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May 22, 2013
THT Essentials:
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Rich Barbieri
John Barten Kyle Boddy Brian Borawski James Gentile Matt Hunter Frank Jackson Chris Jaffe Brad Johnson Jason Linden Dan Lependorf Bruce Markusen Jeff Moore Greg Simons Scott Spratt Dave Studeman Shane Tourtellotte Steve Treder And here's the full roster. Now availableYou can now purchase the Hardball Times Baseball Annual 2013, with 300 pages of great content. It's also available on Amazon and Kindle. Read more about it here.
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Fantasy Articles
Following are the one hundred most recent articles for the category
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05/22/2013: The daily grind: 5-22-13by Brad Johnson05/22/2013: And That Happenedby Craig Calcaterra05/22/2013: Fantasy Waiver Wire: Week 8, Vol. IIby Jack Weiland05/22/2013: The hardest thingby Derek Ambrosino05/22/2013: 20th anniversary: Blue Jays mascot ejectedby Chris Jaffe05/22/2013: Currently historic: A plethora of new stuffby Jason Linden05/22/2013: BOB: Owners’ meeting updateby Brian Borawski05/21/2013: And That Happenedby Craig Calcaterra05/21/2013: The daily grind: 5-21-13by Brad Johnson05/21/2013: 50th anniversary: Jim Maloney: a star is bornby Chris Jaffe05/21/2013: Diamonds in the rough: starting pitchersby Noah Woodward05/21/2013: Profar could be on a Cingrani-esque scheduleby Jeff Moore05/21/2013: Is 5/125 the new 5/55?by Greg Simons05/21/2013: The Verdict: keep your trade secrets to yourselfby Michael Stein05/21/2013: THT Awardsby John Barten05/20/2013: Closer watchby Karl de Vries05/20/2013: The daily grind: 5-20-13by Brad Johnson05/20/2013: And That Happenedby Craig Calcaterra05/20/2013: The Hot Seatby Scott Strandberg05/20/2013: AL Central: state of the divisionby Chris Jaffe05/20/2013: Fantasy Waiver Wire: Week 8, Vol. 1by Karl de Vries05/20/2013: Louisville slugging in 2013by Frank Jackson05/20/2013: 5,000 days since Eric Milton’s no-hitterby Chris Jaffe05/17/2013: The daily grind: 5-17-13by Brad Johnson05/17/2013: And That Happenedby Craig Calcaterra05/17/2013: Gems without whiffsby James Gentile05/17/2013: 40th anniversary: Bobby Valentine breaks his legby Chris Jaffe05/17/2013: Strength of schedule: Adjusting hitter valuesby Moe Koltun05/17/2013: Fantasy Waiver Wire: Week 7, Vol. IIIby Jack Weiland05/17/2013: Card Corner: 1973 Topps: Mike Andrewsby Bruce Markusen05/16/2013: Dear Jonathan Sanchez: Do you mind if we ‘Oliver Perez’ you?by Pat Andriola05/16/2013: The daily grind: 5-16-13by Brad Johnson05/16/2013: And That Happenedby Craig Calcaterra05/16/2013: How Scott Kazmir got his groove backby Kyle Boddy05/16/2013: Three more for eternityby Don Malcolm05/16/2013: Not exactly definitiveby Don Malcolm05/16/2013: The all-decade team: the ‘40sby Richard Barbieri05/16/2013: Of Uggs and Ugglaby Derek Ambrosino05/15/2013: The daily grind: 5-15-13by Brad Johnson05/15/2013: And That Happenedby Craig Calcaterra05/15/2013: Running hot and coldby Shane Tourtellotte05/15/2013: The Phillies should retool but not rebootby Brad Johnson05/15/2013: Fantasy Waiver Wire: Week 7, Vol. IIby Karl de Vries05/15/2013: Currently historic: 300 strikeouts?by Jason Linden05/15/2013: Mike Moustakas’ holeby Noah Woodward05/15/2013: BOB: How bad is the Marlins’ attendance?by Brian Borawski05/14/2013: And That Happenedby Craig Calcaterra05/14/2013: The daily grind: 5-14-13by Brad Johnson05/14/2013: How much do hot/cold starts matter?by Greg Simons05/14/2013: 25th anniversary: The Jose Oquendo Gameby Chris Jaffe05/14/2013: Jonathan Schoop and the value of role playersby Jeff Moore05/14/2013: THT Awardsby John Barten05/13/2013: The daily grind: 5-13-13by Brad Johnson05/13/2013: And That Happenedby Craig Calcaterra05/13/2013: 30th anniversary: Reggie’s 2,000th Kby Chris Jaffe05/13/2013: NL Central division update: May editionby Jason Linden05/13/2013: Fantasy Waiver Wire: Week 7, Vol. Iby Jack Weiland05/13/2013: Last remaining teammatesby Chris Jaffe05/13/2013: The Hot Seatby Scott Strandberg05/12/2013: The curious case of Vernon Wellsby Matt Filippi05/12/2013: 60th anniversary: Whitey Ford’s near no-hitterby Chris Jaffe05/10/2013: The daily grind: 5-10-13by Brad Johnson05/10/2013: And That Happenedby Craig Calcaterra05/10/2013: 15,000 days since facial hair returns to baseballby Chris Jaffe05/10/2013: Cooperstown Confidential: What really happened with Fritz Ostermueller and Jackie Robinsonby Bruce Markusen05/10/2013: Fantasy Waiver Wire: Week 6, Vol. IIIby Karl de Vries05/10/2013: Still life, after allby Azure Texan05/09/2013: Oh Dustyby Pat Andriola05/09/2013: And That Happenedby Craig Calcaterra05/09/2013: 40th anniversary: back-to-back first homersby Chris Jaffe05/09/2013: The Roto Grotto: rates versus opportunitiesby Scott Spratt05/09/2013: Swing rates: