Rickrolling your fantasy team

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Okay. Thanks to Mark, the GM of “Stalin’s Sluggers” for Rickrolling me, along with the rest of my league this morning, suggesting that Rick had some excellent advice for winning your fantasy baseball league.

Rick’s got a point. The first week of the season generally isn’t the time to give up on a player. Taking all the players who have recorded at least 20 plate appearances so far, I present to you the ten worst players in Major League Baseball so far in 2008, based on their on-base percentage and slugging:

	OBP	SLG
Rodriguez, Ivan C DET	0.2	.300
Cantu, Jorge 1B FLA	0.2	0.2
LaRoche, Adam A. 1B PIT	0.1667	0.1364
Polanco, Placido 2B DET	0.087	0.087
Lowell, Mike 3B BOS	.2692	0.2083
Peralta, Jhonny SS CLE	0.1429	0.1905
Tulowitzki, Troy SS COL	0.2174	0.1905
Pence, Hunter CF HOU	0.1852	0.2222
Soriano, Alfonso LF CHC	0.087	0.0455
Ortiz, David DH BOS	.2593	0.2273

Honestly, is there anyone on this list you would drop now? With the exception of Cantu, every one of these players is owned in my league. No one’s moving. Go ahead and pull the trigger if you’re even considering downgrading Big Papi because at .0909 he’s a bit off his 3 year slugging percentage of .6169. Call me first, and I’ll make you an offer.

Playing with pitchers, you get a similar idea. As of the close of games yesterday, there were only 18 pitchers with two starts, and their IP ranged from a high of 16 (Jake Peavy) to a low of 9 (Odalis Perez). Using their ERA as a ham-fisted way of judging their performance so far (please, no flames about the relative merits of ERA vs. other metrics – finish reading first), you see that C.C. Sabathia had a miserable start to his season. Livan Hernandez has two wins and a 3.86 ERA. He also hasn’t walked anyone in his 14 innings.

Sabathia had a lousy start, no doubt. But if you take a look at their three-year averages, you see:

	WHIP	BAA	Kd9	ERA
Sabathia, C.C.	1.19	0.2525	7.76	3.47
Hernandez, Livan	1.499	.293	4.94	4.54

Sabathia, despite his performance, still had a k/9 ratio in the top half of all pitchers with 2 starts (7.59), which is quite close to his 3 year average of 7.76. Hernandez, on the other hand, had the lowest Kd9 ratio of all pitchers with 2 starts – 1.93. I’m intrigued by his performance and I’m going to pay a bit more attention to him next week, but I’m not putting him in yet.

Granted, neither of these two guys is Jake Peavy. But it does demonstrate that the first week of the season doesn’t show you too much about what the season’s going to be like. As for Peavy himself, his k/9 ratio so far of 6.75 is well off his usual average of 9.58. Call me if you want to let him go.

P.S.  By the way, for you Mets fans (or enemies) out there... there are several campaigns going to get the Mets to play his song every 7th inning stretch this season.  Have fun.

My draft: Part 2

This is the second part of my draft analysis, which covers picks 16-29.  I discussed the first 15 picks in an earlier post.

First permit me 4 sentences of whining and moaning...

I have to say that going into this part of the draft, I had expected a 24-hour break after the 15th pick, which I had intended to use to analyze my team and plan some intelligent picks. The bulk of the group decided to press on -- I didn't protest, and so I made some dumb picks. Nevertheless, I pulled the trigger and picked them, so I have to own responsibility and either trade ‘em or dump ‘em. In any case, I’m really not unhappy with the individual players – but I am less than pleased with the overall bunch.  Waah.

My picks

Round 16(#160): Matt Cain (SP SF)
Round 17(#161): Willy Taveras (OF COL)
Cain’s one of those pitchers that fall into the sleeper category. He probably won’t get a ton of run support, so I’m going to have to be careful about when I put him in. Taveras I grabbed because I was still short two outfielders, and I was looking for guys who could steal.

Round 18(#180): Dustin McGowan (SP TOR)
Round 19(#181): J.D. Drew (OF BOS)
McGowan had a pretty good finish to the season (WHIP was 1.143 post All-Star break), and with the Jays’ lineup, he should make for a good spot starter, with the potential to break out. Drew? He’ll help with OBP, and maybe knock in 10-15 HR if I’m lucky and he can stay healthy.

