Salient is an excellent design with a fresh approach for the ever-changing Web. Integrated with Gantry 5, it is infinitely customizable, incredibly powerful, and remarkably simple.
DownloadIf you are frantically searching for news from MLB teams, relax and enjoy a few days of either presents or silence and maybe work on your lists (you can never have too many lists or update them often enough). Part of the delay in new signing or trades is because the MLB offices in New York are closed until Wednesday.
There is another reason that Michael Bourn and others haven’t been signed yet – the new rules on draft pick compensation require that to be eligible for an extra draft pick teams must have made a $13.3 Million qualifying offer. While this part of the changes is good in eliminating compensatory picks for good middle relievers, there is a downside – in order to sign of the players who was made a qualifying offer that team would forfeit its first round pick (unless they have a top ten pick in which case they forfeit their second round pick.
In addition to the huge amount of money to sign Bourn a team also had to give up a first round pick AND the associated money to sign that draft pick. That is quite a heavy investment. Teams who have a top ten pick – yes like the Cleveland Indians won’t lose their top ten pick but will forfeit their second round pick and slot monies. This not only makes it advantageous for those teams but now enables them to make some very creative trades.
We haven’t seen this yet but I will guess we see at least one of these “sign and trade” deals made soon and Cleveland is in the primary position because now they would only lose their third round pick. So they could sign Bourn, forfeit the third rounder and then trade Bourn to a team that doesn’t want to lose its first round pick for a very good minor leaguer – a better player than they would have been able to draft.
Now we just have to wait until Wednesday to see if teams are smart enough to make one of those trades.
Another team that looks to be on the verge of a trade is the Arizona Diamondbacks who recently signed OF Cody Ross to a three year deal. The problem is that Ross is now the fifth outfielder on that team along with Justin Upton, Jason Kubel, Gerardo Parra, and Adam Eaton. Ross would be a fine platoon partner with Parra so the most likely player to be traded would appear to be Kubel who has one year left at a reasonable $7.5 million. Tampa Bay is a team looking for more power so that might be a good match but any other AL team that has the DH slot might also be interested in Kubel. Of course there is always the chance the Diamondbacks finally find a team that wants to overpay for Upton but the matches there seem hard to find. Having “invested” a lot in SS Didi Gregorius the only thing the DBacks could really want to upgrade their lineup would be a STUD third baseman. Hard to see that trade or one for a number one SP.
We will just have to wait and seeThe American League in LABR had a fantastic finish this year, with the team that held the league lead since June sitting in first by only a half-of-a-point heading into the final three-day week, with three teams separated by only a point-and-a-half. For a detailed look, click here
Just watching that fabulous finish while my team was in 5th place motivated me to take a look back at the auction last March and see what worked, and what prevented me from being amongst those teams fighting for the title.
While the complete draft review is archived if you want to read it, I would summarize by saying my offense was good with Adam Jones ($21), Alex Avila ($17), Alcides Escobar ($13), and Andy Dirks ($4) being the best buys. Brett Lawrie ($28) didn’t live up to my expectations, but he and Matthew Joyce ($21) and others were not the reason I lost the league. Even the few disappointments--Jeff Francoeur ($17) and Casey Kotchman ($6)--did not lose the league.
One roster move and the saves I thought I drafted really jumped this team off the tracks. My starting pitching selections – Jeremy Hellickson ($14), Matt Harrison ($6), Jarrod Parker ($4), and (at the time) Alfredo Aceves ($2) were the first of the two strengths of the team. But, those relievers I counted on for my saves--Daniel Bard ($13), Jordan Walden ($16), and even Kyle Farnsworth (only $4)--really disappointed. If not for Aceves being moved to the bullpen in Boston and a nice free agent pickup of Jared Burton, I would not have finished with 31 saves and five points in the category.
The other strength of the draft was my six reserve selections – especially with the 11th pick in that snake draft. The reserves in LABR are far more than just some players who might help during the year because a reserve player can be moved from active back to reserve then back to active in any given week. Other players cannot be reserved unless they are sent to the minors (players who are injured can be put on the DL).
You will see that only half of my six reserves among Kelly Shoppach, Mike Montgomery, Alex Liddi, Luis Mendoza, Vinnie Catricala, and Drew Smyly even played in the majors this year, but that trio were key additions. Shoppach, because he backed up my cheap second catcher play of Josh Donaldson ($3), would play for the rest of the year for me; Mendoza because not only did he start a number of games for the Kansas City Royals but because I could reserve him for a tough start or when he was sent to the bullpen; and, Smyly because while he did not make the Opening Day roster for the Detroit Tigers, he did make the rotation and was called up by Jim Leyland (andme) in short order, and at least for the beginning of the year he was quite valuable for a reserve.
