Rotoman

Dear All-Knowing Rotoman,

In an 11 team, 25 player (15 batters/ 10 pitchers), standard 5 x 5 league that allows DAILY TRANSACTIONS, and free agent sinings are unlimited — what is the recommended cap for maximum innings pitched?

I’ve never played in a league that has a pitching cap. The problem is usually the opposite one: Teams going for too many relievers. But in a 5×5 league there is definitely an argument for going with starters, especially in a mixed league with daily transactions.

If you and your league-mates feel you need a cap, I would suggest a number of starts, rather than a number of innings. You shouldn’t be penalized for having starters who pitch late into games. I know that in many leagues the starts are capped at 180. I can’t really think of a reason why you wouldn’t want to cap them 162.

If you insist upon innings, I suppose the place to look is the ML team totals last year, which would be somewhere around 1,450 innings.

Are you sure Hatteberg is a switch hitter? I think that once Dye regains his form, he will be moved up in the order and “Hatte” will be moved down or out.

I can’t tell you why I thought Hatteberg was a switch-hitter. Somewhere I looked I must have seen the telltale “B,” next to bats, but that was wrong. Hatte’s a lefty and what I wasn’t wrong about is his futility against lefties.

Hatteberg has been DHing because David Justice has been out with a strained groin. Justice is due back Tuesday, which should make Hatteberg a spare part again, as he should be. The larger point, that Oakland is team lacking depth, is still the main point. And why, if you had to play Hatte, you’d bat him third, remains beyond me.

I have a weak OF with Moises Alou, Pat Burrell, Torii Hunter, Juan Encarnacion and Darin Ersted. Geoff Jenkins and Terrence Long are available. Should I grab one of them and drop someone?

If you look at the outfielders who go in a roto auction for somewhere between $13 and $23 you find a big stew. The price difference matters, of course, but when the season is done it’s hard to remember why Long went for $14 and Jenkins $20. Or Alou commanded $22 while Burrell got $16.

In a mixed league, like yours, these guys go for less money and become even more interchangeable. So while it may turn out that you’d rather have Jenkins than one or another of the guys you have active now, I can’t really say whom with any confidence.

Alou could get hurt. Burrell might not develop. Hunter could crash into a wall. Encarnacion will swing and miss. Erstad, oh what’s up with Erstad?

Jenkins will hit for power, which means if you value that over the stolen base he’s a good replacement for Encarnacion. And after a slow start Long is showing signs of life, which means he might be a good replacement for the moribund Erstad, for now.

But the bottom line is that there is enough difference among these guys to make much of a case for one over the other.

What you can do is look for context. Is someone playing in Colorado or Homeron this week? Are they facing the weak pitching of Detroit’s on the road? The possibilities are pretty much limitless and dependent on your desire to drive yourself crazy figuring them out. But if you have unlimited substitutions you can take advantage of your shallow league by rotating hitters and pitchers in and out. You won’t always be right, but you can improve your team this way. And if your league is competitive that little edge can make the difference.

Rotodude,
Why the heck is Hatteberg batting third for the A’s? Does anyone really think he is the best hitter on the team?

ESPN.com – MLB – Game Log

One of the problems with linking to a live box score or game log, as with this link, is that as I write this Scott Hatteberg is coming to the plate in a 2-1 game, with Frank Menechino (who just drove in the A’s first run), on first base. Hatteberg is coming to the plate.

Tonight Jermaine Dye is in the lineup. He just made the third out of the inning, but the A’s tied it up when Hatteberg grounded to Jose Valentin, who threw the ball away. Not a bad stategy, Hatte.

Hatteberg isn’t a terrible hitter for a catcher, but the notion that he is the DH on a team that is going to the playoffs is frightening enough. Or an indication that this team isn’t going to the playoffs.

Okay, I give up. I can’t think of a single reason you’d bat Hatte third. Maybe because he’s a switch hitter? Except he sux against lefties.

I’ll tell you what. Post your best answers. The most clever or smart, if it is clever or smart, with win a Rotoman game-worn hat. And be glad the question wasn’t about Ben Sheets.

Dear Rotoman:

Who would you pick to fill the other three lineup spots if you were in my shoes?

Two are easy. Preston Wilson and Bobby Higginson have history and talent on their side. Wilson hasn’t hit many homers yet, but he will. HIgginson’s start has been a bit slow, but that’s simply a reason to think you’ll get some better performance in the future.

Of the other four, Jacque Jones has been the strongest so far this season, but he hits leadoff, which should undermine his RBI totals. Corey Patterson hasn’t shown that he can hit big league pitching. And Mark McLemore is much more a steals than power guy.

Which leaves the powerful but platoon-disadvantaged Daryl Ward for your last roster spot.

Roto-dude:

I\’m in a six-team league dealing with just National League players. Recently, I had to put Kevin Brown on the DL and I replaced him with Kevin Millwood. They’re talking about trying to put Brown back in next Tuesday. Do you think it’s too early to put him back in? Millwood got rocked on Monday, and he really hasn’t been that effective for a few years. Should I leave Millwood in for a while, for good, or dump him for good?