the John Farrell effectby Moe Koltun05/09/2013: Winning, TWTW, and the purpose of baseballby Matt Hunter05/08/2013: And That Happenedby Craig Calcaterra05/08/2013: The daily grind: 5-8-13by Brad Johnson05/08/2013: Fantasy Waiver Wire: Week 6, Vol. IIby Jack Weiland05/08/2013: What nobody is talking aboutby Greg Simons05/08/2013: Currently historic: A truly rare achievementby Jason Linden05/08/2013: Craig Anderson’s greatest dayby Frank Jackson05/08/2013: 40th anniversary: Stargell hits one out of Dodger Stadiumby Chris Jaffe05/08/2013: BOB: Stadium updatesby Brian Borawski05/07/2013: And That Happenedby Craig Calcaterra05/07/2013: The daily grind: 5-7-13by Brad Johnson05/07/2013: Josh Donaldson and the myth of the ‘New Moneyball’by Pat Andriola05/07/2013: Fun with minor league leader boardsby Jeff Moore05/07/2013: 90th anniversary: Casey Stengel goes bonkersby Chris Jaffe05/07/2013: THT Awardsby John Barten05/07/2013: A.J. Ellis: hardly swinging, hardly missingby Noah Woodward05/07/2013: Baseball Press: a fantasy secret weaponby Jack Weiland05/07/2013: The Verdict: keeping it on the DLby Michael Stein05/06/2013: The National League Graph, 2013by Dave Studeman05/06/2013: And That Happenedby Craig Calcaterra05/06/2013: The daily grind: 5-6-13by Brad Johnson05/06/2013: AL East division update: May editionby Nick Fleder05/06/2013: That other infield shift, and five hitters who should fear itby Noah Woodward05/06/2013: The Hot Seatby Scott Strandberg05/06/2013: Last living linksby Chris Jaffe05/06/2013: Fantasy Waiver Wire: Week 6, Vol. Iby Karl de Vries05/05/2013: The American League Graph, 2013by Dave Studeman05/04/2013: 50th anniversary: Braves balk-a-thonby Chris Jaffe<< Click here to return to the category list. |
![]() March 27, 2013Tough time for NL third sackersMaybe there's something going around, but National League third basemen seem to be getting more than their fair share of injuries of late. Fans and fantasy owners probably are a bit panicked right now as this plague spreads.Click for more... Posted by: Greg Simons September 25, 2012Dee Gordon, invisible manI've been reading Bill Chuck's Billy-Ball.com for years, and he and I exchange e-mails about his posts from time to time. On Monday, Bill had a post that caught my eye for an odd reason, and I felt obliged to comment.Bill was citing the number of players with 20-plus stolen bases thus far in the 2012 season. Having just watched Sunday night's Dodgers-Reds tilt that included Dee Gordon throwing balls everywhere except to the first baseman's glove, Gordon was on my mind. (I have Gordon on a fantasy team, too, so I've been following him and his one-category contributions all season long.) I couldn't help but notice that the speedy Gordon wasn't listed among those with at least 20 swipes, so I mentioned this to Bill. He responded that he had done a search at Baseball-Reference.com, and we all know the power and wonder that is B-Ref, so the lack of Gordon on the list was surprising. I could think of only one explanation for this omission, which I shared with Bill: "Maybe B-Ref looks at his overall game, realizes he does NOTHING good except stealing bases and makes the value judgment to disregard him as a baseball player. It doesn't sound logical, but it's the best reason I can think of." Bill found the glitch and re-posted the list, but I couldn't stop thinking about Gordon and his future. With the acquisition of Hanley Ramirez, the Dodgers found a shortstop for the remainder of 2012. However, 2013 could be a different story, with Ramirez possibly shifting to third base once again and opening up short for Gordon. The question is, can Gordon do enough to justify the starting role? Yes, he has terrific speed. In about one-third of a season last year, Gordon swiped 24 bags, and this year he has pilfered 31 bases in about a half-season of games. But what else does he bring to the table? Last year, he raised expectations with a .304 batting average in 224 at-bats. Sure, his slugging percentage was an unimpressive .362, as was his .325 on-base percentage, but if Gordon could hit .300, he would at least appear to be providing value. This season? How about a .228/.281/.281 triple-slash line? Gordon's stick has gone flaccid. Defense? Well, if you watched Sunday's performance, you got a glimpse of why people question whether Gordon can remain a shortstop. So you have a weak-hitting, poor-fielding speedster. The mid-1970s Oakland A's took a player like this, Herb Washington, and made him a pinch-runner. Incredibly, Washington appeared in 92 games in 1974 but had zero (yes, zero!) plate appearances. (He returned in 1975 for a mere 13 games, also without ever standing at the dish.) Dee Gordon is almost certainly a better player than Herb Washington, but he needs to make some significant improvements at the plate and in the field if he wants to stick in the