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
Killing two birds with one stone (1)
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) 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
Thursday, July 30, 2009Roster DoctorPosted by Paul Singman at 3:14amWelcome 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. The owner of today's team is Jeff Zimmerman (also goes by TusconRoyal) a respected writer at Beyond the Boxscore and Driveline Mechanics so I'll be more than happy to take a look at his team and see what I can make of it. The settings: Player Pool: Mixed No. of Teams: 14 Categories: Runs, RBI, OBP, SLG%, Net SB // Wins, Saves, Strikeouts, ERA, WHIP Scoring: Rotisserie Other notes: Daily updates, Non-keeper, no bench (BN) spots Roster: C - A.J. Pierzynski C - Yadier Molina 1B - Justin Morneau 2B - Placido Polanco 3B - Russell Branyan SS - Rafael Furcal CI - Maicer Izturis MI - Edgar Renteria LF - Matt Holliday CF - Curtis Granderson RF - Denard Span OF - Scott Podsednik OF - Grady Sizemore Util - Adam Kennedy SP - Joba Chamberlain SP - Carlos Villanueva SP - Dan Meyer SP - Alfredo Aceves SP - Aaron Poreda RP - Francisco Cordero RP - Dan Wheeler RP - David Aardsma RP - Jose Valverde P - Leo Nunez P - Mark DiFelice DL - Hong-Chih Kuo Jeff sent over the full standings of his league so I know he is last in OBP, Wins, and Strikeouts, and tied for second-to-last in SLG%. He is in 10th place with 66.5 points (that number may have changed in the days since his submission) and the leader currently has 106.5 points. He also recently made a trade he termed "unfair yet necessary" that was Brian Fuentes for Span with him receiving Span—one I agree was a good deal given his team's situation. Let me start off by saying this: You have literally zero percent chance of winning this league. You can, however, give a good show for the final two months and greatly improve your position in the standings. And your hitting, despite the Span trade, needs to be further improved. My suggestion is to trade starter Joba Chamberlain for as big a hitter as he will command. Since he is riding the coattails of two great back-to-back starts his value should be peaking, making this a great time to trade him. Having seen him live for one of those two starts and having watching part of the other on television, I know that a lot of his outs were on hot-shot ground balls and line drives that luckily were hit directly at fielders. That luck, as you know, will not continue. Joba is still a good pitcher, but is not the type you need when pitching at his more probable 4.20 ERA self. You should be looking to get guys who can go late in games, increasing their chance of getting the win and racking up strikeouts. Considering your league is without a maximum innings pitched limit, I would stockpile some more starters and even consider streaming fringe starters when they are facing poor offenses. Ian Snell, Luke Hochevar, Chris Tillman, and Jason Hammel all make good speculative adds if unowned, and I would be willing to drop some of your weaker pitchers like Villanueva, Poreda (now in the minors) and Dan Wheeler to add these guys. Although it may hurt your pristine ERA and WHIP to an extent, the reward of climbing the wins and strikeout categories will be greater if you make smart moves. The hitter you receive in return for Joba can be of any position, since the new player can fill the Util spot with Kennedy moved over to MI, replacing Renteria. Even before a trade gets done I would drop Renteria for almost anyone, though Delwyn Young or Christian Guzman would be preferred additions. The last type of move I would consider would be moving Podsednik to a team more desperate for steals. Depending on what you can get in return compared to the estimated stolen base loss, acquiring a more powerful outfielder like Jonny Gomes may increase your point total in several categories. With at least some of the moves I suggested implemented, hopefully your team will gain some ground in the categories you are really lacking in without losing too much in the ones you are currently doing well in. For some people it is either first or nothing, but for others finishing in fifth is better than in one of the last spots. If you are in the latter group, let's see how far your team can climb. 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.
Paul Singman said...
Haha, no those are not baseball websites that specialize in fantasy baseball. Driveline Mechanics specializes on breaking down players’ swing and windup mechanics, and Beyond the Boxscore is a more stat-based website with a focus on graphs. Both are good sites and I wouldn’t let Jeff’s team make you think otherwise. Posted 07/30 at 11:53 PM
Dan Turkenkopf said...
Paul, Thanks for the kind words about Beyond the Box Score, but I wouldn’t say we “focus on graphs” there. We like using graphs to illustrate our points, but our goal is intelligent analysis of baseball - generally through statistics. Graphs are just one tool to accomplish that. I guess what I’m saying is: even if graphs aren’t your thing, you can still find a lot to like at Beyond the Box Score. Posted 07/31 at 06:06 PM
Derek Carty said...
While we’re talking about it, I’ll chime in and give an endorsement to Beyond the Boxscore, for those unfamiliar. Not a fantasy site, but it still has some stuff that can be applied to fantasy baseball and is a great baseball destination in general. Many of the writers, like Dan, also write for the main section of THT. Posted 07/31 at 07:01 PM
Jeff Zimmerman said...
First, I would love to tank Paul for the help. This league was rough in that it was a keeper league and I mainly kept bats and a couple of relievers. My starting pitching the previous year was average so I kept no SP. Also, when I draft I always try to take the best players and Joba was the only SP that even came close to making the cut. Another problem I didn’t mention was that I was way too high on Chris Davis. Since he was sent down, I couldn’t keep him on my bench and just had to release him. I think what Paul does is great in giving a second set of eyes to the team. I have been able to turn Joba and Aardsma into Bartlett and Figgins. The grouping for OBP in closer and more people are reachable so I am making a push there. Posted 08/03 at 11:37 AM
Page 1 of 1
Commenting is not available in this weblog entry.
Next Post: Dump trades and free markets>> <<Previous Post: Former top pitching prospects revisited |
this guy is supposed to be a fantasy writer? his team is god awful. i’m going to steer clear from those websites, unless they want to hire me.