Ask Rotoman

Major League Baseball : Ask Rotoman

It seems I didn’t plug last week’s column. Must have been that All Star excitement. There is a modest endorsement of Dontrelle Willis, a scouting report on David Wright, some thoughts about Johann Santana you probably don’t need to hear, ideas about dump trades, and a look at over and underachieving pitchers.

And the new one comes out Wednesday. Send questions to Ask Rotoman or join in at the discussion board, where there is a posse of very smart baseball guys ready to help.

Major League Baseball : Ask Rotoman

A second half preview of under and over achieving hitters, and some thoughts on Austin Kearns, Josh Beckett, Carl Crawford, Rickey Henderson and others.

Major League Baseball : The Official Site

Box scores are working at mlb.com, in the form of the excellent Gameday pages. Box scores are working at Yahoo, too. Maybe it’s because I got a little peeved at ESPN a few days ago, but they haven’t had any box scores all night.

Down Carrie, down.

ESPN.com – MLB – BOXSCORE

It seems that even if you switch to another box score ESPN is happy to switch you from NO REFRESH to 90 SECOND refresh.

Why in tarnation am I still here? Why are you? Let me know. Thanks.

ESPN.com – MLB – Olney: Ripple effect

Buster takes an interesting angle when he says Beltran helps the Astros because their defense has been so bad. In spite the success of the pitchers, I agree. And it doesn’t hurt that he gets on base, runs, and hits for power.

Major League Baseball : Beltran Deal Fallout

I contribute to a package of opinions about the deal and what it will mean in the fantasy precincts, here.

ESPN.com – MLB – Scoreboard

ESPN.com has gotten pretty aggressive with it’s Insider program. First of all, they invalidated my username/password combo, which I’d had since 1996, when I was their first fantasy columnist–they published my projections in 1995 with the first week of launching, Ask Rotoman originated in 1996, and I wrote a series of 30 stories from 30 spring training camps in 30 days for a few years.

I can’t blame them for that.

Then they moved Rob Neyer behind the wall, which may be good business but doesn’t feel like it is. I visited to read Neyer, but if I want to pay to read him I’ll buy his books. His column is fun but way to slight to make me want to pay for it.

But old habits die hard and even though I “watch” the games at mlb and have come to like much of the fantasy services at Yahoo, when I’m just looking for news my fingers usually type ESPN.

But now the smart guys there have decided to default auto refresh of pages to on, meaning that I can’t sit on a page and read the box score without having the page redraw every 30 seconds. If I press the off button it stops, but if I jump to another page and then come back, the refresh is set at 30 seconds again. Even at a time like now, when all the major league action is done for the day.

If I was an insider, I’m sure, the site would recognize me and adapt my preferences, which would be no refresh (I can hit the button myself when I want to). It’s hard to begrudge the folks at Disney their money, though if they hadn’t blown all that money on the cartoon with Roseanne Barr playing a bossy cow maybe they wouldn’t have had to be so bossy themselves.

ESPN.com – MLB – Beltran sent to Astros in three-team trade

Obviously Beltran owners in AL leagues are bummed, but they had to be ready for this. The question is how high are NLer’s expectations.

I did a survey of AL hitters who moved to the NL following Shawn Green’s rather rude introduction to the senior circuit a few years ago. A little surprisingly, AL hitters moving to the NL do take a hit, at least in the short term. Not all of them, of course, but on the whole.

Which doesn’t mean you shouldn’t jump all over Beltran. Even if he’s half as roto valuable in the second half in Houston, he’ll be worth an all-in bid. There is no way any team in position to acquire him can take a pasadena. But if he starts out 2 for 33 remember that the NL has some kind of hex on AL initiates.

But it doesn’t last.

Baseball Prospectus | Articles | Prospectus Today: Sheehan–Biased

I think this Joe Sheehan piece is on the free part of the Baseball Prospectus site. Sheehan is a very smooth writer and almost always a pleasure to read, but to my taste he usually goes on a little too long about not quite enough to truly enjoy.

But this Prospectus Today piece is the much-needed antidote to too much BP self promotion and self congratulation. I’ll let you read it, but let me say that my estimation of the goings on at BP have risen measurably today.

Growth is good.

Major League Baseball : Ask Rotoman

The new column is out, with lots of comparisons. Boone, Polanco and Vidro. Pedro and Prior. Manny and Lance. Byrd and Capuano. Wha?

Also, what to do when some jerk stops playing in your league, and an evaluation of the closer situation in Arizona.