big leagues for any length of time. Posted by: Greg Simons February 02, 2012THT Forecasts - 2012 fantasy price guidesIn addition to the Oliver database, reports, projections, and watch lists, THT Forecasts also has a fantasy price guide that you can customize with your league specifications (although note that not all stat categories you can imagine are present yet; we'll work on that!).Also, the fantasy price guides are updated as the season progresses and new data are added to the Oliver database, thus changing the projections for the remainder of the season to assist you with waiver wire pick-ups, trades, etc.. You can then return to your price guide at the end of the season to evaluate players and see what they should have been worth before the season started (thus best to transfer and save your pre-season fantasy price guide for comparison). Note that the fantasy price guide lists players according to their dollar values for an auction draft, but the rankings can still be applied to a snake draft. For a league that uses a points structure, you can switch to the customizable reports, download and open them with your favorite spreadsheet, and then include your stat-cat modifiers to calculate point totals for the players. Finally, using Yahoo! Fantasy Baseball's default league auction and roto settings, here are the top projected offensive players: Pos Players 2012 Value C Mike Napoli $34 1B Albert Pujols $55 2B Dan Uggla $30 3B Jose Bautista $40 SS Troy Tulowitzki $32 OF Matt Kemp $57 OF Mike Stanton $47 OF Ryan Braun $44 Util Miguel Cabrera $52 Util Joey Votto $46THT Forecasts is available for the 2012 season, with Brian Cartwright's Oliver database providing over 9000 projections for major and minor leaguers. Visit Forecasts today to learn more and sign up for only $14.95! Posted by: Greg Tamer July 26, 20111,000,000,000 seconds of fantasy baseball (7/26/11)At some point today, it’ll be 1,000,000,000 seconds since baseball experienced one of its biggest and most unlikely transformations.All those ticks of the clock ago, Dan Okrent drew up the rules for Rotisserie Baseball, beginning the fantasy sports craze. Started as something small among a group of friends, fantasy baseball—and fantasy sports as a whole—has transformed into a mutli-million (multi-billion?) dollar annual industry, completing reworking how people follow the game. Old local allegiances can be replaced by overriding concern for how your players are doing. It’s so all-pervasive now that it’s like breathing the air. It’s all around and you can’t imagine sports without it. That said, it’s also the creature of modern media communications. In order to have fantasy sports, you need to be able to follow your players on a daily basis, and that means follow all teams. That was tough to do back in the day. As a kid growing up in the 1980s, the local paper gave box scores and some info, but only on Sunday would they give you season’s stats for all around the league, and that was highly fragmentary. The first revolution was USA Today, a national paper with much a much wider number of season stats made available. The real breakthrough, of course, was the intern. Now we all have access to players’ seasonal numbers, often updated to the second. Dan Okrent’s billion second moment greatly predates the internet, but Rotisserie and similar leagues have become much larger as a result. It’s so big that Okrent once said he could create a number of inventions, win a shelf-full of awards, and further humanity in numerous ways, but when he dies the first line of his obituary will still say “invented Rotisserie baseball.” Aside from that, many other events celebrate benchmarks today, whether it is traditional anniversaries or “day-versaries” (which are events occurring X-thousand days ago). Here they are, with the better ones in bold if you just want to skim: Click for more... Posted by: Chris Jaffe June 06, 2011Quiz results: Pujols’ OPSMaybe Albert Pujols read the pop quiz post Friday, voted for "Over 1050" and set out to make that a reality. Whatever the reason, he pumped his 2011 OPS up from .746 heading into Friday's game to .826 following Sunday's 10th-inning, game-ending, series-sweeping home run.Yes, that's an 80-point gain in a mere three contests. That's what going 6-for-11 with three walks, a hit-by-pitch, four homers, one double, seven RBI and seven runs scored over the weekend will do for a player's numbers. Additionally, his OPS+ climbed from 109 to 132. Had this quiz been posted today instead of Friday, there's little doubt the voting would have been different. Heck, I cast a vote for "850-950," but based on this outburst, I'd change to "950-1050" if I had to do it again. But timing is everything, so here is what The Hardball Times' readers had to say on the matter: Click for more... Posted by: Greg Simons Click here for more THT Notes. | ||||