Oak's Corner: Finally Back to Baseball!

Happy opening weekend! I finished my last draft on Wednesday night, an online NFBC Main Event, and immediately flipped from draft mode to season mode. Gone were the thoughts of ADP and closer draft strategy as I moved to studying schedules, matchups and the new free agent lists.

It's funny how as much as one can prep and plan for a draft, so much changes within each draft that flips that plan on its head. I was picking in the eight hole in my Main Event (15-teamer) and was going to take Max Scherzer or Jacob deGrom in the first round if available, but if not (cue narrator: They weren't), then I would take the best bat in the first, followed by an ace in the second round. Of course, Jose Altuve slipped all the way to 23rd and I just could not get myself to pass on the consensus second overall pick last year at that discounted price.

When Walker Buehler was snapped up the pick before me in the third, rather than push up the next tier of pitching (thinking one of them would last to me in the fourth), I took another all-around contributor in Starling Marte. Of course, the entire next starting pitcher tier was drafted before my next pick, and instead of the two top pitcher plan I wanted to implement, I ended up with a great offense, but Zach Wheeler as my SP1.

When the rest of the league kept eating up any mid-tier pitchers I liked way before they typically go, I adapted and ended up with an offense I love, but a pitching staff that needs work. I attacked the pitching it with volume and a mix of floor and upside guys, but it just really shows that in a competitive 15-teamer, you have to be ready for anything and be ready to adapt. Looking back, I probably should have pushed up the starter in the third round and taken my medicine, but I'm hoping I can piece it together, and sometimes having a known focus in FAAB can help with your pick-ups.

The Weekend That Will Be

With no game action to really break down as of yet, I'm looking at the upcoming weekend of action to see who I'll watch this first weekend of the baseball season.

I am really interested to check out Yu Darvish's first start on Saturday against the Rangers in Texas. 2018 was a complete wash for Darvish as he only pitched 40 innings, and those innings were really bad (4.95 ERA), but I would guess he was never close to healthy. It has been a few years, but it is easy to forget just how nasty Darvish's array of stuff can be when he is fully healthy. While everyone remembers the Game Seven World Series meltdown, in 2017, Darvish did have 200-plus strikeouts across 186.2 innings with a 1.16 Whip.

He dealt with a blister late in spring training, but he is expected to be fine for this start. Of course, we have heard that before with Darvish. His ADP in the 38 NFBC Main Events drafts over the last two weeks was 128, putting him in the middle of the ninth round. I had him as a target in the range in multiple drafts but got sniped on him on multiple occasions. He represents a pretty significant boom or bust pick as he could be bad or hurt again, but I'm willing to bet on his second or third round upside and I look forward to seeing how he looks on Saturday.

I'm also am excited to check out the slew of rookies that ended up breaking camp with their teams. I obviously know and study the names of the bigger prospects in baseball and work through them as I am prepping for both drafts and podcasts, but I'm not a deep prospect guy, so this will be my first extended look at a number of the big name rookies. I want to check out Pete Alonso's power stroke that hit 36 homers in the minors in 2018 and also see out just how refined Eloy Jimenez's hit tool is that had him hit over .330 last year with a strikeout rate around only 15 percent. Of course, I plan on watching many Padres games early to watch the 20-year-old phenom Fernando Tatis Jr. (I remember watching his father hit 2 grand slams, man, when did I get old?) to see if he can manage the large strikeout rate enough to not be a total batting average drain to go along with his power/speed combo profile.

On the pitching side for rookies this opening weekend, I'm looking forward to watching the starts of Kyle Wright and Chris Paddack. I saw Paddack pitch up close against the A's this spring and I was impressed with everything he did, but particularly how free and easy his 94 mph came out of his hand. He scores a nice, soft landing spot at home against the Giants who were shut out on Opening Day by Eric Lauer and the Pads bullpen.

On the flip side, Wright gets the opposite in terms of matchup as he gets a road start against the newly powerful Phillies lineup who dropped a 10 spot on the Braves Thursday. I haven't seen much of the 23-year-old right-hander, but he throws really hard (there were reports of high 90's this spring) and while his walks in 109 Double-A innings were a bit high at 3.54 BB/9, that is a number that is lower than we often see from young fireballers and one that could be worked with just a bit of improvement. It will be fascinating to see how he handles being tossed in a super-hot fire on Sunday, as well the previous day when fellow rookie Bryse Wilson takes the mound for the Braves in Philly.

FAAB Feelings

Without any game action to really break down and study, I am a week away from providing any good names, but I wanted to note a general item that I think will significantly affect FAAB much of this year. As we start to get into a decent sample of games played, I think a number of really poor offenses are going to clearly emerge. I was stunned looking at starting lineups on Thursday by just how many weak offenses there are in baseball. While picking matchups has also been key, I think a massive factor this year in particular is going to be taking an aggressive stance with streaming starters who are facing these bottom five to seven offenses we identify as ones to attack. As more people figure out just how weak some of these lineups are as the season progresses, we may even have to look a week ahead to identify "streamable" pitchers, but the streamers are definitely going to be there this year. I mean, Tyler Naquin, Starlin Castro and Alex Gordon hit third for teams today and that doesn't even touch on the Giants who started multiple players I honestly hadn't heard of until about a week ago.

