Yes, I’m a little down about losing out in the final period of the season.  I was very proud of my season, having missed on several drafts picks and having received terrible early season luck with both closers and wins (forcing me to punt wins entirely) but making up for it with a lot of great FAAB adds and a flurry of trades in the weeks leading up to the trade deadline (all told, I made 10 trades in July and the first two weeks of August), changing gears, transforming my roster, and setting in motion a plan that I thought would make me a winner.  At the conclusion of the trade deadline, I thought I was the favorite to the win the league.

I knew it would be close between Clark and I, and I knew that luck could play an integral part in the final standings.  Because I believe it did, I’m going to take this opportunity to step up on the soap box and whine my heart out—hopefully with the understanding that I have all the respect in the world for Clark, who I believe played a tremendous season.  I just happen to think he was aided by a little luck.  Take this merely as the sour grapes ruminations of a guy thinking of what could have been.

(more…)

Last week, I looked at a couple of my players that have outpeformed most people's expectations this season and why I drafted them.  Last time I looked at Mike Napoli and Mark Reynolds.  Today, I'm going to look at Alex Gordon and Curtis Granderson.

(more…)

With my series on closers wrapping for the year last time out, today Eric has asked me to explain the logic behind drafting some of the players I selected back in March.  While I’ve had the good fortune of putting myself in the championship race (I’m currently in first by a point), my road to the title has been a bit of an unorthodox one.  Looking back at my post-draft day roster, Eric said that “it sure doesn’t look like a champion.”  That’s because I had some pretty spectacular misses, such as Dan Johnson ($10), Travis Snider ($15), Kevin Kouzmanoff ($9), Matt Thornton ($12), and Frank Francisco ($13).  Counterbalancing this, however, were some big hits in Curtis Granderson, Alex Gordon, Mark Reynolds, Mike Napoli, and Michael Pineda.

(more…)

This season, I’ve been running a series of articles here at the website for the CardRunners Experts League looking at closers and how we can best predict the number of games a closer will save in a given year.  Thus far, I’ve looked at a closer’s preseason hold on the job, his skills, and his closing experience, but aside from picking a closer with a firm hold on the job before the season starts, there is little difference between the top tier closers and the bottom tier ones in terms of pure saves.  Today, I wanted to combine all of our factors to see just how well we can predict saves and then look at which closers have over/underperformed expectations in 2011 and which CardRunners teams have gained/lost the most.
 

(more…)

Team Carty trades Casey Kotchman, Maicer Izturis, and Ezequiel Carrera to Strict Beet Juice for Asdrubal Cabrera, Juan Rivera, and Edwin Encarnacion

This season, I’ve been conducting a series of studies in an attempt to better understand which closers will accumulate the most saves—the primary reason we draft them in the first place.  Over the past couple of months, I’ve found that closers who begin the season with a tenuous hold on the closer’s chair tend to wind up with far fewer saves than those who begin the year with the job all to themselves.  I’ve also found that relievers with poor skills who “aren’t good enough to be closers” tend to accumulate nearly as many saves as relievers with elite skills.  Today, I thought I’d add a third variable to the mix: experience.

(more…)

I meant to post this earlier, but a couple of weeks ago, I penned an article for Baseball Prospectus discussing the differences between mixed leagues and AL/NL-only leagues using my participation in Tout Wars (mixed), CardRunners (AL), and LABR (NL) as examples.  Most of it is behind the pay wall, but if you have a subscription, I think it's an interesting read.

Derek Carty trades Luke Scott to Peter Kreutzer for Ezequiel Carrera.

In a swap of lottery tickets, my Team Carty trades Kyle Weiland, Neil Ramirez, and $30 FAAB to Two Out Wonders (Chris Hill and Nick Cassevetes) for Chris Davis and Don Kelly.

A couple weeks ago, I began a series looking at closers and how to best identify the closers that will succeed in a given year.  Given that, on the whole, less than 50 percent of pitchers who begin the season as a closer end the year closing games, deciding which closers to choose for our fantasy teams is a tricky subject.

Last time, I looked at how often closers lose their jobs based on their start-of-year classification of sole closer, injured closer, injury replacement, or part-of-a-committee.  I found that, far and away, sole closers are the best bets while the rest are lucky to get double-digit saves.  This time, I’m going to put the theory of “draft skills, not roles” to the test.
 

(more…)