Rotoman

MLB.com: Ask Rotoman

The new column is posted. Tidbits on getting a third baseman, dealing with pace, and understanding pitch counts.

ESPN.com: MLB – Monday roundup: Cardinals’ Marrero out indefinitely

There has been a lot of mail in the last few weeks asking about Marrero, wondering if he would be okay. The answer was yes, until Sunday, when he hurt his ankle and had surgery.

He’s out for six weeks they’re saying, at least, but this is the sort of rehab that can take a good deal longer. Don’t play the pessimist, but don’t go making your plans as if Marrero is sure to be back by the All Star break.

Just a heads up.

ESPN.com: MLB – Baldelli flourishing despite poor plate discipline

“The system is too involved to explain in full here, but it’s proven amazingly prescient in projecting the 2003 season so far — predicting a breakout for Jose Cruz Jr., a collapse for Jeremy Giambi, and continued health woes for Ken Griffey Jr. among other things — so let’s give it a spin.”

That quote is from Nate Silver, talking about Baseball Prospectus’s PECOTA system (I’m not sure why they spell it with all caps, since acronyms 5 letters or longer are usually spelled with upper and lower case letters). The story is interesting, and demonstrates why PECOTA can be an interesting tool. But the quote drives me crazy, the way BP often does.

So, PECOTA is amazingly prescient, is it? By predicting that Cruz would have a good year, Giambi a bad year and Griffey a hurt one?

Weren’t those the obvious choices for each of those guys this year? And isn’t it a bit early to be crowing? If the vaunted but new PECOTA had gotten everything wrong so far, don’t you think the BP staff would be talking about how it takes the whole season and then some to judge things?

I really love lots of what various BP writers have revealed about the game over the years, but the frequently smug self promotion has often turned me off. It’s as if they forget that the reason we like reading them is because they’re smart, and so are we. That’s too bad.

ESPN.com: Albie Lopez

Stupid Rotoman. Bad bad bad.

I’ve spent much of this year in first place in the American Dream League. I haven’t had a big advantage, but even when I’d drop out of first for a few days, I’d pop back. Until this week.

First of all, my starting staff is built around Rick Reed, Andy Pettite and Freddie Garcia. All have been knocked around recently, none more so than Garcia this week by the Yankees. Garcia’s history against the Yanks going in was good, but he’s not the same pitcher he was before the all star break last year.

My strategy was to spend some money on breadth of mid-range starters. That hasn’t worked out yet, but unless all three stay in the crapper all season long I should be able to work something out. The strategy may not work, but it wasn’t stupid.

I had Ugie Urbina as a freeze, so I tried to pick up solid middle guys to give good innings and the odd save here and there. LaTroy Hawkins, Arthur Rhodes and Lance Carter all went pretty cheaply in the end game and they’ve all worked out very well so far. So that wasn’t the stupid thing.

The other reliever I bought was Ryan Bukvich. I knew it was risky, because he doesn’t really have better control than Mike MacDougal, but I felt sure MacDougal wouldn’t last the season, and in a trial Bukvich could get a bunch of saves even if he didn’t pitch all that well. He didn’t pitch well, but before he could do too much damage he was sent to the minors.

Which brings us to Albie Lopez, who I activated this past Monday when Ismael Valdez was disabled. I thought about leaving the spot open, but Lopez hadn’t been pitching too badly, and with MacDougal faltering I could dream about Albie becoming the Royals’ closer, couldn’t I?

His first night Lopez vultured a win, his fourth of the season. I was starting to feel blessed. And then Garcia gave up 10 runs in three innings, Pettitte got knocked around, and Albie gave up four runs in two-thirds of an inning. But that wasn’t all…

Tonight Albie gave up seven runs in 1.1 IP. I’ve dropped from fifth in ERA to 11th in a matter of days. All because I had the hubris to think I could outsmart nature.

You can’t outsmart nature. Guys like Lopez have their bad runs, give up lots of runs, and then pitch pretty well for a while, ending up decidedly mediocre. That’s how they keep getting jobs (and actually Lopez was pretty good last year in the Atlanta pen). All would work out fine if you could grab the hot streak, and dump him before the crash, but if he’s going good you’re never going to drop him.

