So we've reached the (traditional) half-way mark in the baseball season. Players have risen and fallen (Bautista and Hanley, for example,) been called up and sent down (Trout and Rivera,) and gotten injured and recovered (Lester and Brian Wilson.)
Whether your team is at the top of the heap or looking up at the pack now's the time to reassess and make whatever changes are needed for the long haul. But before then let's take a look at some of the more interesting stories in fantasy baseball in the first half o '11.
Jose Bautista vs. the World. So the jury has a verdict and they've decided that Jose Bautista smells like the Hall of Fame. He's been the most valuable hitter in FBB according to baseballmonster.com and the fact that he provides most of his value without the help of the stolen base put him in company with Adrian Gonzalez as the only elite fantasy hitter without wheels. True, guys like Miggy, Prince, Votto, Konerko, and Berkman aren't exactly speedsters but the difference between Bautista and those guys right now is about the same as the difference between Votto and Mark Trumbo.
The elites are the elites. Looking on baseballmonster again at the top forty-eight players by value we find very few unexpected names. The single most surprising is probably that of Melky Cabrera and while there are others, such as Alex Gordon, Michael Young, Brennan Boesch, Josh Beckett, and James Shields, the bottom line is that there are relatively few total sleepers this year.
The SP are outshining the RP. I went into this season believing that strong closers had become undervalued in fantasy based on the ideas that closer are often as valuable as starters and that they tend to be easier to predict than starters. So far, I look like an idiot. And it's not just the purple striped button down and yellow slacks. The top thirteen performing pitchers are all starters and aside from Michael Pineda could all have been predicted to be top pitchers in '11 (if you're smart enough to predict good results from Beckett and Shields, that is, as was done by someone I know.) The top RP, on the other hand, are a bit of a rag tag bunch made up of Craig Kimbrel, Fernando Salas, Drew Storen, Joel Hanrahan, Johnny Venters, Kyle Farnsworth, Mike Adams, and Antonio Bastardo. There are some very talented gentleman in that group to be sure but you don't get a Brian Wilson, Jonathan Papelbon, or Mariona Rivera until the ninth best producing RP. Those who paid bottom dollar for saves this year have been laughing all the way to the bank.
Cheap SP's can fill out a rotation, but haven't broken into the elite. A smart drafter/waiver wire scourer could have cheaply picked up SP's like Jeff Karstens, Scott Baker, Josh Timlin, Cory Luebke, Erik Bedard, and Brandon Beachy among others but none of those guys are giving you truly stellar numbers. Good, yes. But if you want a pitched provided $25 plus in value this year not named Pineda, Shields, or Beckett you likely needed to spend top dollar for him at the draft.
With a nod to the second half, callups are running wild this year. With Mike Trout getting Major League at-bats already and the KC pair of Hosmer and Moustakas firmly entrenched in the Royals' lineup this may be the year that rookies and callups decide fantasy championships. Their affect on the pitching side of the ledger may be even more pronounced as guys like Pineda, Beachy, Kimbrel, and Venters have all become impact fantasy players. So who will we see next? Jennings in Tampa Bay? Montero in the Bronx? Chime in in the comments with who you think will be the next impact player called up in '11.
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