Waiver Wire: April 6th
This post comes to you all the way from Tokyo town. I just flew here today (yesterday? tomorrow?) and boy are my arms tired. (badum-ching!) As you can tell, it’s been a looong day. Let me quickly get to a couple waiver wire ideas before I pass out.
Shaun Marcum
Our shallow league special won’t be on the wire long, but if you missed out, don’t worry. There’s plenty of reasons to be suspicious of Mr. Marcum. First, even before he missed all of 2009 with elbow surgery, he hasn’t been the picture of health. His major league high is 159 major league innings in a season, and 168 total innings in a season. He doesn’t have a nice K/9 (7.13 career) or ground ball rate (40.3% career), and though his career ERA looks okay (3.95), his career FIP is much less interesting (4.81). That’s probably because he’s somehow managed to put together 400+ innings with a .273 BABIP. In his first start he had a sparkling .068 BABIP even. If it wasn’t such an obvious idea, actually, it seems that the best move here would be to sell high. Here’s a bet his ERA ends up in the low 4s where it belongs with his peripherals.
Dexter Fowler
It takes a little deeper bench in order to take advantage of the fact that Fowler is being summarily dropped in many leagues, but the reward is there for the patient manager. While Seth Smith is definitely a nice pickup in most leagues since he’s getting the lion’s share of at-bats by taking on righties, Fowler is not yet chopped liver. Obviously, the team is looking at Fowler’s nice .322/.374/.470 major league line against lefties (and his correspondingly putrid .228/.343/.353 line against righties) and making what they believe to be the best short-term move for the team. The problem is that this split has only come in 461 total major league at-bats (which is not a significant level for splits like these), and his minor league splits were non-existent (.843 OPS vs lefties, .859 OPS vs righties). Expect Fowler’s upside to will out and force some sort of move by management (Brad Hawpe, I’m looking at you), and in the meantime, just put him on your bench and slot him in against lefties. You’ll enjoy both short- and long-term return.
Scott Downs
The deep league special is a speculative play based on an incredibly tiny sample size seen in one light. Yes, Jason Frasor blew one save. And yes, it’s one inning. And yes, he probably won’t be removed from the closer’s role in Toronto today. On the other hand, Downs has been amazingly consistent for three years now (FIPs around 3.33 all three years), and managers love consistency. Compare Frasor’s range on his FIPs (2.99 to 4.55) and you’ll see that it’s not at all assured who’s going to have the better year in that pen this year. Throw in the fact that Frasor has been linked to the Twins in trade rumors, and Downs looks like a good bet if you’re a-speculatin’.
10
Shaun Marcum is (probably) this year’s Chris Shelton. He has a great and unexpected opening day for a team people aren’t too focused on, and isn’t a great bet to remain as good as he looked on opening day. However, Marcum should have a solid year rather than enter into a career ending slump. If you had Marcum before opening day, trade him :)
I had Marcum on my bench in two leagues (I didn’t want a disaster in Arlington putting my pitching staff in a hole). I’m fairly confident that nobody will trade anything of value for him.
It remains to be seem how Marcum bounces back from his injury but your comments about his performance before the injury miss the mark.
It is true, that in 2006 and 2007, Marcum benefited from a low BABIP without which his ERA would have been north of 4.00.
But Marcum was a noticeable improved pitcher at the start of 2008 before an injury that he pitched through before finally being disabled. Consider his record in April, May and June (he was hurt midway through June):
- His xFIP was 4.00, 3.79 and 3.77
- his k-rate was 7.84 overall and topped 8 the last two months.
- his k/bb ratio was 3.18 overall and 4 the last two months.
- he had four plus-pitches according to pitch values, and while two were of marginal value overall, that reflects the sharp drop-off after June.
- His stats matched my observations; while I’m not a Blue Jay fan, I live near Toronto and watched him often. He left almost nothing over the fat part of the plate and kept batters off-balance with his mix of pitches and locations. That he gave up only 72 hits in 98.2 innings those three months was entirely a surprise.
It’s also a bit off-base to write about his lack of innings as if that reflects a chronic injury history. He came up in 2006 to be used partly in relief and pitched 131 innings that year (including minors). In 2007 he pitched 157 innings even though he only became a starter one-third of the way into the season. And in 2008 he pitched 98.2 innings through mid-June, which was surely among the league leaders, before his injury.
Again, it remains to be seen if a guy who hasn’t pitched for a year-and-a-half comes back successfully and it”s way to early to make that judgment. But if you want to know what his ceiling is, you really should take a closer look at 2008 before he was first disabled.
excellent post rotofan. I like your statistical insight instead of the “Sell High” gut reaction. I’ gonna keep him around for awhile and try some spot starts against favorable matchups and see what happens.
I hear you on the innings analysis, and I like your post rotofan. However, I will submit that a 7 K/9 – 3 BB/9 ratio, paired with a sub-par groundball rate – while above average technically in real baseball – does not make an excellent player in shallow or mixed fantasy leagues. Remember I came at this from a waiver wire standpoint, so that analysis is couched in a shallow league milieu. If you own him in a deeper league, hold on to him, who knows what you can get for him anyway coming off injury. But if I lucked into him in the final round in a shallow league, I’d probably look at those divisional matchups and try to tack him on to someone for an upgrade.