don’t.)
Jeff Weaver – Los Angeles Dodgers – MLB – Yahoo! Sports
A jury decided that the Angels could keep LA in their name, and they decided to keep Weaver in LA. The Anaheim ballpark isn’t quite the paradise Dodger Stadium is but there are plenty worse places to pitch. His component ERA has been lower than his actual ERA every year of his career, which suggests to me he does something to make his rough times worse. Whatever, I’m not going to suggest that the bad results were all bad luck, but he pitched better than his ERA looks.
Statmaster : A Baseball Team Statistics Tool
Another way to make lists is this bit of webware from Baseball Almanac. As the site points out, every major site has player stat pages organized by teams, but it can be hard to find the particular stat you’re looking for. Statmaster has a long list of available stats, and you click off which ones you want to see. It doesn’t allow you to pull leaguewide lists, which is a shortcoming, but it does offer what could be a faster way to do research than sites where you have to scroll across multiple pages to find the more esoteric numbers. Worth checking out, and it will certainly be bookmarked by some.
This is a nifty piece of online software that comes with a price attached. You’ll have to decide if the early promise is worth the price, but I have a compulsive desire to make lists, and Playertrack.com certainly feeds that addiction. The site advertised in the Fantasy Baseball Guide this year, and we appreciate advertisers. What I’d like to see is a way to plug other sets of numbers into the mechanism, so you could analyze projections, or 2004 numbers, or three year averages. Even if you don’t want to pay it’s worth checking out for the Top 10 lists that come for free, which hint at what’s possible.
Major League Baseball : Fantasy : Fantasy
The first column of the new year is up at mlb.com. Do the Mets have a Reyes of hope batting Jose first? Does Oliver Perez have some more control? Weekly or daily transactions? And introducing Chatter, about Esteban German, Jeremy Hermida, Jon Papelbon, and Bengie Molina. Expect a new column every Wednesday from here on out. And send your questions to Ask Rotoman.
Henderson rejoins Mets as spring training instructor – MLB – Yahoo! Sports
The Mets’ biggest problem is that their worst hitter, Jose Reyes, is likely to be the guy on the team who gets the most PA this coming year. Naming Rickey Henderson as special baserunning/getting on base coach for Reyes and Carlos Beltran can’t hurt. It’s unlikely 10 days late in camp is going to make a big difference, but given Reyes’ skills, if he could find a way to get on base more he’d be an immeasurably more valuable player. Omar Minaya clearly knows that.
ESPN.com – NHL – Theodore tests positive, blames result on Propecia
The second hair growth drug test story of the day. Jose Theodore says he’s been taking Propecia for eight years to grow his full head of hair. Hey, it works! At least Zach Lund had the decency to have a receding hair line.
Yahoo! Sports – Fantasy – One-Man Mock Draft
Brandon Funston is a fantasy veteran and I have no doubts about the preseason utililty for fantasy players with time on their hand to have a One-Man Mock Draft. Thinking through the different processes each team owner would have to go through to make his optimal pick has got to be good exercise, and will certainly help you familiarize yourself with all the draftable players.
But Funston’s talk about “runs” is pretty silly. The whole concept of the run is based on teams going all emotional because they fear all the good players at a position will be taken before their next pick. So they take a lesser player in the run rather than the best available player. When you’re drafting by yourself the psychological pressure shouldn’t play a role, and if you try to simulate it you’re likely to do yourself a disservice.
The other thing he says is that he designed his mock to reflect this year’s tendencies to draft pitchers later and more hitters earlier. Needless to say, if you can pick up Jake Peavy (3rd), Rich Harden (6th) and Roy Halladay (6th) in rounds 3 to 6, the right way to play your mock draft is to do it. When there is a lot of pitching and prices fall, as seems to be happening this year (as it did last), load up.
Minor League Ball :: Minor Leagues blog featuring John Sickels
Sickels is always thoughtful, knowledgeable, hard working and pleasant. His site is full of information and opinion, and is becoming part of my routine. I don’t know why it took so long. For a while he was the only reason to visit ESPN.com, and then they let him walk.