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May 12th 2002 |
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Your Daily Fantasy Rx |
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by Tim Polko
Colorado: 7 Home games: 4 vs. Florida; 3 vs. Atlanta.
Los Angeles: 7 Home games: 3 vs. New York Mets; 4 vs. Montreal.
Arizona: 7 games: 3 Road at Pittsburgh; 4 Home vs. Philadelphia. Pittsburgh: 7 games: 3 Home vs. Arizona; 4 Road at Houston
Atlanta: 7 Road games: 4 at San Francisco; 3 at Colorado.
We already own five of this week's free agents, and we see no need to add Tino Martinez, Pokey Reese, Gary Sheffield, or Livan Hernandez, as Hernandez doesn't help in strikeouts, Sheffield and Reese continue to battle injuries, and Tino's very overpriced for his current level of production. However, regarding Roy Oswalt($870), we own two of only three Top 100 DC teams without him, as well as two of only five Top 250 DC teams that don't own him. We've planned to add him in May since we first set our roster due to Houston's more favorable schedule, including avoiding his Colorado visit), and he's a must-own free agent at this point. At least two regular Challenge columnists have advised that there's no need to pick up Oswalt since you should already own him, however we're pleased with our performance to date and are perfectly comfortable with grabbing him now. Our problem is who to drop from our roster. We have only five position players on our reserve squad, and four of those comprise the other half of our Coors' platoon from the one in our lineup any given week. The fifth taxi squad member is usually our third 3B, and we like the flexibility of owning Chavez, Hillenbrand, and Blalock at the moment so have no desire to cut any of them today. So we need to cut a starting pitcher, and we're limited by the obvious need to keep Randy, Schilling, and Eric Gagne on our roster since they're all essential players for us to keep pace with the rest of the league. Arizona also has the best offense in the National League thus far. We need to insure our continued dominance of the four starting pitching categories, so we'll focus on salary, strikeout rate, PQS average for his last five starts, PQS average for the year, and team offensive production to narrow the field. I've also included Oswalt for reference.
Pitcher Cost K/9 5/'02 Team R/G Avg.(Lg. Rank) Pedro 1770 9.8 3.4/3.2 6.0(2) Maddux 1550 6.3 2.8/2.6 3.78(12) Mussina 1380 7.5 3.6/3.7 5.03(5) Clemens 1240 8.7 4.4/3.8 5.03(5) Morris 1190 8.5 3.6/4.0 4.22(9) Hudson 1170 6.4 3.4/3.8 4.78(8) Ru.Ortiz 1140 4.6 3.2/3.1 4.66(4) Vazquez 1100 5.9 4.6/4.3 4.94(2) Wood 1050 9.0 2.6/3.1 3.88(11) Lawrence 480 4.7 3.2/3.3 3.39(16) Oswalt 870 7.7 4.0/4.0 4.63(5)I'm focusing solely on who is the most cost-effective pitcher since we don't mind spending on starting pitchers as long as we're guaranteed quality starts. The pitchers that clearly belong here are Pedro, Mussina, Clemens, Morris, Hudson, Vazquez, and Oswalt. Perhaps Pedro and Hudson are slightly questionable, but we certainly like the upside of both players. So we're left to decide between Maddux, Russ Ortiz, Wood, and Lawrence for three spots. However, we're also planning on making a few other changes in coming weeks, including the additions of Nomar, Patterson, and Vlad. While we'll likely drop Bonds and perhaps Rollins, we may be cutting back on our number of pitchers. Are there other pitchers we should consider adding to the team? Let's compare some other top starters with our current questionables. I considered over twenty pitchers but narrowed the list down using a couple common factors such as a minimum 7.0 K/9(Glavine, Millwood, Colon, C.Hernandez, O.Perez, Fogg, and Garcia failed this test), worst offenses in league(Tomko and Rupe), and arbitrary injury concerns(Burnett's pitch count). Upping the minimum K/9 to 7.5 allows me to remove Ramon Ortiz, Leiter, and Astacio from consideration. Finally, a 3.5/3.5 PQS minimum kicks off Clement, Brown, Zito, Duckworth, and Halladay, although we'll likely reconsider Zito in a week or two.
Pitcher Cost K/9 5/'02 Team R/G Avg.(Lg. Rank) Maddux 1550 6.3 2.8/2.6 3.78(12) Ru.Ortiz 1140 4.6 3.2/3.1 4.66(4) Wood 1050 9.0 2.6/3.1 3.88(11) Ishii 750 10.3 3.6/3.7 3.67(14) Padilla 750 7.7 4.2/4.3 4.31(8) Prior 750 3.88(11) El Duque 700 7.5 4.2/4.3 5.03(5) Beckett 670 9.4 4.0/4.0 4.83(0) Armas 640 7.8 4.2/4.0 4.94(2) Lawrence 480 4.7 3.2/3.3 3.39(16)We're certainly not prepared to add Mark Prior until he's actually called up and established himself, but Ishii, Padilla, El Duque, Beckett, and Armas all appear to be improvements over Maddux, Ortiz, and Lawrence. As we're still pleased with Wood's strikeout rate and last performance, we'll definitely keep him for now. Now instead of analyzing the remaining 8 pitchers, I'm going to postpone any other move until next week since we just discovered that Texas demoted Hank Blalock. Also only one of the eight doubles, and Beckett's double includes a start in Colorado. While we may trade to make pitching moves soon, we'll limit ourselves to adding Oswalt and cutting Blalock for this week, and we're comfortable using Chavez and Hillenbrand for the rest of the year.
