2 Apr
Paul Sporer and Kevin Orris join the guys on Baseball Daily Digest Radio: http://www.blogtalkradio.com/thefantasyinsiders/2012/04/02/baseball-daily-digest-radio-with-joel-henard-and-albert-lang.
We’ll talk fantasy baseball, especially starting pitchers, the Atlanta Braves and much more to get you ready for the real opening day!
26 Jan
In Ray Flowers (@BaseballGuys) latest mail bag, he wrote, in essence, that head-to-head (h2h) fantasy baseball is bastardizing the game of baseball completely.
Ray’s first point: “Baseball is a marathon with 162 games. H2H turns that marathon into a sprint.”
I’m not sure how h2h turns the 162-game schedule into a sprint. h2h leagues run for the entire season. Sure some of that includes the fantasy play-offs, however, aren’t there play-offs in baseball? Isn’t the World Champion the winner of the play-offs? Do they give the regular season winner the World Series trophy? Nope. The best team is decided by a play-off. h2h has that, roto doesn’t.Neither is exactly like real baseball, each have their similarities and differences.
Ray’s second point: “Baseball is about consistency and working through the grind as much as anything. When you play H2H you remove that aspect of the game completely.”
His main argument, I think, is that Pujols alternating good weeks with wretched weeks would ruin you in h2h, but not roto. Well, that kind of runs against his point. In roto, all that matters are stats at the end of the year, you don’t have to weather slumps at all.
12 Dec
Matt Wieters: Awesome Catcher for the Platoon Advantage: http://www.platoonadvantage.com/2011/12/matt-wieters-awesome-catcher.html
It’s been an incredibly tough season/off-season for Orioles fans. After the way the club finished 2010 and a pretty good 2010 offseason (sure they made their share of bad signings, but, this time, they were limited to one-year deals!), which saw them deal fringy relievers for solider major league players, Orioles fans could smile a little smile that the team was at least sort of going in the right direction. On April 9, the Orioles were 6-2 and 5.5 games ahead of Boston and Tampa Bay. Of course, reality set in and the Orioles continued to completely and utterly fail to develop minor league talent at the major league level and finished 69-93, 28 games behind the Yankees. Then, the 2011 off-season came and GM candidate after candidate turned them down. Eventually, they hired Dan Duquette (who has been out of baseball almost as long as it has been since the Orioles finished above .500), and, sadly, it didn’t seem nearly as embarrassing as it could have been. Of course, the one joy Orioles fans had throughout the season was the defense of Matt Wieters. It was beautiful to watch him play baseball well. Then, when the Fielding Bible and Gold Glove Awards recently came out, we had validation for our love of Wieters.
9 Dec
The good: since 2001, when Buehrle began 11 straight seasons of 200+ innings, Buehrle is first in the majors in innings, 21st in BB/9 (min. 400 IPs), and seventh in WAR (Fangraphs edition) behind only Roy Halladay, CC Sabathia, Roy Oswalt, Javier Vazquez, Randy Johnson and Johan Santana. You can’t quibble with that consistent usefulness.
To date, Buehrle has a 3.83 ERA, 1.28 WHIP, 2.48 K:BB rate and 45.9% ground ball (GB) rate. However, there are some chinks in the armor. He led the league in hits four times and, as Dave Cameron pointed out, his ERA likely benefited from some subjective ground ballness and how they are classified/scored as errors. As Cameron discovered, 10.1% of Buehrle’s runs allowed have been unearned. While his ERA puts him in great company, if you look at runs allowed, he seems more like Al Leiter, Barry Zito, Randy Wolf and Jarrod Washburn. You certainly can’t just assume all his unearned runs were a product of his insane amount of ground balls, but it is certainly possible he’s getting a little help from those scoring the games.
Another issue with Buehrle being the savior is that he’s old and has a tremendous amount of innings on his arm. Buehrle will be 33 years-old next year and has already pitched 2,476.2 innings in the majors. I wrote the majority of this before he signed, with the assumption that he would get a four-year deal, just based on the fact that every single team wanted him. I just don’t think he’ll stay productive that entire time, i.e., until his age 37 season. And I’m not sure I can find a pitcher similar to Buehrle who has.
