Week 9: Monster and Max pickups and drops of the year

Michael, Andrew, and Paul Smyth at a Smyth family wedding in Charlottesville, VA last weekend…Paul had had a few

TOTAL			HITTING			PITCHING				Manager	Team
1	Dean	4.07	1	Dean	3.13	1	Dave	2.83		Max	My Story Begins
2	Arthur	4.29	2	Arthur	3.25	2	Matt	3.83		Dean	Ender's Game
3	Keith	4.71	3	Keith	4.25	3	Michael	5.17		Arthur	DOMINATION
4	Brian/Josh	5.00	4	Brian/Josh	4.25	4	Dean	5.33		Paul	South Florida Gators
5	Michael	5.50	5	Michael	5.75	5	Keith	5.33		Dave	I Hate Fantasy
6	Dave	5.57	6	Max	5.88	6	Arthur	5.67		Cory	Hebrew Nationals
7	Matt	5.86	7	Paul	6.13	7	Cory	5.67		Keith	Bourbon Street Blues
8	Max	6.14	8	Cory	7.13	8	Brian/Josh	6.00		Brian/Josh	Alternative Stats
9	Cory	6.50	9	Matt	7.38	9	Max	6.50		Matt	615 for the win
10	Paul	6.79	10	Dave	7.63	10	Paul	7.67		Michael	Pic'em Pelham'ed

Dean continued his pullback to the field after another week of streaming pitchers poorly. Arthur was the big upwards mover in the week with the Paul Goldschmidt acquisition paying major dividends right now. Cory gained some major ground in the lower tier. Dave fell back to sit near the ranking he was before his seemingly inexplicable jump last week. The final takeaway I had from the rankings was the even distribution of Power Rankings from top to bottom. The tiers have mostly evaporated.

Hitter	Date picked up	6/7/2017		Pitcher	Predraft	9-Jun
Ryan Zimmerman	Late April	2		Alex Wood	337	34
Zack Cozart	Late April	12		Ervin Santana	242	44
Marcel Ozuna	Late April	16		Jason Vargas	338	56
Mark Reynolds (mult)	Early May	18		Robbie Ray	203	76
Elvis Andrus	Early April	20		Mike Minor	393	84
Corey Dickerson (mult)	Middle May	21		Jeff Hoffman	449	92
Ender Inciarte	Late April	23		Jose Berrios	631	98
Michael Conforto  (mult)	Middle May	28		Mike Leake	288	116
Aaron Hicks	Early May	38		Louis Severino	380	129
Starlin Castro	Middle April	45		Lance Lynn	294	151
Eugenio Suarez	Middle April	52		Michael Pineda	197	166
Justin Bour	Middle May	53		Dylan Bundy	349	191
Avisail Garcia	Late April	56		Zach Godley	551	192
Brett Gardner  (mult)	Middle May	69		Garrett Richards	180	195
Yonder Alonso	Early May	73		Brandon McCarthy	392	198
Marwin Gonzalez  (mult)	Late May	81		Sean Manaea	160	199
Travis Shaw	Late April	88		Jake Odorizzi	168	365
Kevin Pillar (multi)	Middle April	97		Taiwan Walker	182	387
Cesar Hernandez (multi)	Middle April	99		Tanner Roark	156	484
Jed Lowrie	Late May	101		Marco Estrada	189	507
Domingo Santana	Late May	104		JA Happ	185	542
Andrelton Simmons	Late May	120		Jeff Samardzjia	158	568
Neil Walker	Late May	130		Julio Urias	153	656
Logan Morrison	Late May	138		Joe Ross	195	696
Josh Reddick	Early May	150		Adam Wainright	196	745
Josh Harrison	Late May	152		Vince Velasquez	150	749
Jonathan Schoop (mult)	Early May	174		Alex Cobb	194	754
Brandon Belt	Middle May	185		Jared Eickoff	181	853
David Phelps	Middle May	186		Drew Smyly	198	1351
Matt Holliday  (mult)	Middle May	194		Carlos Rodon	186	1398
Aaron Altherr	Middle May	200

We’re gonna take a look backwards again this week, analyze some of the moves, and non-moves from the first 10 weeks of the year.

Background: I ran the data on every hitter pickup so far this year, I wanted to see just how many of them amounted to anything. There have been approximately 90 different players added (some of them ‘mult[iple]’ times, 19 of them are currently ranked in the top 100. Two of these players (Ozuna and Inciarte) were dropped, in my opinion, quite prematurely so we’ll call it 17 free agent pickups that have amounted to an enviable, ownable, commodity. Among the 90 different pickups there were approximately 20 repeats (players dropped and re-picked up). Therefore approximately 17 of 110, or 15% of hitter pickups have been successful.

