WARNING: I LOVES ME SOME TALKING. this is tl;dr for many, but if you help me i will give you some darn good help as i'm going to hang out here for a good hour or so (oh yeah work is flyyyyying today =)
hey guys, i'm doing pretty well in my fantasy baseball world this year, winning three out of five leagues and still theoretically having a shot at the 4th and in the midst of a big run towards first in my 5th (where i went from being ~30 down at one point to perennially down 15-20, then some SP luck and the fact this league drafted late and i'm projected -190 innings under so i've got 8 starters and 5 closers and like, let's let it rip)
anyways, this is the winners' league, the one bastion of yahoo fantasy baseball that i have yet to win. as of today i'm up 16 points on the league with a solid 92.5 points, as the parity in the league (a bunch of good solid offenses and a bunch of people hovering around 40-55 saves have enabled PARITY!) so closers, save the diamondbacks situation, get snatched up quick. to give you an idea, despite worldbeating pitching at one point a couple'a months ago my offense was lower 1/2 to even 1/3 and it looked like i had no hopes for filling the gap power-wise, middling with the jay bruces and garrett joneses of the world, and despite having mccann pujols dunn and vlad it looked lost.... then jose bautista showed up and 21HR in ~240 at bats later i'm 10/12 in HR and on top of the league by the aforementioned 16 points.
i also happen to lead the league in steals with 105, perennially up ~2-3 steals on the one team that hasn't made a move all year (gotta love grady sizemore in the OF) yet drafted well enough to have a competent offense even with a hole in the OF. they're at 102 3rd place is at 90 steals and prolly won't mount the tet offensive as it's one of those teams that has so many this-year-players that when they invariably regressed to the means he dropped ~20 points in the standings over the span of ~3 weeks.
sorry for the tl;dr there... basically, i've got chone figgins and his .233/0/23/26 as my 2B, and obviously it hasn't really killed me thus far... i mean i've had enough hot/300+ hitters to balance out the batting average hits i've taken (coco crisp 1/22 hello i am talking to you... and the rajai davis situation, which is... sad. just said. if they give him regular playing time he'll hit at least .260 and arguably be the best pure SB guy in the league) and my thing is like, i'd love to have a productive 2B where i could get BA, runs, maybe even some HR/RBI since chone is nil to none htere... but i'm afraid of risking the SB slot that i've taken advantage of all year, especially seeing as i'm using my outfield/utils for as much power as possible. so my question is, do you think i can afford to let go of chone? here's what i've got:
c - brian mccann 1b - albert pujols 2b - SHAWN figgins (gotta earn chone status, homey) ss - alexei ramirez (even tho his overall #s don't bowl you over, man, he's hitting like .330+ this month and yeah) 3B - jose bautista (please please god don't trade him to a team that has a HR sinkhole of a ballpark.. or cause him to press.. or anything. this guy has been my saviour) OF - vladimir guerrero (god, it's so nice to have him out of that util spot) OF - adam dunn (perhaps the most steady HR guy in teh game... you get your 35+ and the .278 average is... mammaries!) OF - jack cust (i just FINALLY cut ties with garrett jones... he seemed to get out of his bleh a month ago but has been like .230/2/11 for the last month. hey man if this guy can hit .275/+ he's got the power... he seems to be hot as hell, midaswell give it a roll, eh?) util/OF - jose tabata (i just FINALLY cut ties with jay bruce, who always was one of those guys like "man if he could even hit .250 he's got the power" well for most of the year he was .275+ before a recent slump and i gave up on him) util/OF - brett gardner (totally slumping this month, but still, a revelation of a steals guy this season. short of carl crawford his overall game = mammaries) bench/OF - mike stanton (just picked him up cuz even tho he's .230 for the last month, that 7/16 is nice, and short of tyler colvin, he's the only FA in the top ~25 players for HR in the last month available) bench/OF - rajai davis (i just can't give up on him in a deep league... coco crisp might get hurt and even hitting 7th or 9th or whatever, rajai if healthy can get on a roll and steal like 10 bases in a month)
SP - felix hernandez, david price, mat latos, tommy hanson, jaime garcia (ride him til he's gone), and ricky romero (who i still think is worth spot starts at home or against crap opponents, like baltimore, even tho fantasy baseball sites tell you to trade high it's all crashing down ARRRGHHH. granted he did get hit hit hit hit last year, his downward spiral isn't quite like a phil hughes joint)
RP - mariano rivera, carlos marmol, bobby jenks (jekyll n hyde!), and the doubleheaded monster of orioles closing: alfredo simon and michael gonzalez
so that's what i've got, and out there @ 2B (trading in this league is a pain in the arse.. someone offered me jason bay for tommy hanson when i gleefully pointed out that SP was available, and proceeded to offer phil hughes to everyone... eventually cutting him today)
- gordon beckham, neil walker, sean rodriguez, reid brignac, ian desmond, ronny cedeno, bill hall, etc.... oh and chris getz is available, who in only 30 at bats in the last month has 5 SB, which would match up with what chone has given me in the last month....