Round 20(#200): B.J. Ryan (RP TOR)
Round 21(#201): Heath Bell (RP SD)
Going into this round, I figured it was time to draft a set-up guy. I got absolutely housed in holds last year, so I had determined to pick up one of the relatively small number of reliable set-up men in the draft. I identified Shields, Rafael Betancourt, and Jonathan Broxton as people I wouldn’t mind having. Unfortunately, just as I queued these players up, they dropped off the board, being taken with picks #196, #198, and #199. This was the only expletive I uttered during the evening, but it was a loud one. So I picked up Heath Bell. After watching the Sox-A’s game Monday, I’m surprised I didn’t pick Okajima, who went with six picks later.

Ryan… well, let’s just say he was a long shot. Call it a roll of the dice.

Round 22(#220): Jeremy Accardo (RP TOR)
Round 23(#221): Randy Johnson (SP ARI)
Here’s another roll of the dice. If the Big Unit makes it back, he’s a high value pick. Accardo I got to back up Ryan.


Round 24(#240): Daniel Cabrera (SP BAL)
Round 25(#241): Jerry Owens (OF CHW)
The dice keep rolling. If Cabrera could ever dial it in, he’ll be unhittable. As far as Owens… a the time of the draft he was looking pretty good – there were some groin problems, but he was playing well and looked like he had put the injury behind him. As of today (3/26), he’ll be starting the season on the DL because of a tear.

Round 26(#260): Hiroki Kuroda (SP LA)
Round 27(#261): Clay Buchholz (SP BOS)
Once again, I go with the unproven Japanese League player. Kuroda had an insane 2006 season playing for the Hiroshima Carp, with a ridiculous 1.85 ERA and a 1.004 WHIP. He’s reported to be a serious groundball pitcher with really good control. Buchholz, at the time of the draft, looked like he’s be opening the season in Pawtucket. I’m not fooled, and neither are the other 76% of CBSsports.com fantasy owners who own him. He’ll be making the 50 minute trip up I-95 to Boston sooner rather than later.

Round 28(#280): Gil Meche (SP KC)
Round 29(#281): Brandon Lyon (RP ARI)
Meche could be a lot worse. Sure, he’ll not get much of any run support… but he’ll reliably start, and he did improve over the course of the season. As far as Lyon… I’m guessing he’ll get a bunch of saves and / or holds, but I also suspect I’ll pay for those with a loss or two unless he stops screwing around with his fastball and throws the good breaking stuff that got him 35 holds last year. I’m keeping a close eye on him.

Overall, I have to say that I’m not too happy with my team. I met my goal of drafting a more solid infield than I’ve had in previous years – but I also missed a few opportunities to draft players such as Posada who would have made a better contribution to my team. Next year, I’ll go into the draft aware of my tendency to pick “known” players. I also did a poor job of drafting my reserve, ending up with a huge stable of pitchers, several of whom I’ll have to let go in order to back up my batting. Right now I have a team that I’d project to finish in the middle of my league. I’ll need to make a few trades to improve my team and make it competitive.

My draft: Part 1

Right. So here is my team for this year. Out of respect to my league members, I’m not going to post everyone’s picks, though I’ll talk about a few of them as they relate to mine.

I picked this team for a 10-team rotisserie league, with basically standard scoring except that we count OBP and holds in addition to average and saves.

My overall strategy going into this draft was fairly straightforward. In general, I lean towards players with a higher OBP. However, in the past this has led me to have teams that do very well in runs scored, steals, and OBP, but weak in HR and RBI. So I started by ranking players using a variant of the “tiers” strategy described by CBSsports.com’s Scott White, highlighting players projected to have an OBP of .371 or higher (last year’s winning OBP).

For some strange reason, the computer gods deigned to give me the first pick. After my initial moment of glee, I recognized the mixed blessing of having the first pick. Sure I got to draft A-Rod. But then I would have to sit on my hands for 19 picks while a lot of good players dropped off the board. Then I’d get two back-to-back picks, but then the pattern would repeat itself. Every 19 picks, I get two.

So, with commentary, here are my picks.

Round 1 (#1): Alex Rodriguez
No real surprise here. I briefly considered, just for argument’s sake, the possibility of David Wright. Couldn’t do it, even if I seriously believed in the contract year theory.

Round 2(#20): Brandon Phillips (2B CIN)
Round 3(#21): Robinson Cano (2B NYY)
The first two rounds of the draft saw the middle infield go very quickly… particularly shortstops (Ramirez, Reyes, and Rollins were all gone) – and Chase Utley was the #9 pick. It was pretty clear that the quality at second base would be gone by the next chance I had to pick. So I grabbed both of these players, and took care of my MI/2B positions.

