Late Innings

So I got drunk Friday night and overslept a huge fantasy draft on Saturday morning. I’m really pissed too, since it’s a really competitive, invite-only league, and my mad-skills kinda raked last year. My team was auto-picked, and it sucks. I understand how auto-pickers work; the algorithm attempts to grab the best player available at the position. In other words, I’m stuck with a pretty sweet crop of outfielders. My infield blows, my pitching staff fucking sucks (both starting and relieving.) I think I can salvage things here with this disaster… pitching is best found on the waiver wires anyways.

I had the same issue happen to me last year with a fantasy football team. In other words I was that kid who showed up with eight quarterbacks. Oh well, my strategy now changes. I was really hoping to draft a catcher as soon as I can. Think about it… we have Brian McCann, we have Joe Mauer, we have Russell Martin and then it falls off. I know Matt Wieters is now a household name, however I’m not sure where he went in this one particular draft.

I was eying the fourth round to draft a catcher. From what I’ve experienced, people get scared off if you draft too early. That is if I was to draft McCann in the fourth round, we’d have other owners being:

Oh shit. He didn’t just draft a catcher, did he?

At that point, the other catching studs are off the board. The same thing happens in fantasy football, especially if you draft a tight end (or in some leagues a defense) too early. In either case, if you party and chase girls the night before, you’re stuck with Jason Varitek (whom I ripped all Winter) and Gerald Laird on your roster the day after. That’ll teach me a lesson. Yes I’m smart enough to clean up the roster via waiver wire pickups, however good catching doesn’t come along too often, and this will be tough to fix.

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A few things happened since I was last here. Scott Baker got a four year, 15MM extension a few weeks back, and Jon Lester got a five year, 30MM contract yesterday. Both the Twins and Red Sox aren’t getting discounts, and I give credit to the two pitchers for striking while the iron’s hot. And the Astros signed Ivan Rodriguez to a contract worth 1.5MM… good move on both sides, though FanGraphs doesn’t consider him much more of an upgrade on J.R. Towles. I gave up on Towles, and am now starting to consider Pudge for this fantasy team as I speak…

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I wanted to close with an interesting graph I came up with for Johan Santana:

Google “charts” the Mets’ ace.

What do we see here? Easy. Johan’s ERA and Ks dropped when moving to the National League last year. However his WHIP was high, and his K/9 and BB/9 were also alarming. However the scary part behind his season last year was that 3.50 FIP. In other words his ERA should have been around 3.00 or so last year, but he got assisted with one hell of a defense (especially Mr. Beltran and Mr. Wright and Mr. Reyes…)

Santana’s a great pitcher, but his supporting cast saved his ass last year, sans his bullpen. That could change for this season, and I could see Johan winning 20. I think his ERA will be about what it was this past season, and I expect him to be fine in 2009 (he got off to a rough start last season.)

It’s tough to project the Mets’ ace. If you’d see, his 2007 and 2008 campaigns were very similar. He struck out about 20 more hitters with the Twins, yet his ERA was down by nearly a run as a Met. The result, he was a 4.6 WAR pitcher in both seasons. He also reached a career high in innings last season, and could that be a problem this season? We hope not. Still is the Santana of old going to return in 2009? I’m not sure. I highly doubt he’ll ever be a 7 WAR pitcher again though, something Tim Lincecum was last year (at a worth of 33MM, he was highly deserving of that Cy Young award.) Santana is a very good pitcher, and is a solid ace, but that Major League leading 2.53 ERA is hella-deceiving.