SP(6)
RP(4) We're left with few choices after the Blalock demotion and most of our roster falls right into place. The Colorado platoon starts since they play seven at home, and we'll continue to use Gagne until we gain more ground in saves. Schilling, Clemens, Morris, and Wood all double, everyone's home for at least one but Kerry, and we don't mind starting him in St. Louis and Milwaukee. Our only decisions involve the DH slots and last SP slot. Seattle plays six on the road, so we see no need to use Ichiro this week. Klesko, Rollins, and Bonds all play seven while Sosa and Jeremy Giambi play six each on the road, so we'll likely keep two of the first three. We're generally worried about Bonds since he's only hitting .231 with 3 solo homers in the past three weeks, and considering his injury problems, we'll leave him on the bench. As we'd like to try to make up some ground in homers and RBI, we'll go cheaper on pitching, avoiding Randy, Pedro, and Mussina despite relatively nice home starts. We don't need to start Ortiz, and we'd prefer Oswalt to Lawrence due to his superior skills and recent history. Using Klesko and Rollins, we only leave 180 of cap room while maximizing our potential games played.
C Jorge Posada 990 C Toby Hall 320 1B Todd Helton 1980 1B Jason Giambi 1640 2B Luis Castillo 1000 2B Alfonso Soriano 900 3B Eric Chavez 1070 3B Shea Hillenbrand 450 SS Alex Rodriguez 1880 SS Juan Uribe 500 OF Larry Walker 1530 OF Lance Berkman 1320 OF Juan Pierre 1180 OF J.D. Drew 1010 OF Adam Dunn 710 OF Daryle Ward 620 DH Ryan Klesko 1300 DH Jimmy Rollins 940
SP Curt Schilling 1540 SP Roger Clemens 1240 SP Matt Morris 1190 SP Kerry Wood 1050 SP Roy Oswalt 830 SP Eric Gagne 500 RP Jason Isringhausen 1290 RP Byung-Hyun Kim 1200 RP Eddie Guardado 900 RP Jorge Julio 750
We're making the same free agent move here, grabbing Oswalt for the demoted Blalock.
SP(6)
No starts: Pedro, Mussina, and Ortiz.
RP(4) Foulke will sit as we prefer Isringhausen at home and for salary reasons, and Gagne will continue to start to help us gain ground in saves. Randy, Brown, Clemens, Morris, and Oswalt all have nice home starts that we prefer over Lawrence in front of the worst offense in the majors. The Coors' platoon is at home so all four Rockies will play, leaving the DH slots for Jimmy Rollins and Jeremy Giambi since we don't have enough cap space for Klesko. While we're hurting on offense, we're also somewhat short on strikeouts at the moment, so this lineup gives us a fairly good balance for the desirable categories.
C Jorge Posada 990 C Toby Hall 320 1B Todd Helton 1980 1B Jason Giambi 1640 2B Luis Castillo 1000 2B Alfonso Soriano 900 3B Eric Chavez 1070 3B Shea Hillenbrand 450 SS Alex Rodriguez 1880 SS Juan Uribe 500 OF Larry Walker 1530 OF Lance Berkman 1320 OF Juan Pierre 1180 OF J.D. Drew 1010 OF Adam Dunn 710 OF Daryle Ward 620 DH Jimmy Rollins 940 DH Jeremy Giambi 500
SP Randy Johnson 1990 SP Kevin Brown 1430 SP Roger Clemens 1240 SP Matt Morris 1190 SP Roy Oswalt 830 SP Eric Gagne 500 RP Jason Isringhausen 1290 RP Byung-Hyun Kim 1200 RP Eddie Guardado 900 RP Jorge Julio 750
We have no relievers on the bench, so we'll stay with Smoltz, Isringhausen, Kim, and Guardado until further notice.
SP(6) Lo Duca and Pierzynski have a one game edge on Hall so both will start. Nick Johnson remains on our bench until he starts to see more playing time. As we can't afford a better third baseman, Aramis Ramirez will enter our starting lineup full-time with Blalock's demotion. Schilling, Clemens, Morris, Wood, and Gagne are fine, but we're rather limited on our last starting option. Oswalt doesn't really help yet, so we'll take Vazquez in San Diego since he has the best offense/defense differential. Despite his decent weekend, we're going to sit Drew for salary reasons and activate D'Angelo Jimenez and his four home games. We don't see anyone that we need to buy for Blalock at the moment, so we're not going to waste a move at this time.
C Paul Lo Duca 1640 C A.J. Pierzynski 1000 1B Jason Giambi 3320 1B Steve Cox 1160 2B Alfonso Soriano 1800 2B Jose Ortiz 1500 3B Eric Chavez 2270 3B Aramis Ramirez 1590 SS Alex Rodriguez 3430 SS Juan Uribe 1300 OF Larry Walker 2790 OF Lance Berkman 2540 OF Cliff Floyd 2300 OF Juan Pierre 1880 OF Adam Dunn 1610 OF Daryle Ward 1590 DH Todd Helton 3400 DH D'Angelo Jimenez 1000
SP Curt Schilling 3160 SP Roger Clemens 2870 SP Matt Morris 2650 SP Javier Vazquez 2600 SP Kerry Wood 2300 SP Eric Gagne 1230 RP John Smoltz 2610 RP Jason Isringhausen 2370 RP Byung-Hyun Kim 2230 RP Eddie Guardado 1690
Click
here to read the previous article.
Please e-mail your comments to
tim@rotohelp.com. |
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