At the start of spring training I happened upon a little quote from Leo Mazzone, saying that Millwood was throwing in the mid-90s again, the way he did in 1999, perhaps because a cyst he had in his should had been cleared by a rigorous off-season conditioning program. But the spring training results were less than impressive, and it’s clear he isn’t throwing that hard now.

He has had a very good curve and apart from the hammering he took Monday in Florida, he’s looked pretty good.

His next start is Sunday in Atlanta against the Astros. You play in a shallow league and Millwood is probably no better than an injury replacement sub at this point. And Houston is the third or fourth best hitting team in the NL at this point, and you’re running some risk he’ll get clobbered if you keep him in.

But apart from last Monday, when he was working on a strange work schedule after being drafted as an emergency reliever the preceding week, he’s shown some sign of being back (Note the strikeouts: nearly one per inning). I’d keep him, for now.

If I were to trade Aaron Sele and Matt Lawton, what players do you think I could get in return?

I love answering questions, I really do. But open-ended questions like this one are simply impossible, and I find because of them I’m writing more and more answers that say, “It’s really impossible to tell without knowing your league size and your rules and what the standings are and who is on everyone’s roster.”

Which, of course, either provokes a long email with many of those details (which are impossible to absorb and so still impossible to answer), or bounces back because the email address I have is wrong.

I know I should have a FAQ and maybe I will do something about it when I redesign askrotoman.com and rototouts.com in the next week or two, but for now I’m not answering open-ended questions.

Pardon moi.

Yo, what happened to Rotoman? I looked at ESPN and I looked at RotoWorld and I can’t find him.

5-1-1-6-2-1-2-1-0-0-5-3-4-7 These were the runs scored in the American League last night. The average is 2.71 per team. Isn’t that abnormally low? And why last night, Tuesday, April 23?

Yo, Rotoman has been at mlb.com for three years, with a new column posted every Tuesday, and here, at askrotoman.com. Where have you been?

I’ve been thinking the same thing. Runs Scored seemed to be down. Lots of shutouts. Lots of fantasy team ERAs in the threes. It seemed like we were in the middle of some 80s revival, and I’m not talking 1987.

But Steve Moyer ran a chart the other day in his column on RotoWire showing that scoring was actually up a little in the American League, while it was down just a little in the National League.

I’ve also been noticing that umpires have been calling the high strike more aggressively and consistently than last year, while the zone’s width may have also narrowed some. It has looked to me like more hitters are becoming aware of pitches at the letter being called strikes, and they’re swinging more aggressively at high heaters, and thus whiffing more.

So, I thought it might be worthwhile looking at a few numbers to see what trends there are this year:

AL (April)
PA per RBI 2001 8.24 2002 7.79
AB per HR 2001 34.9 2002 35.1
OPS 2001 .748 2002 .761
K per IP 2001 .721 2002 .686
BB per IP 2001 .374 2002 .381
ERA 2001 4.41 2002 4.75

So yes, more RBI per plate appearance, which has to mean more runs scored, especially since there is a higher OPS this year. But fewer homers, though hardly enough of a decrease to notice.

On the pitching side, strikeouts are down, walks are up and ERA is way up.

Does this mean anything? Last year April and September were the worst months for hitters, a result you might expect figuring in the weather and the supposed early advantage pitchers have. But in 2000 hitters had their best month in April. I don’t know which of these two years is the aberration, or if the history of early season is simply erratic, but clearly it is subject to swings.

Which means that we should hesitate before we draw sweeping conclusions, except that so far what I seemed to be seeing around home plate isn’t what I was seeing.

[I should also point out that players (hitters and pitchers) have been complaining about the umpires’ strike zone, which is supposed to be getting more consistent by virtue of some high-tech imaging and training the umpires are doing with the leagues’ help. The players say it isn’t, at all, and it’s driving them to distraction.]

As for last night, I don’t know. It sure looked to me like the home plate ump in the Yanks-As game was calling all kinds of stuff strikes. Or maybe it was because it was Warren Spahn’s birthday.

Beacon Journal | 04/22/2002 | Art of the steal missing

This is brought to you because maybe one of your players will be affected, even though the whole thing sounds like a pile of crap. Personally, I’d be surprised if Lawton didn’t end up with 20 steals, though Charlie makes it sound like that’s unlikely.

Everett Out

I know I shouldn’t toot my horn, it’s way early yet, but so far the year is shaping up in many ways as predicted. I don’t think anybody thought that Everett would be a great hitter but the assumption was that Dee-loving Jimy Williams and the Astros’ power hitters would help keep Everett his job.

But he hasn’t. Will Julio Lugo get the bulk of the time? His defensive deficiencies could mean that Geoff Blum will take away some AB, but this has to be good news for those who invested in Lugo and Morgan Ensberg–some AB have been freed.