basically, do you think anyone out there could give me production worthy of risking the chance that chone maybe has a .280ish ~7+SB august and/or september? i've gotten out to a 16 point first place lead saddled by his dead weight, using him as a purely one dimensional outlet for steals... but the fantasy experts seem to think that there's no hope for him, whereas i figure since he's 90% likely to stick there there's a chance he could even hit like .250 and still has the chance to swipe 10 bags in a month... hell, at one point in the last month his last month stats had him at 11 steals, so i mean, he's had productive monthlong spurts...
outside of steals, i could gain or lose a point or two or three in runs and BA, potentially, therefore his .232 might be hurting me more than i see given that i kind of like leading the lead in steals whilst being 10/12 in HR and 9/12 in RBI =D
Yeah .. that's tough man. I know Figgy has been awful ... but he honestly has to start being more consistent at some point, yeah? And with Tabata, Gardner and Rajai Davis and even Alexei occasionally stealing some bases .. I think you should be ok there.
I'd probably take the chance on Beckham ... he's actually been hitting pretty well recently.
by Tom Emanski AllStars » Wed Jul 28, 2010 3:08 pm
i can't believe I made it through that post
Here are the options I see: 1) stay put with Figgins 2) drop figgins and add beckham, benefit in a lot of categories and get very few steals 3) drop figgins add Brignac, as above
Besides the one guy that's behind you by 2-3SB where is everyone else? if they're back a significant ways then add Beckham. If everyone is crowed to within 10=15 SB stick with Chone.
I see you bought into Tabata and I think that wise. People think he's a one trick pony but he's hovered around .300 his entire (albiet short) minor league career and is beginning to approach that now (went from .235 to .280 quick). Those stolen bases aren't going to stop (what was it ten in his first month?), so Figgins is looking less and less servicable. Why not go one step further onto the Bucco Train and scoop Walker. He's a ball player hitting .300 plus for a good amount of time now and usually bats one-two with Tabata followed by McCutchen. That's dynamic stuff which will result in BA and runs. It's not a coincedence that crappy team is scoring loads of runs all of a sudden. Of course seeing that everybody on the squad is a teenager, it might catch up with them. But they are playing spoiler and you know how that goes. I'd cut Figgins, go Walker and keep a close eye on things. Little different than what other think but a .300+ #2 hitter is nothing to sneeze at. Peace.
from what i can tell tabata is one hell of a little ballplayer.. i've seen him on the package a couple'a times, and like, i saw a stat somewhere that he hits .300+ late in games or with RISP or something... the dude is clutch, and was clutch in the minors. he thanked me for picking him up by hitting his first MLB homerun in his first game on the squad, replacing coco crisp who was really only there to make sure rajai davis didn't disappear on me (remember, facebook likes die hard) he's started off 6/13 for me thus far with a HR and 2 RBIs and a handful of runs, so if he can just hit like .275+ i reckon the steals and runs will sort themselves out... this will really really be helped out by pedro alvarez hitting homeruns and andrew mccutchen not hitting .230 over the span of a month or two... hell in theory garrett jones is a road warrior, and he is such a nice looking hitter at the plate (and hell, he's a nice looking man at that) but short of playing the cubs he isn't that .280/21/44/10 guy in ~81 games last year
um, to the one dude who asked about the SB situation... i'm at 105, 2nd place is at 102, and then third place is at 90. i think from there there's a couple'a teams in the 80s... i mean, realistically we're talking about ~10-20 steals from figgy from here on out, and if it's just steals i mean i know i've got tabata and gardner and rajai and whatnot, it's just that i kind of like having steals at 2nd base because i've got my OF loaded up with the jack custs and mike stantons i mean, there's more of a chance of my HR pace stalling (i'm a vlad guy, as the avatar might suggest, and his drop from .330 to .307 in this last month has me a bit worried... tho i'm keeping the faith) so i'm figuring since i've designated the 2B as a hole where i'm getting no power production, well, i'd ideally like steals there... but hey, even the leader in steals at 2B in the last month, ben zobrist, hit .195 whilst collecting his 8 steals last month.
