Sometimes In a Fantasy World We Forget About Defense

I'm one of the many people that drafted Mike Napoli this year looked at his stats of the past season and started drooling over what just may have happened if he was given 500 at bats. Currently each and every one of those players is in early season panic mode because it appears as if Mike Scioscia believes that it isn't Mike Napoli and his 40 HRs the past two years that give him the best chance to win, it is in fact Jeff Mathis a player who has hit under .215 in each of the past two seasons.

Through the Angels first 7 games Mathis has started 5 games while Napoli has started just 2 and I along with other Napoli owners wonder what the hell we were thinking on draft day. Sometimes you look at a players numbers and just get lost in aww with the prospective of endless power and you completely forget that baseball actually includes defense and a catcher is first in foremost in charge of calling a good game. Defense statistics will likely never work their way into fantasy baseball but if you ignore defense like I did than you just might wind up with a guy like Napoli who isn't seeing the field for the most part because he just isn't that good with the glove.

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M E T S = Mercifully End The Season

Do it before David Wright gets Hurt!

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Numbers On Steroids: Mickey Mantle

Numbers on Steroids is a look at baseball players during the 90s to see if anything screams out at you. This week it's throwing a curve ball and looking at All Time Great Yankees. Players that we know did not take steroids to see if this gives a defense to any of the players 'convicted' by Numbers on Steroids. Time to look at my dad's favorite athlete of all time, Mickey Mantle. Averages Say: What's with the mysterious dip at 27 and then the uptick? At Bats Per Home Run Says: That's a mighty jump from 22 to 24 Explaining As If It Was the 90s If you take a look at the numbers there are two time frames which in the 1990s would be questioned. First would be the incredible leap he took from his first year in the big leagues to his first MVP season in 1956. His batting average jumped 50 points. His slugging percentage jumped 90 points and he hit 15 more homers than his previous high. This wouldn't merrit a conviction nowadays though because the young age he...

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Guest Post: Thoughts on Sabathia Signing

I asked Grutt what his thoughts were on the Sabathia signing and I thought his response pretty much nailed it. So here it is. I don’t know. Every year I get a little more disenchanted with baseball. Yea, it’s great we signed the top pitching free agent. But we were supposed to. No team was even in the ballpark of the Yankees offer yet they still needed to jump from the already ridiculous price of $140 million to $160 million to close the deal. Now I hear we are going to sign more pitchers who will also get large contracts and the position player gaps are still glaring. Each new, large contract just adds to the feeling that the Yanks are supposed to win it all. “I think we have a good chance this year.” That is a lost feeling. If they don’t win I’ll wonder why, like there has to be some other reason besides that it’s a sport you can never predict how things will work out and some years just aren’t yours to be won. If they win I will be pleasantly smug. It gets a little more...

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