Roster Doctor

Welcome 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.


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dk
14 years ago

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.

Paul Singman
14 years ago

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.

Dan Turkenkopf
14 years ago

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.

Derek Carty
14 years ago

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.

Jeff Zimmerman
14 years ago

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.