Round 4(#40): C.C. Sabathia (SP CLE)
Round 5(#41): Carlos Guillen (1B DET)
Approaching these picks, it looked as though Jeter might be available, but he was taken with the 36th pick. This cleared out most of the quality at that position. Luckily, Guillen still has SS eligibility in our league, and had him in my shortstops group, so I happily picked him. However, the computer slotted him in at 1B, which to my chagrin, I didn’t notice until a few rounds later. More about this later.

Going into the draft, I wanted a 1# and #2 starting pitcher. After that, I figured the quality would level off enough to make “tiering” ineffective. Picching went quickly in our draft – Santana (#8), Webb (#19), Verlander (#22), Beckett (#23), Dan Haren (#34), and even a pair of relievers -- Papelbon (#25) and K-Rod (#38) -- were all gone. C.C. Sabathia was the last first tier pitcher available. No problem here – I had him last year, and I think he’s up for a better year this one than last.

Round 6(#60): Brian McCann (C ATL)
Round 7(#61): Chipper Jones (3B ATL)
I like having a strong catcher, and there were only five I was willing to draft: Martinez, Martin, Mauer, Posada, and McCann. Mauer was actually the first catcher drafted (#14), and then one team took both Martinez (#32) and Martin (#49) on successive picks. At this point, I had the option of picking either Posada or McCann.

                  R | H | 1B |2B | 3B | HR | RBI| BB| KO| SB| CS | BA | OBP | SLG

McCann   51 | 136 | 80 | 38 | 0 | 18 | 92 | 35 | 74 | 0 | 1 | 0.2698 | 0.3200 | 0.4524
Posada    91 | 171 | 108 | 42 | 1 | 20 | 90 | 74 | 98 | 2 | 0 | 0.3379 | 0.4261 | 0.5435

Based on last year’s stats, this should have been a no-brainer. Yet for some reason, I pulled the trigger on McCann. Why? Probably because I’ve had him on my team for the last two seasons – coincidentally, picked him up at the start of his first full MLB season (which he ended hitting .332, with 24HR, 93 RBI, and an OBP of 0.3882). He’s a solid catcher – clearly one of the top catchers in MLB – but Posada’s the better player, and I should have picked him. Seems that I have a soft spot for former players… witness my picking of Sabathia.

Round 8(#80): Bobby Abreu (OF NYY)
Round 9(#81): John Smoltz (SP ATL)
By this point, I had noticed that the outfield pickings were getting pretty slim. So I grabbed Abreu for the outfield, and John Smoltz for my #2 started. I like reliable, and he falls into that category. Lackey was still available, but I didn’t grab him because I’ve been burned in the past on the mid-season return from the DL. He was taken with the 84th pick by a player who auto picked the entire team.

Round 10(#100): Corey C. Hart (OF MIL)
Round 11(#101): Todd Helton (1B COL)
I was surprised that Helton was still available at this point. He won’t do as much for batting as he has in the past, but I’m looking for him to pump up my OBP and hit about 90 RBI.

Round 12(#120): Ben Sheets (SP MIL)
Round 13(#121): Julio Lugo (SS BOS)
Ben Sheets has been injured so many times, I probably should have avoided him altogether. But none of his injuries are on that glorious arm he has, so maybe – just maybe – he can make it through a season…? Plus having him on my team gives me an excuse to listen to the Brewer broadcast, and Uecker still calls one of the most entertaining games in baseball.

Speaking of players I shouldn’t draft, we have Lugo. By this point, I had noticed that the computer had put Guillen at 1st base, instead of at shortstop where I intend him to reside for the season. Now, petulantly, the computer was requiring me to find a shortstop. I would have liked a shortstop with a reasonable OBP and good run scoring ability. None were available. So I picked Lugo. At least he’ll steal some bases while he negates Helton’s OBP.

Round 14(#140): Johnny Damon (OF NYY)
Round 15(#141): Jason Isringhausen (RP STL)
I wasn’t really intending to pick an all-Yankee team. But Damon was still available, and if he can stay healthy, he’ll be a good value. Izzy was one of the last second-tier relievers available.

I'll post the balance of my picks later.  As you can see, I've got some good players, but the makings of some problems, which will emerge in the final rounds of the draft.