Full article at TPA: http://www.platoonadvantage.com/2011/12/future-of-mark-buehrle.html
9 Dec
A stathead…er…An untrained observer with a working knowledge of the National League for the last eight years who stumbled upon the back of this card would likely assume that some combination of Roy Oswalt, Brandon Webb, Jake Peavy, Carlos Zambrano and Aaron Harang would fit the bill as the top starters in the National League from 2004-2009.
Not so fast! Marquis and his 9.5 WAR (Fangraphs) but amazing winability (80 Ws) is clearly involved, as noted by this fine 2010 Topps card.
Never mind that his 4.9 K/9 rate was the fifth lowest among starters with significant innings from that era (it was worse than Woody Williams, Kris Benson, Cory Lidle, Dave Bush, and many others). In addition, his ERA (4.49) was similarly amongst the worse, as were his FIP (4.84, which only bested Jeff Suppan) and xFIP (4.68). Like Jack Morris (who I revere), Marquis just pitched to the score. Right…
While that’s a lot of negativity, we can say that Marquis was durable (and averageish). He threw 1,177.1 IPs during that stretch, the fourth most behind Oswalt, Harang and Zambrano. Of course, that took its tool as he started the 2010 season late and struggled to win just two games. Apparently, it’s hard to pitch to the score when the Nationals are involved.
He pitched better on the surface in 2011, good enough to look like an innings eater to the Diamondbacks. Unfortunately, shortly after he was traded to Arizona, he broke his fibula and missed the rest of the year.
Regardless, Marquis has come a long way from Staten Island and the Little League World Series. In case you don’t remember, Marquis was on the third-place little league squad in 1991. He even beat Chad Pennington.
Pitching and winning must have seemed real easy in little league. It probably seemed harder but not impossible from 2004-2009. I imagine wining seems a lot more difficult now after struggling with losing teams and injuries.
Follow h2h_corner on Twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/h2h_corner
1 Dec
Talk about a seemingly non-ominous ominous reverse jinx card.
I’ve been a huge Sizemore fan since he went 20-20 in 2005 as a 22-year old. I’ve written about him for fantasy and I’ve handled this card carefully. It is one of those I wanted to write about but couldn’t get into it.
Until recently, Sizemore went out there, played hard and fabulously and never missed a game. From 2005-2008, Sizemore played 639 games, or 160 per year, and put up a .281/.372/.496 line paired with superb defense in centerfield.
But, maybe, just maybe, he should have taken a few more games off here and there. As the card alludes to, Sizemore missed two months in 2009. Unfortunately, that would be the beginning of a dramatic (hopefully abbreviated) Dale Murphy like swoon. Sizemore appeared in 210 games total from 2009-2011 and his production (.234/.314/.413) plummeted.
At 22 and 23, Sizemore’s career trajectory looked a lot like Duke Snider’s did at similar ages. At 24 and 25, his career resembled the great Barry Bonds. Now, he looks a lot like Trot Nixon, Reggie Smith (albeit a very good player), Bobby Bonilla, Ron Gant and Ellis Burks.
For awhile, Sizemore did it all. He is his high school’s all time leader in rushing yards and was a third round pick in the MLB draft. He was a shooting star and was part of the massive Bartolo Colon trade (Sizemore, Cliff Lee and Brandon Phillips), which basically ended the Expos. Heck, at the time, he even signed a pretty nice contract with an incredibly friendly 2012 club option – yet that option was declined (thankfully he got back together with Indians and hopefully his body will heal).
If this is just Sizemore playing out the string with a body that quit on him, let’s remember his 2006 season. He became the second player in MLB history to have at least 50 doubles, 10 triples, 25 home runs, and 20 stolen bases in a single season.
Here’s hoping he finds the magic elixir.
Follow h2h_corner on Twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/h2h_corner
h2h Corner 