A Closer Look

This first couple weeks is going to be fascinating and frustrating to see how a number of teams handle the ninth inning with a lead. After one day, your guess is as good as mine as to what we saw in the Reds and Royals in the ninth, but the only clarity I got from those two situations was that the Royals will be a mess for a while and the Reds' comments about using Raisel Iglesias in various higher leverage spots look like they may be more than just spring news. But of course, it is one day and the really interesting thing this season to start in the closer market is that we have some good teams (hell, one is the World Series champion) with unclear situations and those are the ones that could result is some huge benefits and I will highlight two of those here.

The Red Sox are the most intriguing open closer role as it is pretty well assumed that they will win 95+ games and someone has to get the twenty-seventh out in those games. NFBC drafters were betting on Matt Barnes over the last two weeks with an ADP of 189.2 in the Main Event with the next highest guy in drafts being Ryan Brasier with an ADP of 317.1. Strictly due to those respective prices, I was more interested in Brasier despite his spring injury issues.

Brasier exhibited immaculate control (1.87 BB/9 in 33.2 MLB innings) across two levels and while his strikeout numbers were not huge (7.75 K/9) in his limited time in the majors last year, he did average nearly 97 mph on his fastball and had an excellent 15.8% swinging strike rate. Barnes has a huge 14.01 K/9 strikeout rate (a number that likely led drafters to bet on him sliding into the role), but an elevated walk rate likes his 4.52 BB/9 scares me with any closer. Manager Alex Cora has not named a closer as of yet (although he has said he knows how he is going to handle the pen) and the Red Sox got smoked on Thursday so we didn't get to see anything in a real game, but at least one local sportswriter have already guessed that it would be Brasier for the ninth. We won't know anything for sure until we see a couple of late leads, but if you play in a league where Brasier is available, I would grab him now just in case the saves move his direction out of the gate.

NFBC drafters assumed the Twins closer job would fall mostly to Trevor May as he had a 207.1 ADP coming off his strong, but quick, 2018 season in the majors when he posted a 12.8 K/9 strikeout rate with a 3.20 ERA in 25.1 innings. The former starter missed all of 2017 after undergoing Tommy John Surgery, but his emergence out of the pen seemed like a likely fit for the Twins closing out 2019 games. Twins new manager Rocco Baldelli has not named a closer and while no one was close to May in ADP, Blake Parker got drafted in almost every league and about half the Main Events has someone speculate on Taylor Rogers.

Well, Rogers was the guys on Thursday as he retired the final four Indians to close out the win for Jose Berrios. A closer look shows that using a lefty made sense as among the four batters Rogers faced, 2 were left handed and one was a switch hitter (Jose Ramirez) who was significantly better against righties in 2018. So this very well could have been just a game script situation that made sense or maybe Rogers showed Baldelli something on Opening Day, not to mention he was really good in 2018 with a 2.63 ERA in 68.1 innings. While Rogers was better against lefties in 2018, he was still pretty darn good against righties too. I still think May is going to be the guy in a majority of their opportunities that don't clearly call for a lefty, but if I drafted him at his ADP, I admit my anxiety would have risen a bit today, even though it was only 1 of 162.

Series of the Weekend

Mets at Nationals. The major appeal of this series, aside from bring an divisional rivalry, is the exceptional pitching matchups we get coming out of the gate. If you are a pitching fan, then definitely settle in for this one as all six of the starters in the series were picked in the first five rounds in NFBC Main Event leagues.

The first game of the series fully lived up to the live with Jacob deGrom outdueling Max Scherzer for a 2-0 Mets win highlighted by a Robinson Cano first inning homer off Scherzer. After a day off Friday, we get another great matchup between two fun guys to watch in Noah Syndergaard and Stephen Strasburg. In the final game of the series, we get two guys who had massive breakout seasons that 2018 in Zack Wheeler and Patrick Corbin.

The Mets have struggled over the last two seasons, often due to injuries, but do feature an intriguing pitching staff and an offense could surprise if they get the production I think they will from Michael Conforto. I try not to focus too much on half-seasons when trying to project anyone, but I think it works with Conforto's 2018 as he was returning from a shoulder injury early in the season and sometimes the power just takes a while to come back.

Conforto was truly awful in the first half with a .216 average, but exploded in the second half with 17 homers in only 68 games, posting an .895 OPS. His hard hit rate in each of June, July and August was above 40% after being under 30% in both April and May when it was clear he was not quite yet himself. Conforto showed a ton of pop in 2017 with 27 homers in only 109 games and I really like the fact that he walked 13.2% of the times over the last two seasons. He does strike out a bit at 24.9% in 2018, but that number is not horrible in this era and with his hard hit profile, I don't think 40 homers are out of the question if he can just have a healthy 2019.

Enjoy opening weekend, baseball is back!