Ask Rotoman

ESPN.com: MLB – Spring roundup: Rangers name Lewis No. 4 starter

A few notes from today’s news:

Lewis has a chance to be very good, and should be a target if you can get him under $5. He is also a young pitcher who could flounder. Cheap is good.

I let Mike Hampton get away in the XFL draft, though he was one of my prime targets while he was still in Colorado based on the idea that he would be traded over the winter (the innaugural XFL auction was at Ron Shandler’s AFL festival in November). Hampton got off to a rocky start this spring but has been pitching better lately. Many have pointed out that he was never really as good as he looked during those two fine years he had, but they are erroneously concluding that that means the Colorado experience was a reasonable one for him based on his talents. He may not win the Cy Young award, but there’s no reason to not to spend $10 or less on him.

Eric Byrnes has had a good spring and is going to get a chance to start while Chris Singleton recovers. Byrnes is still a prospect and while Singleton is a very good centerfielder, he doesn’t hit like an A. If Byrnes gets off to a quick start look for his playing time to increase quickly. That makes him worth a flyer, and cause you to knock a few bucks off Singleton and Terance Long’s prices.

ChicagoSports.com – Stewart set to sub for Wright

You may have to register to reach this page which refers to three inportant points:

Wright isn’t yet healthy enough to rely on.

Jerry Manuel is infatuated with Josh Stewart.

Carlos Lee is a terrible outfielder.

Wright has only pitched a couple of innings in the past three weeks, so it makes sense to bring him along slowly. But Stewart will be jumping from Double-A, where his results were fine last year but his ratios were mediocre.

The advice here is to let Jerry Manuel get giddy about Stewart, but be very wary yourself. And expect Carlos Lee to lose playing time because of his defense.

Jermaine Clark

Clark had a nice enough year in Triple-A last year, posting a .370 OBP. He has apparently made the Rangers as the backup second baseman. He has played some outfield in the past. And he runs.

He is an excellent sleeper, as Rotoworld points out here, in part because, contradicting what they say, Hank Blalock is not anything more than an emergency fill-in at 2B. No one thinks he makes the pivot well enough to play there regularly.

Clark is a name to put a star next to as a $1 end game flyer.

ESPN.com: MLB – Wrist twist: Glaus’ condition worries Angels

This is a huge story, not only if Glaus’s wrist is fractured, but even if it’s merely sprained. Hitters with wrist/hand/elbow/shoulder problems are often able to play, but are often unable to swing with their usual power.

Follow this story closely. I had Glaus down as someone to pursue aggressively this season, but I no longer think that’s the case. Caution is advised, at least until we know a lot more.

ChicagoSports.com – Alfonseca out 6 weeks

Two points here: Rod Beck probably makes the team because of this. The saves will be split between Remlinger, Veres and Guthrie. I’m putting my money on Veres.

The funny thing is this should hurt the Cubs, who have tried to stack their bullpen, a lot less than it does some fantasy teams. Still, no matter how well any of the subs do, it looks like Alfonseca will get the job back when he’s able to do it. Sometime in May.

ESPN.com: MLB – Relegated to Tigers bench, Easley asks club for trade

Damion Easley is a class act, and he has a contract that will certainly be impossible to trade. On top of that, Omar Infante isn’t ready to hit in the big leagues, though his enthusiasm and the Tigers’ need to generate runs, may well lead to some valuable stolen bases before he’s sent down to Toledo.

Easley is a fly ball hitter in a park that is suddenly a little smaller, stuck on a team that might like to get young in a hurry, but will probably experience some growing pains. If I can pick him off for a buck or two late in the day, I’m going to make Easley a sleeper.

Rotoworld.com

Sleeper alert. Lopez was the best candidate to close KC games, because MacDougal and Bukvich do not throw enough strikes. Now that he’s out of the rotation maybe Tony Pena will come to the same conclusion.

Unauthorized Entry – The Bush Doctrine: War� without� anyone’s� permission. By Michael� Kinsley

So far it seems we’re going down a different path, a better path, than the one threatened. Instead of bombing the crap out of Baghdad, to shock and awe, we seem to be attempting to pressure the outlying Iraqi armies to surrender, and to cut off the fish’s rotting head. So far so good.

But the reasons for opposing the war, I don’t think, have had much to do with whether or not we might win it expeditiously (and that, of course, is far from assured.) At issue is whether or not the world will be a better place for our invasion, and whether our liberties will be increased or decreased.

Kinsley doesn’t get at the broad range of implications of the Bush policy, the way Thomas Friedman (who supports the idea of our active participation in regime change) does, but he perfectly describes the utter breakdown of democractic ideas and ideal that suffuse this administration and the peril that we should all know comes from top down thinking, because our Constitution warns us about it repeatedly.

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Goodby to Some Old Baseball Ideas

I know, I know, you’re preparing for your draft and you have no time to dawdle for nostalgia.

Well, my buddy Mark Starr, who has a story in this week’s Newsweek about Theo Epstein and the “stats revolution” in baseball, sent me the link to this 1954 Branch Rickey story. A reader of his named Cyril Morong sent it to him.

Everything Rickey thinks was proved true didn’t turn out to be true, but his vision of the game and our ability (immeasurably enhanced by cheap computing power) to model it statistically, is breathtaking.

I wish Rickey was around to help us sort out the various issues surrounding Defense Independent Pitching Stats.