Order Now The Hardball Times Baseball Annual 2010 is now in development and will ship in mid November! This year's book will feature articles by THT's staff as well as Bill James, Rob Neyer, Tom Tango and Craig Wright. If you use this link to purchase the Annual, you will be in the first group to receive it and you'll be supporting THT.  Derek Ambrosino
John Burnson Derek Carty Marco Fujimoto Eriq Gardner Matt Hagen Jonathan Halket Rob McQuown Troy Patterson Mike Silver Paul Singman Michael Street And here's the full roster. Got a question for our fantasy baseball experts? Email us:
Heater MagazineAdd 10 MPH to your fantasy team — see for yourself
HEATER MAGAZINE Winner, 2008 CBS Sportsline Fantasy League of Experts  Plus our Statistical Definitions Most Recent Comments
Top 10 prospects for 2010: Toronto Blue Jays and Kansas City Royals (8)
Top 10 prospects for 2010: Chicago White Sox and Detroit Tigers (4) Waiver Wire Offseason: NL (2) Acey-deucey (1) Waiver Wire Offseason: NL (12) Monthly Archives
November, 2009
October, 2009 September, 2009 August, 2009 July, 2009 June, 2009 May, 2009 April, 2009 March, 2009 February, 2009 January, 2009 December, 2008 November, 2008 October, 2008 September, 2008 August, 2008 July, 2008 June, 2008 May, 2008 April, 2008 March, 2008 February, 2008 January, 2008 December, 2007 November, 2007 October, 2007 September, 2007 August, 2007 July, 2007 June, 2007 May, 2007 Gear up for baseball season with Chicago White Sox tickets and New York Yankees tickets. LA Angels tickets, Houston Astros tickets, and Atlanta Braves tickets are hot sellers! You can get Boston Red Sox tickets, San Diego Padres tickets or Chicago Cubs tickets for your favorite baseball fan. Coast to Coast Tickets has the best MLB tickets like Minnesota Twins tickets, LA Dodgers tickets, Milwaukee Brewers tickets, New York Met tickets and St. Louis Cardinals tickets. Find premium Chicago Cubs tickets and other Chicago tickets at JustGreatTickets.com. Chicago Cubs Tickets Chicago Tickets  All content on this site (including text, graphs, and any other original works), unless otherwise noted, is licensed under a Creative Commons License. |
Most Recent Posts
Friday, May 29, 2009Roster Doctor - 5/29/09Posted by Paul Singman at 1:10amWelcome to THT Fantasy's Roster Doctor. If you'd like your team to be analyzed by one of our fantasy baseball experts, please send your full roster to this address. Also be sure to include your league's player pool (mixed, AL-only, NL-only), number of teams, scoring format (roto, head-to-head, points, etc.), categories, whether or not it's a keeper league, and any other pertinent information. If your roster is selected it will be analyzed in a future Roster Doctor column. I chose a deep league for today so this roster will not look like an All-Star ballot... Player Pool: Mixed No. of Teams: 16 Categories: Traditional 5x5 (except instead of stolen base totals, it is net stolen bases [NSB]) Scoring Type: Head-to-Head Roster: C - John Baker 1B - Adrian Gonzalez 2B - Chase Utley 3B - Mark Teahen SS - Stephen Drew LF - Jayson Werth CF - Carlos Beltran RF - Matt Kemp Util - Nelson Cruz BN - Juan Pierre BN - Adrian Beltre BN - Matt LaPorta BN - Mat Gamel DL - Ryan Doumit SP - Chad Billingsley SP - Javier Vazquez RP - Brian Fuentes RP - Brad Ziegler P - Yovani Gallardo P - LaTroy Hawkins P - Carl Pavano BN - Andrew Bailey DL - Kelvim Escobar For a 16-team league, I think your hitting is overall, quite good. Your outfield is stacked like Scarlett, as is the right side of your infield. The left side of your infield however, manned by Drew and Teahen, needs to be reworked. Actually, Teahen is a decent option at third, and he is the type of player that provides more value than he commands in a trade so I suggest keeping him as a role player. Drew, on the other hand, is the hitter on your team I would look to upgrade right away. He has been playing too terribly to be worthy of netting you anything valuable in a trade so the players you give up should either be outfielders or starting pitchers. Luckily, Drew is not the only shortstop struggling right now and other shortstops that are struggling—such as Jimmy Rollins and J.J. Hardy—can be acquired relatively cheaply and are more likely to break out of their slumps. Both are discussed briefly in this article. In a perfect world, you would be able to trade the players you feel are valuable yet somewhat expendable in return for players you deem more helpful to your team's cause. However, sometimes it is important to trade the players that, even though are playing great for your team, have a higher perceived value than what they most likely will produce in the future. Adrian Gonzalez is a perfect example of this type of player. Adrian is a great player, but right now he is perceived by some as a super-elite player and can haul quite the load of player(s) in a trade. His current 37.7 percent HR/FB rate is unsustainable and for the rest of the season, most likely, he will play like the .280/35/100 hitter he is; not the .280/63/120 player he currently is on pace for. Winning owners will recognize this and receive players in trades that will produce better numbers for the rest of the season than the players they are trading away. If you can acquire a "super-elite" player for Gonzalez, I would accept. I feel Nelson Cruz' production is pretty legitimate by the way. None of his indicator stats jump out at me so he is someone worth keeping if no one is biting on trade offers with him. In your submission you note that you would like to bolster your pitching, and in my opinion, that is unnecessary. Billingsley is one of the best pitchers in the game right now—although I would like to see his BB/9 rate decrease, not increase as he supposedly matures. Right now he has given up 30 walks in 67 innings, good for a 4.03 walk rate per nine innings. Still, he is one of the best pitchers in the game and when combined with Vazquez and Gallardo, the three make a formidable three-headed strikeout machine. A relief corps of Fuentes, Ziegler, and Bailey to back him up is solid—there is no reason to try and improve them by any means other than through free agency. The rookies you have taken a stab on—LaPorta and Gamel—have yet to pay off but I would hold onto at least Gamel for now. My feeling is he could get hot at any moment, and can make a nice platoon player when facing righties. The implication is that LaPorta is expendable, and if a player in free agency catches your fancy, he would be the one to drop. So what you should be doing immediately after reading this is to start attempting to acquire a new shortstop. I gave you my suggestions of who to target, but almost anyone will suffice over Drew. After that major upgrade, I would feel comfortable carrying this team throughout the rest of the season and into the playoffs. Yes, I do think you will make them. Paul has been managing fantasy baseball teams for many seasons and writing for THT Fantasy over the past year (and counting). In his first year competing in expert's leagues, he is both surprised and happy to say he finished in the top 30% of his three leagues. He welcomes readers' thoughts at his email here or in the comments below. Commenting is not available in this weblog entry. Next Post: Waiver Wire>> <<Previous Post: Minor League Mailbag |