There were many good free agent additions and roster moves. But, one truly terrible move cost me a lot of home runs and runs batted in and countless hours of rest. You see, I had filled my middle infield slot in the auction with one Minnesota Twin named Trevor Plouffe. Quite a pick in early March, but early in the year Plouffe was benched and that empty spot (and the devil) made me cut him (if only he had been sent down right away) in the first week of May to add Wil Rhymes. UGH: Had I held onto Plouffe I might have finished 4th, and together with those missing saves, who knows? But, such is rotisserie life. {jcomments on}
In keeper leagues it is trade season. Trade deadlines vary from league to league –some as soon as the All Star break, some in early August. So a team in my AL keeper league sends out this email…..
"I am going to trade Austin Jackson (5D10) this week. As I promised several of you, I am making a league wide announcement to invite all interested. Please email all offers by Friday.
All offers are acceptable (dump offers/player offers/minor leaguers/draft pick upgrades)
I will look at all of them
If you have multiple offers submit them
If you don't make an offer, don't bitch to me later, you had your chance."
Really have to love it on two counts:
1) He gave everybody in the league fair notice
2) He put them on notice about bitching when he trades Jackson to the team right behind them
Actually this should really be standard procedure for any teams that are “rebuilding” (yeah I know some of you like to say dumping but that shouldn’t be the intent or description). Give everyone in your league a chance to exchange offers with you – it makes the trades better for you and fairer for the league.
On the other side of trade negotiations be fair with your league mates. You don’t hold up one guy for a king’s ransom for one trade and then turn around and trade an equal player(s) to someone else for much less.
You should also be careful about trying to squeeze blood out of a turnip – if you have a fair offer on the table you have discussed with the other team and then at the last minute ask for “a little bit more”. You should get what you really deserve….
“Sorry bud I traded X to another team. See you next year”
And ending up holding the players whose contracts are expiring this year and getting nothing for them.{jcomments on}
If you watched the Cubs on Monday or looked at the box score today you noticed Ryan LaHair in right field. That was not a mistake, as manager Dale Sveum notified LaHair that he would be playing right field for the foreseeable future.
That move occasioned one immediate move as RF David DeJesus moves to CF and Tony Campana et al find room on the bench. We will have to wait for the other shoe to drop but really the date it will happen is the only thing in question. The Cubs are expected to call up 1B Anthony Rizzo at some point this week or next.
Rizzo is batting .364 with 23 home runs for Triple-A Iowa in the Pacific Coast League. And while GM Theo Epstein says the Cubs are sticking to their “plan” for Rizzo, he doesn’t say what that plan is/was or absolutely say the young power hitting Rizzo, whom he knew as a Red Sox prospect when both were in the Boston organization, is close to a call-up. Full circle got Rizzo traded to San Diego last year and then from San Diego to Chicago this year where he was re-united with Epstein as his GM.
So along with Rizzo, we wait. Meanwhile, fantasy players are either trying to trade for Rizzo or figuring out how much FAAB to bid on him whenever the young slugger arrives. {jcomments on}
"Through the course of a long season, you find yourself with stretches when things don't go your way. You battle through those things. In the end, you're better for it."
Those comments could be made by any fantasy baseball player. They could just as easily be made by any major league player and were in fact from the mouth of Texas Ranger all-time hit leader Michael Young responding to a question about coming out of a “slump” over the weekend.
But remember when your roto team loses twenty points over just two weeks what Young said – and at this point that we are still “early” into the season.
Early you scream? Well yes, while we are two months or one third into the games to be played, the counting numbers in many categories are still very tightly bunched, so you will often see a loss of several points in say strikeouts on a given day. The answer of course is that with those points still reflecting several teams within eight or nine total strikeouts, your loss could just be because you had no starters going yesterday while everybody in your sub group had one or two. Or that you all lost some points because the team at the bottom of the group had Chris Sale and Drew Hutchison pitching yesterday and that is what 24 strikeouts will do.
It’s just that usually it takes more than one or two days to get that many strikeouts.
As further proof of the tight bunching in many categories starting this week in the AL LABR league I was in second place with 74.5 points, but more than ten points behind ESPN’s Nate Ravitz who was leading the league. Well my aggressive lineup play of pitching Nate Adcock for a good two start week severely damaged my ERA and WHIP, and I dropped four points in the standings and dropped to sixth place.
But Ravitz’ category positions were also weathered and his dropping seven points actually puts me three points closer to him. Unfortunately there are now four other teams in between us.
Remember in some ways the season is still young. It’s a long way to September.{jcomments on}