The Baseball Diaries: Thursday, June 11th
Welcome to the Baseball Diaries. This is a morning after review of my main team(s) on a designated site. I’ll go over the process that went into selecting the players, good or bad, in hopes you will find something in here that ultimately helps your team selection.
If you’re not trying to learn, then just kick back and read for the revelry. Sometimes the tilt is real…and highly entertaining for the observer. Below you’ll find one of my main DraftKings teams for Wednesday night.
Player Analysis
Well pitching was odd last night, to say the least. Matt Harvey was a no doubt, locked in member of my team from the first second I saw this slate. I always like to have the biggest stud pitcher on my team and he was that guy last night. Clearly that didn’t work well. All those little rumors and whispers floating around about possible injury may very well be true. I won’t pay up for him again unless I see a couple good games in a row.
On the second spot, there was a lot of stud potential to pair with Harvey. Guys like Tyson Ross and Jake Arrieta peaked my interest. However I decided to roll with the unknown commodity and take Vincent Velasquez. The price was too cheap for a kid that is considered as solid of a prospect as Lance McCullers, and we see how well McCullers is pitching. He pitched well, but the big boon to his fantasy value was that guys like Ross and Bauer flopped.
Anthony Rizzo
Mike Trout
Andrew McCutchen
Here’s what makes baseball shady sometimes. So, you save a plethora of money at pitcher with Velasquez and you can spend it on stud hitting. However, unlike the NBA, that guarantees you nothing. Rizzo got a couple of late RBIs to boost his total, McCutchen had a couple of singles and Trout got a late base hit, but it was at a huge opportunity cost. If I spent more on pitching and needed cheaper hitters, I had other guys on my list like Chris Coghlan and Kyle Seager. There’s so many directions you can go with a team on any night that sometimes it feels like a total crapshoot when building a team.
I’ll always look to get Hanley in my lineup vs. a left-handed pitcher. He was terrible last night, but it was either Hanley or a total punt at shortstop for me. As far as Dustin Pedroia, this was a total Batter vs. Pitcher play for me. I was thoroughly enamored with his slash line of .469/.514/.688 against Chen. He came out and had a nice game for the cheaper price tag and helped this team cash despite the Harvey debacle.
This pick basically boiled down to wanting to get some exposure to the Dodgers against Jeremy Hellickson. So, I scrolled down the lineup to see who the best Dodger hitters were last night. I started off with Adrian Gonzalez, but I was turned off by the limited success (.182 BA) in 22 at-bats vs. Hellickson. That left me a choice between Pederson and Puig since my other two OF spots were locked in. Although both guys were very close, I gave the slight edge to Puig in the end because he just seemed like he was a better fit to do some damage against Hellickson. Luckily I chose correctly.
I was going to punt the catcher spot last night regardless. When I scrolled through names and numbers, Perez became the clear option here. He has good numbers against righties, Erasmo Ramirez is prone to home runs, and the price tag was only $2,700. Ultimately he sucked…but that was the thought process behind it. Sounded good at the time.
This pick is last on this list because it was last on my roster last night. My final decision was at third base and it was either going to be Spangenberg or a two-man switch. I was close to dropping down $100 from Rizzo to Goldschmidt so that I could afford Kang at third base. That would have worked out well. Another option was dropping McCutchen to Braun and getting Machado or Alvarez at third. I just went ahead and went with my initial feeling and didn’t disrupt the team I built and plugged in Spangenberg.