Well, I’m off to Arizona Friday to compete in LABR (NL-only auction held Sunday night). It should be interesting. My strategy might turn out to be fairly radical, but I’ll let you know how it turned out next week. Wish me luck. As for responding to comments (and writing posts, for that matter), it should be pretty sporadic for the next few days, so bear with me. But for now, I’ll leave you with some more thoughts around the league:
Maybe not anymore, but Jeremy Bonderman has to be one of the most overrated players in baseball. Sure, his stuff is very good, but he’s yet to translate that into being an effective pitcher over the course of a year. During five seasons, he’s never had an ERA less than 4.00 or a WHIP less than 1.30. Because he throws so many sliders, he’s also a major injury risk. He’s dominated for stretches, has solid strikeout potential and last year’s soaring ERA can at least partially be explained by an abnormally high BABIP (.329), but he better come at a major discount at this point. His career K:B ratio of 2.56:1 is good, not great.
I really wish Adrian Gonzalez could somehow escape Petco Park. I still like him for fantasy purposes, but a would-be superstar is merely very good because of where he calls home. He still strikes out too much, but if he switched places with Todd Helton, he’d be a first round fantasy pick.
If you prorated Chase Utley’s stats from last year over the course of a full season, here’s what you’d get: 27 HR, 11 SB, 126 RBI, 128 Runs, .332 BA. He’s increased his batting average every season he’s played during his career, has three straight 100-RBI campaigns and is a very effective base stealer (84 percent success rate). He can handle southpaws, and with that lineup and ballpark, he simply can’t fall out of the top-5 of your fantasy draft.
If Joe Torre benches Andy LaRoche in favor of Nomar Garciaparra’s corpse and bats Matt Kemp at the bottom of the order I’m going to flip my lid. I’m convinced there’s a conspiracy why managers consistently go with veterans over younger, better talent. This would never happen in any other profession. Why does it in a billion dollar industry?
This is a good year to target Rafael Furcal, who is both coming off a miserable campaign and entering a contract year. An ankle injury can be partially blamed for his lackluster 2007, but if you compare his 2006 season with Jimmy Rollins’, you’ll find two very similar players. Rollins has improved since then, and I’m certainly not suggesting Furcal will be the better player in 2008, but I am cautioning you not to chase last year’s stats.
Nick Markakis is anything but under the radar these days, but that doesn’t mean he’s still not being undervalued in drafts. Prorate his numbers after the All-Star break last year over the course of a full season, and you get: 31 HR, 20 SB, 135 RBI, 113 Runs, .325 BA. He’s 24 years old. Prediction: Markakis has a better fantasy season than Vladimir Guerrero or Carlos Beltran.
Leave a Reply