And if he goes bad, you go bad. We have free agent pickups on Monday. Valdez will be back, I guess, though he’s the sort of guy you can carry when you’re staff is going good, but Lopez is going out the door, and Bukvich is headed for the reserve list.

The challenge will be to get someone better.

MLB.com: Ask Rotoman

I neglected to post this Tuesday, when this week’s column went up at mlb.com. Questions about closers, starters and ripoffs this time.

XFL: Xperts Fantasy League

I posted this a few weeks ago but heard that it didn’t work. Now I’m finally getting back to it.

Ron Shandler’s idea was to create a fun league with a bunch of buddies, essentially roto industry vets who didn’t tick him off too much. Low maintenance, keeper league, nobody under 40 years old need apply.

I’m not a big fan of the keeper rules (I don’t think there will be many of them), and I screwed up the date of the draft (which took place in Arizona in November, during the AFL), so I was on an airplane back to NY while Alex picked the team. He wasn’t nearly as interested as I was in this thing, but he did it, and he did a great job.

My major instructions were to get Vlad and ARod, and then fill in. Oh, and get Preston Wilson and dump saves. I thought the two would cost about $150 of the $260 budget, but so what? These were the two irreplaceable guys in this sort of league, and I wanted them both.

As it turned out, Alex bought Vlad and Wilson, had no trouble avoiding closers, but flinched on ARod, who went for a very reasonable $56. Instead he bought Barry Bonds. Okay. Did I mention we were playing with OBP rather than AVG?

The reason I return to this tonight is because two of our pitchers, Zach Day and Joe Kennedy, got creamed. They gave up 16 runs in 9 innings between them. Still, we managed to gain half a point and lead the second place team by 19.5 points. Obviously we can’t absorb such beatings regularly, but we won’t have to.

Equally obviously, all that’s gone right so far will go wrong. On the other hand, Vlad is just starting to heat up.

The link above will bring you to the XFL’s home page, which has a link to the standings. The center will not hold for Pattonandco.com, I don’t think, but right now it’s a pisser.

ESPN.com: Josh Beckett

Elbow pain got him pulled from a game tonight after one inning, and he admitted he’s been hurting since the April 15 tilt v. Philadelphia.

Only 99 pitches thrown in that game, so ignorance of the pitch count on Jeff Torborg’s part isn’t to blame.

It’s too soon to tell how bad things are, but he’s going to see Dr. Andrews. Uh oh.

ESPN.com: MLB – Getting a better read on balls and strikes

Craig Wright is one of the smartest baseball guys around, and his point is dead on. By agreeing with him, Rob Neyer is pretty dead on, too.

The umpires really have to deal with this: How can it be bad if all balls are called balls and all strikes are called strikes?

During the period of transition there may be some oddball affects, but in the end the game will stabilize around a set of secure standards, and would be fans (and dedicated fans, too) won’t be tormented by the multitude of inconsistent ball-strike calls that we endure even today.

Rotoworld.com: Cliff Politte

Well, it finally happened. The total meltdown of Kelvim “Donde Esta El Plato” Escobar has forced Carlos Tosca to promote someone, and all those waiting for Cliff Politte as a closer in waiting can now count on him as a closer.

I’m a Politte fan. I bought him in the end game in Tout Wars two years ago, based on his brief but impressive K/BB ratios the year before, and he promptly went on the DL, then got traded to the AL. But for the most part since then he’s pitched the way I hoped he would..

This spring has been rockier for him, and I think there’s a good chance the Blue Jays’ newest closer isn’t going to take the world by storm. But Politte should be able to do the job most nights, which will be a big improvement over Escobar.

If he’s available, grab him. He’s not a dead-on cinch to prevail, but he’s well worth the risk that he’ll utterly fail.

ESPN.com: Gerald Laird

He was called up to the big club while Todd Greene is out and is expected to be sent down when Greene returns. Laird is a good defensive catcher who has shown some pop and plate discipline in the past. He’s a little young and wasn’t exactly tearing up Triple-A before the promotion, and he strikes out too much, but if your league let’s you pick up free agents and keep them at good prices, this may be a chance to grab the Rangers’ starting catcher next year when no one is looking.

Laird is a longshot, but catcher is the position at which it makes the most sense to take flyers.