Investing & Maybe Fantasy Baseball

If you read my pitcher rankings for this week you’ll see I saw a glimmer of hope with Jarrod Parker because he was a two start pitcher @Cleveland and @Seattle. Well I just finished watching his start and it was the worst start I’ve seen all year. All four home runs he surrendered were pitches that missed (or were left) up in the zone. Throughout the entire game there were runners on base; he was pitching behind in the count more often than not and bounced a lot of balls in the dirt. I’m not surprised he’s tied in the Majors with five wild pitches. There’s something wrong with Parker and I have no problem if you want to drop him in ten team mixed leagues.

Similar to Parker, Jeremy Hellickson has underperformed to begin the year and today was a continuation of his poor performance. Even though he was staked to a seven run lead he was only able to throw five innings while allowing three earned runs, six hits and four walks. The reason for his struggles was the command of his pitches was loose all game, which lead to him throwing a lot of pitches outside the strike zone. Since his command was off he also used a lot of pitches to try to make the perfect pitch, being overly cautious instead of being aggressive and challenging hitters.

Speaking of overly cautious, Andrew Cashner pitched a solid game against the Double-A lineup known as the Marlins. However, I bet fantasy owners who started him today (or this week) were expecting more than three strikeouts. His problem throughout the game was throwing the ball for strikes, only throwing 57 percent of them. With a fastball that sits in the mid-90s I wish he would have used it more often in order to generate more swings and misses, but according to the Padres TV commentators the Padres coaching staff wanted him to pitch more to contact so he would have quicker innings and therefore go longer in games, which he did; this year was the first time he pitched into the seventh inning.
Joel Hanrahan left the game today with an arm/elbow injury. I don’t how long he may be out, but if you’re looking for the pitcher next in-line I would say its Junichi Tazawa.

Below are the FAAB results for all four of my NFBC leagues. Since this is my first time playing in the NFBC I’m finding the FAAB process to be more time consuming and tricky than I previously thought. My strategy for coming up with bids is to look at player comps of the player I’m looking to get and see what they went previously went for. What’s awesome about doing multiple leagues is I get to see FAAB trends over a larger sample. Anyway, enjoy!

15 Team Satellite

 12 Team Satellite

12 Team Online Championship

 12 Team Satellite

Yesterday the scouting enigma known as Dee Gordon was called up from Triple-A, where he was hitting .314/.397/.431 with 14 stolen bases (out of 16 attempts). Last year he had a very disappointing season the Majors as he was overmatched by professional pitching. However, he still had 32 stolen bases in only 330 plate appearances.

Odds are in daily pickup leagues he’s already gone, but for NFBC owners we have to decide if we want to pick him up and if so, how much. Aside- seriously folks, every league should have FAAB bidding system like NFBCs. I’ve been in daily transactions leagues and the owners who have no lives always pick up players before anyone else. I’m bidding in the $400s to ensure I acquire his services. My rationale is fairly simple.

Judging by the look of the way Hanley Ramirez left the field and the fact he was put on the DL the next day tells me he’s probably going to miss more than minimum 15 days allotted. Suppose Ramirez only misses 15 days, the Dodgers infield is still a big mess. Luis Cruz is only batting .095. Mark Ellis, 36 in June, hasn’t played in days and his 2 year contract expires at the conclusion of the season. Justin Sellers was benched because his .191/.267/.250 slash line was too low compared to his adequate defensive abilities. The playing time is available for Gordon if he #wants it. If Gordon can hit .250 with a .330 OBP he should be able to find everyday at-bats at shortstop, not second or third. The news about him playing second base is rubbish. If Ramirez comes back in 15 days and Gordon is hitting, Ramirez will be at third base.

I believe there’s a high likelihood plays well enough to earn back the starting job, which means he could easily steal 50+ bases by the end of the season.