On the pitching side, it was a slightly more complicated endeavor, pitchers are constantly streamed in our league without the intention of the player lasting more than a day on our teams, so I couldn’t simply list and check each pickup.  Instead I analyzed pitchers that were pre-draft ranked between 150 and 200, and those that went from outside to the top 200 to back inside of it. Starting Pitching ranks are pretty finicky in our league due to the ER category, pitchers that pitch fewer innings perform better in the rankings, so a couple of good starts will make a SP look fantastic. For example, Jose Berrios is a top 100 player, but Dave has only owned him for about 2 weeks since he was just promoted from the minors. In contrast, Chris Archer leads the league in Innings Pitches and is third Strikeouts with a middling ERA, so he has a good bit of Earned Runs. This significantly deflates his rank. Given that we all still need 30 innings each week, you’ll need to start players that will allow some ER, thus you will own some players ranked poorly but add team value. The conclusions here are as complicated as the analysis. Opening up the acceptance criteria to the top 200 as a good pickup based on the previous discussion leads to a total of 15 successful starting pitcher adds (Pineda was drafted). There have been approximately 270 starting pitching adds so far, we’ll assume for the sake of argument that about half of them have been streaming, so that leaves 15 out of 135 successful pitcher adds, 11%.

Therefore, only 15% and 11% of your pickups are going to be successful, might make you think twice before grabbing that hot player. Then again, as Michael is falling in the offensive ranks behind his struggling Carlos Gonzalez, Kyle Seager, and Andrew McCutchen, sometimes ya just gotta mix it up.

A short commentary on the Monster and Max adds and drops so far:

Ryan Zimmerman: Keith has been on this one from early on, the fantasy industry is all aboard, Keith was just first to the punch, congratulations

Mark Reynolds: a few members of the league have owned Reynolds already, but Arthur is the only one to stick with him. Reynolds was offered in the now infamous Goldschmidt for Machado trade, but Michael deemed Reynolds a useless bat that wasn’t going to be better for the rest of the year than say, Hanley Ramirez or Yonder Alonso. Since that time David Dahl has stopped his injury rehab and Gerardo Parra has pulled his quad ensuring playing time for the first baseman, and Mark Reynolds has kept mashing. He still owns one of the luckiest ewOBA minus wOBA indicating some major regression is coming…but Arthur will just keep laughing up the standings while we all passed on him.

Justin Bour: Paul has been on this breakout guy from fairly early in the year, props

Zack Cozart: a couple of consistent themes here, Cozart is another unsustainably high ewOBA minus wOBA guy, Cozart was also offered in a bid for Paul Goldschmidt, and Keith has been on him from early on. Get while the gettin’s good.

Monster Drops:

Byron Buxton: this has been mentioned in earlier blogs, but Buxton had a ton of hype in March, he came out and faceplanted early on and Brian and Josh cut bait. Solid move

Rich Hill: Michael paid a good price at the draft for Hill, but there were indications early on that something was wrong. Michael cut Hill when he went on the DL in mid April and it has worked out very well for what was a questionable move at the time

Max Drops (we’ll see another theme here):

Ender Inciarte: Ender was one of the best players in the league for a two week stretch in the middle of April, and then again in early May, and then again in late May. The problem was there was one bad week there in late April and Paul cut bait on his late round flyer…you chose….poorly.

Marcell Ozuna: similar story here, one or two bad weeks, Paul dropped him, BJ claimed him on waivers and hasn’t looked back

Michael Conforto: Brian and Josh, tsk tsk tsk (not that any of us claimed him on waivers), Conforto is Cory’s elite keeper to this point

The book is still out: Paul dropped Kevin Pillar a few weeks ago and Michael claimed him…we’ll see; Michael dropped Ian Desmond and literally the next day the aforementioned Rockies injuries happened, Desmond hasn’t turned it around yet but the playing time is there at least;

I’m sure I’ve missed some, feel free to comment or email with your suggestions or any pats on the back you’d like.

We’ll keep the recaps short this week with a few noteworthy items (sorry guys the intros are the most fun for me)

Arthur really had it rolling last week as he thumped Brian and Josh. That’s right, even in a thumping they were not BJ, they were really good. Arthur was just incredible. He had the second highest average of the year at .349, had over 114 R+RBI with a ton of HRs and his pitching threw a 2.4 ERA with a sub 1.00 WHIP and 4 wins. It was good to be Arthur last week. Dean’s week 4 will edge him if we ever look back because Dean had a .360 AVG and a 1.06 ERA with more innings, but this was about as monstrous a week as we’ve seen. Well done.

Paul beat Dave in a week where both teams were pretty bad, but what was noteworthy here was something Dave texted me about this morning. Apparently there was a stat correction this morning from a game earlier in the week that took hits and RBIs away from his team.  Dave would have benched hitters last night that would have saved him batting average, but instead, the loss of hits, (tie of) RBI, and AVG took this from a 6-7 loss to an 4-8 loss, ouch.

Matt beat Dean…seriously. Dean had a pretty down week for his standards this year and Matt his 16 HRs with 83 R+RBI was good enough for the win. Dean streamed poorly again as Matt was none the wiser….he was partying in Nashville at the CMA fest (pics to come later).

In the rest of the Matchups, Max had good offense and awful pitching, Cory put up 95 R+RBI with only 12 HR (…wait, what? How the hell did that happen) with a 2.2 ERA and still lost to Max somehow. Michael and Keith were pretty bad too, Michael with some bad luck pitching on Sunday to lose him a couple of categories.

Monster of the Week: Arthur. Let the record show Arthur earned a Monster of the Week. (now he can stop texting me asking for one since he’s won it two out of 3 weeks)

Max of the Week: Michael and his statistical projections are losing pretty hard on the Machado trade, but that isn’t a Max. We’ll call it a wash for the week because that one has a long ways to go.