Patience is best remedy for early fantasy trouble
The 2012 season was barely a week old when someone asked me a question on Twitter: "At what point do you get concerned with Elvis Andrus?"
By Troy Taormina, US PresswireTexas Rangers shortstop Elvis Andrus didn't take long to break out of an early-season funk.
By Troy Taormina, US Presswire
Texas Rangers shortstop Elvis Andrus didn't take long to break out of an early-season funk.
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The
Texas Rangers shortstop was batting .125 with three hits and a walk in
his first 27 plate appearances and was on the bench that day for the
final game of a home series against the Seattle Mariners.
Presumably,
this fantasy owner had paid a fairly high price to land one of the
game's best young shortstops and was disappointed with the return on his
investment. His question is one that is asked nearly every time a top
player gets off to a slow start.
When should I start worrying?
My rather arbitrary —and perhaps a little flippant answer: "May TH>15."
The implication was it simply is too soon to tell anything after the first month, much less the first week.
Needless
to say, Andrus recovered from his slow start. He had three hits
immediately after his day off, and in the next 30 games (through May
15), he posted a .364 average (with a .441 on-base percentage), scored
22 runs and stole six bases.
The point isn't
to remind everyone Andrus is a good player to have on your fantasy team.
The point is while sample sizes are relatively small, most of the
early-season anomalies have worked themselves out … and fantasy owners
have a pretty good idea of where their teams stand.
As
a general rule, I try to wait until somewhere in mid- to late-May
before I take a serious look at where my teams are in the standings.
Unless there's a major buying opportunity, I don't actively explore
trade opportunities in the first six weeks of the season. My reason is
that if I've put a lot of thought into building the team, the players
should have ample time to show whether or not they'll produce what I
expected.
So what happens when those players
fail to live up to expectations and my team is sitting in the basement?
Well, yeah, then it's time to be concerned (statistics through Sunday).
Heal thyself
If your team is languishing, there's plenty of time to take corrective action.
The first step, though, is determining whether or not anything needs fixing.
At
this time last season, my team in the NL Tout Wars experts league was
struggling to stay out of the cellar. My most expensive starting pitcher
(Zack Greinke) and my second-most expensive hitter (Ryan Zimmerman) were on the disabled list. My $19 first baseman (Adam LaRoche) looked like he was headed to the DL, too.
Despite all the negatives, the team had upside if the injuries healed and a few slow starters (Madison Bumgarner, Mike Morse, Giancarlo Stanton and Freddie Freeman) came around.
That's
exactly what happened. I made one significant trade and one key free
agent pickup, but my team that ended up winning the league by a
nine-point margin largely was the team I assembled on draft day.
I
realize a little dumb luck might have helped — it's rare so many early
underachievers are as productive as mine eventually were — but the
self-examination that led to the decision to stay the course was valid.
Implementing a plan
The
first step in fixing a wayward fantasy team is determining how much
improvement is necessary. Major league teams reached the 40-game mark
this past weekend, a little less than a quarter of the season.
It's
easy enough to look at the league standings and multiply all the
counting categories by four to see projected season totals. The same can
be done for individual player stats.
A cursory glance at the league leaders tells us it's rather unlikely Josh Hamilton continues at his current pace and winds up with 72 home runs and 184 RBI. Emilio Bonifacio isn't going to lead the majors with 80 stolen bases (especially since he just went on the disabled list). And Derek Lowe probably isn't going to go 24-8 with the ridiculous ratio of 60 strikeouts to 72 walks.
If those players are spurring your team's success, don't get too confident.
On the other hand, we also have a pretty good idea Albert Pujols won't finish his first season for the Los Angeles Angels with a .211 average, 12 homers and 72 RBI.
You
might not be able to buy low on Pujols, but there are more than a few
players with sub-par numbers who make attractive trade targets —
especially for teams that need to make up a lot of ground.
Bargain hunting
One
of the most difficult commodities to acquire in fantasy baseball is
elite starting pitching. Dominance in four statistical categories,
combined with fewer roster spots allocated for pitching than hitting,
makes an ace extremely difficult to replace.
Tim Lincecum's struggles have been a topic of conversation all season. The San Francisco Giants' two-time Cy Young Award
winner has one quality start, but he is striking out more than a batter
an inning. One major reason his ERA is above 6.00 is a strand rate of
59.3%, one of the worst in the majors.
One way
to identify pitchers who should be posting better stats than they have
is by looking at the difference between their ERA and FIP (or Fielding
Independent Pitching, a stat that measures only factors that a pitcher
has under his control — such as walks, strikeouts and home runs
allowed). Lincecum, for example, has a FIP of 2.93 — a difference of
3.11.
Meanwhile, two former aces have
struggled on their way back from significant injuries, but we know the
talent is there. It might be a matter of shaking off the rust from a
year's worth of inactivity.
Josh Johnson
of the Miami Marlins is 2-3 with a 4.82 ERA, yet his FIP is nearly two
runs lower at 2.89. He has been hurt by a low strand rate (67%) and a
high opponents' average on balls in play (.366).
Adam Wainwright
of the St. Louis Cardinals is 2-5 with a 5.77 ERA, but most of the
damage has been done by an inordinate number of home runs. Despite
posting the highest ground-ball rate of his career, Wainwright has
yielded seven homers in 43⅔ innings. His home run-to-fly ball rate of
21.9% is one of the worst in the majors (and more than twice his career
mark of 8.2%). With average luck on fly balls, Wainwright's expected FIP
is at 3.31.
For fantasy teams having considerable ground to make up in the pitching categories, these guys (and to a lesser degree Max Scherzer, Matt Moore and Dan Haren in the American League) could be the ticket to ride back into contention.
From a hitting standpoint, there might be no bigger disappointment than Kansas City Royals first baseman Eric Hosmer.
His
.172 batting average ranks last in the American League (although he has
been at least somewhat productive with five homers, 19 RBI and 16 runs,
all slightly ahead of Pujols).
Hosmer also
might be having the worst luck of any hitter in 2012. The overall major
league average on balls in play is slightly below .300. But when Hosmer
makes contact, his average is an unsustainably awful .165. On the
positive side, he's striking out less often and walking more than he did
a year ago, when he hit .314 with 19 homers and 78 RBI and finished
third in AL rookie of the year voting. A turnaround seems imminent.
Finally,
there's another way to inject life into a dormant fantasy team: adding
someone who is on pace for no stats at all. Yes, several significant
players have yet to play a game but could be added inexpensively
through trades or the free agent wire. There's considerable risk in
depending on outfielders Carl Crawford and Morse, shortstop Stephen Drew or catcher Salvador Perez when they're just returning from injuries.
There's even more risk investing in veterans such as Manny Ramirez, Vladimir Guerrero, Hideki Matsui or Roy Oswalt .
But
for teams at the bottom of their league standings, picking up players
at the low point in their value is a way to start climbing back toward
the top.
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