The folks at Baseball Think Factory are kind enough to supply Fangraphs with projected ZiPS values for each player covering the rest of the season. These values take the player’s preseason projection and how they have produced so far in 2012 and then estimate the player’s stats for the rest of the season.

I used Zach Sander’s formula to rank only 2B for the rest of the season.using z-scores. Here are the rest of season values for 2B order by their current z-score and some thoughts on the rankings:
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Adam Wainwright

The Cardinals’ success without Adam Wainwright last season was a minor miracle. Chris Carpenter had a fantastic season at the top of the rotation and Jaime Garcia and Kyle Lohse did enough in the middle to make up for the fact that they struggled to find a capable back end of the rotation until the trade deadline acquisition of Edwin Jackson.

So far this season, Jackson is gone, Carpenter has yet to make his debut, and Wainwright isn’t exactly leading the team into the fields of glory. Lance Lynn has been a pleasant surprise and Jake Westbrook has already nearly equaled his 2011 WAR total, but it’s hard to blame Cardinal fans — to say nothing of fantasy owners — for wondering just when the pre-surgery Wainwright will show up. Read the rest of this entry »

Wasting time with the proverbial series of tubes one day, I stumbled upon one of the dumbest questions I’d seen in a Yahoo! forum. Some sad human being actually asked “how many dimes are in a dollar” on Yahoo, the top response was “How many do you want there to be?” No fooling.

Now, as dreadfully Homer Simpson as that might sound, I actually found sort of a terrifying similarity when looking at one of my fantasy squads. I’ve had such a run of terrible luck at third base that I rather feel like I’m getting about five dimes on the dollar in return for my investment, and well, I’d like there to be more. While I’d prefer to have a neat-and-tidy lineup where I’ve got a stalwart at each position, I’ve had to scramble in a way that has forced me to think well outside the box. Like taking the blue pill kind of outside the box.

Enter the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad home/road split for Chase Headley.

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Gavin Floyd has been a rather consistent pitcher the past few years, as his xFIP has been nowhere below 3.64 and nowhere above 3.73 over the past three seasons. This year, Floyd’s ERA looks great, with a 2.53 mark through seven starts and 46.1 innings, but once again his xFIP is comparable to season’s past, with a 3.77 mark.

The worry with Floyd is that his ERA has consistently been above his peripherals, which likely has something to do with his home ballpark. He has an 11.4% home run per fly ball ratio for his career, with a 12.4% mark at home and 10.6% away. Homers have not been kind to Floyd in his career, and especially not when pitching in his hitter friendly home ballpark.

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Round and round she goes; where she stops, nobody knows.  This closer carousel that keeps spinning around this season is starting to become downright unbearable.  They say never to pay a premium for saves on draft day because they’ll be abundant on your waiver wire, but this is ridiculous.  Now it’s getting to the point where you shouldn’t be spending so much of your FAAB dollars either because the shelf-life of a closer in 2012 is about a week.  Here’s a look at who’s getting the baton passed to them now… Read the rest of this entry »

Last season, I drank the Adam Dunn Kool-Aid. He was coming over from the the National League. He would likely be in the lineup everyday, even if hurt, with the option of the D.H in the AL. What could go wrong? Pretty much everything. It couldn’t happen again I figured, so this season I drank the Albert Pujols flavored Kool-Aid. With him getting up in the years, he would be able to get a rest from fielding, DH a bit, continue hitting, win the MVP, and most importantly, lead my fantasy team to a title. Yea … that is not happening.

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It’s Wednesday, or “hump day”, as the cool kids say, so you know what that means, right? Time to feel sorry for all you deep leaguers out there. The funny part about writing this weekly column is that I am reminded how crazy deep mixed and Only leagues are. When you get excited about picking up the players I highlight, you know your league is deep. So who looks tastiest one the free agent buffet?

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Yesterday’s biggest news was what was going on in Stephen Strasburg’s pants, which is usually just news to a select group of people, notably his wife and doctors.

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Catcher started out as a deeper position this year than it has been in years past, but the injuries seem to be mounting up behind the plate more quickly than at almost any other position — pitchers notwithstanding since there are about as many of them as there are position players even before articulation is taken into account. This month alone Miguel Olivo, Josh Thole, Chris Iannetta, Wilson Ramos, and most recently Sandy Leon have all been placed on the disabled list, leaving owners looking for a replacement.

To that end, here is a pair of catchers who are getting enough playing time to be considered plug-and-play and producing enough to be worth rostering. Read the rest of this entry »

It seems like every other day a member of the Tampa Bay Rays is being put on the disabled list. Kyle Farnsworth, Evan Longoria and Desmond Jennings are the main players sidelined by injury, but they’re joined by the likes of Sam Fuld and backup catchers Jose Lobaton and Robinson Chirinos. The latest to catch the injury bug is big right-handed starter Jeff Niemann.

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