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DownloadIn 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}
As we head into the Memorial Day Weekend we are just a few days from the end of the first third of the 2012 baseball season.
In many formats that means time for a serious look at your place in the standings and your roster. Oakland General Manager Billy Beane used to view April and May – the first third of the year as the time to see what he actually had on the field and based on that, make his plans for the rest of the season. If there is a chance for your team to contend, then you have to make a plan that will get you into contention.
Beane suggested that June and July – the second third of the season was the time to put the plan into place – call up players from the minors that might fill a need; trade from excess either on the team or in the system to fill a critical need; even cut or send down players who weren’t productive.
After those roster moves the team would be set up to make a stretch run in the final third of the season.
YOUR fantasy baseball team is not much different. Sure there are slightly different approaches in redraft or keeper leagues; in trading leagues or non-trading leagues. But the roster analysis has to start now. What are the categorical deficiencies; and How can you correct them? Be truthful in your analysis but don’t just look at the numbers for the first third of the year – you may be trending up in some categories and down in others so your splits by week/month are very important to look at.
The easiest thing is to deal from a clear surplus of stolen bases or saves. But even in the power categories remember there is a maximum number of points in the category – you don’t get more if you win the column by ten…or twenty….or fifty. It is better to get 11 points in HR and RBI in a twelve team league if giving up those two points will gain you more in pitching.
The earlier you can get your plan together and start re-structuring your lineup the more effect new players will have on your stats – three or four months of better production is obviously better than just two months. But you may also have more trading partners to choose from by making deals earlier.
What you will have to pay for your reinforcements depends on your league structure. My focus here would be primarily on keeper leagues because redraft leagues should be very restrictive if they even allow any trades – all you can do there is rearrange the deck chairs.
While you would like to acquire the hot bats don’t forget that historically reliable players who are off to slow starts will cost you a lot less, so while you may look to deal for an Adam Jones to fill a weak outfield slot it will cost you. But you may well get a Kevin Youkilis thrown into the deal or be able to acquire him cheaply from another team. Youk has just come off the DL and will be playing some first base as well as third base for Boston unless the Red Sox find a team who wants him.
Now is also the time you may be able to acquire a younger player who has talent but it is struggling enough to lower the price substantially. Eric Hosmer would be a great trade target if yours is a team that needs to roll the dice a little. You would never have pried him away from an owner in March or April but trading for him before he starts hitting again is a better proposition.{jcomments on}
As a kid who loved baseball and lived in Los Angeles in the late 50's and early 60's my brother and I were big Dodger Fans. When school was out for the summer it was commonplace for us to go to sleep with the radio on with the voice of Vin Scully accompanying us to snoozeland.
We had one of those clock radios between the beds in our room that you could set so the radio would play for a set period of time before turning off automatically. Some nights we didn’t notice when the radio went off, already dreaming of our own hits in upcoming or future games; while on some nights I had to turn the radio back on if the game hadn’t finished and I was still awake.
Tuesday evening after a painful procedure earlier in the day I had to take some pain pills and hit the pillow early. So I turned on the MLB Network thinking I would hear a few scores and highlights before I turned the television off.
But an old friend greeted me – the network having switched to live coverage of the Giants at Dodger stadium and the dulcet tones of Vin caught me up on the game. Ryan Vogelsong, a pitcher on my XFL team was leaving the game in the eighth inning leading 2-1 but with the bases loaded. In came Javier Lopez to face the left hand hitting Andre Ethier. Scully not only described the Dodger’s Diamond Vision scoreboard showing Ethier hitting a grand slam home run from some earlier time but of course also noted that Lopez was the toughest pitcher in the National league facing LH hitters, holding them to just a .146 batting average over the past two years.
But Scully also weaves in a lot of personal information about certain players so last night his audience also learned that Lopez had a degree from Virginia University and that his wife had a doctorate counseling and psychology from the University of Tennessee.
More importantly I listened to Lopez retire Ethier and Juan Rivera and then after a quick top of the ninth inning by the Dodgers Javy Guerra (pronounced Geera) went back out to retire the left hand hitting Tony Gwynn Jr. and James Loney before giving way to Santiago Casilla to face Juan Uribe to attempt to win the game – Vin forgot to add that doing so would seal the win for Vogelsong as well as get me a save for my several Casilla teams.
But all the fantasies came together quickly as it took Casilla only two pitches to record those wins and saves as narrated by the legendary Dodgers’ announcer. A sound I enjoyed once again.
And then I had to reach over and turn off the television and try and find some different fantasies.{jcomments on}