and to slant this even further, i'm a beckham guy. i had him in 4/5 leagues to start the season, i own a beckham jersey shirt (i'm in chi, and last year i saw him live vs sabathia and he absolutely worked him for 3/3 with a double down the leftfield line, a long single down the rightfield line (it coulda been a double, but he intentionally got "hung up" in between first and second to draw the throw into second to ensure that teh run scored and there wouldn't be a throw home, so he scooted back to first, and then he placed a double right in the right-center gap... i mean he pwned sabathia, and like.. yeah) in this league i gave him ~100 at bats where he hit .200 with nothing, hell, maybe it was even 150AB. so it's not butthurt lashing out at him... he's slowed down since his torrid pace, but like, the whitesox are clicking and if he can hit like a .280/~15-20/75 type guy like he did last season from here on out, he's hitting 9th which is meh, but you know, you'd love him to be that 2-hole guy like he worked last year before wearing out / adjustments-made-against-him in teh stretch.... so taht would be my move, and believe me i was afraid that if he kept going 4/4 3/5 and all of htat someone woulda nabbed him... but he's there. and like, the question is do i have enough power to hold onto my lead if i give up an OF/util slot to one of my steals guys (right now tabata and gardner play every day with rajai davis there, and i mean, coco crisp is stillt echnically out there with 11 steals in the last month... but i just had him for 1/22 2SB and was bleh... i didn't start him on his HR days or anythign either. and when you get those players who make you mental starting/not-starting them and then you say F IT and start them and get 1/22, it's like, F IT YOU GONE.
so i've got somethign to think about... i reckon it's a good problem to have that like, i've got too many innings (projected 66 over) with 3.23/1.23 i'm 2nd in wins with the pack roughly 8-10 wins behind me (some guy with 1 closer just passed me and got up to 73 wins to my 69, but he's creeping up the projected IP limit and he's almost caught me in innings and like, my K rates are excellent so even as i pare down the innings to catch up with the pack i should hold out the lead in Ks) and i've got this array of ~6 SP now where i could just cut phil hughes like i just quit you.. heh. he's been garbage since june rolled around, but the 10 wins 3.83/1.20 good K rate worked for me
you know what, i went with beckham.... there's a point or two in runs within ~10 runs of me, hell, i'm at .269 and if i can get to .273 i'm looking at 2.5 to 3 points right there... i figure that i could lose 1 point in steals, two would be the absolute worst but dude in third place would have to outsteal me by 15 steals to do it... and i know that the guy in 2nd place for steals hasn't made a move all year so really ending up with 102 steals is wow... he's got jose reyes and hanley and andrew mccutchen nelson cruz and ian kinsler... so his team leader in steals has 21, as jose hasn't been SUPERMEGAOHMYGOD stolenbase guy this year... but i reckon i'll concede one point to fortify my hold on other points and potentially gain other points, like, beckham went 2-4 with 2 doubles 2 runs and an RBI last night. if he can hit .300 for a stretch and score runs and drive in runs, the HRs and the occasional steal would be... mammaries.
thanks for the neil walker love to the one dude... i get where you're coming from, but like, beckham even at .346/2/10 was 170 overall and walker at like .333/1/10 was 270 overall and beckham scored 12 runs to walker's 9 and like, you know what? i'll go with the hot guy who i own a jersey shirt of... i'm an expos fan in chicago, and i own two chicago jerseyshirts.... a marmol and a beckham. so let's hope beckham heats up and it gives me a local rooting interest and i might lose one point in steals but i won't lose 2, and i reckon someone hitting well over .300 over the last 2 weeks and last month is someone who can maybe help me raise that BA up a few points, cuz like, if i can grab a point or two in runs and BA this league is over.
i'm almost ready to say the league is mine... but i don't want to jinx myself. this league has a whole lot of parity.. and if you're only as strong as your weakest, well, i'm 4/12 in average at .269 and as i said .273 is 6.5/12 so i think i made a solid move here, not expecting beckham to hit .340 over a month or even .370 over the next 2 but if he can hit .300+ for a bit, well, i think i'll be fine.
thx 4 your help guys im bored so i'll still troll the forum with baseball advice =D
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by sinicalypse » Wed Jul 28, 2010 2:10 pm 
