Yes you have a day off from work on Monday. And yes you can watch baseball all day. Or, watch a couple of games sandwiched between a BBQ or family outing. And, all those things are great on this special holiday, but let’s not forget the name of the day.
Memorial Day: dedicated to the memory of those who served all of us by giving their limbs and lives in service to our great country just so we would all continue to have the freedom to do whatever we want today. So please give that at least a little thought today.
Okay, now aside from the tough questions of brats vs ribs vs hamburgers, how the hell are YOUR fantasy teams doing? And WHAT are you going to do to make some necessary changes?
Today we are through the first third of the 2011 season.
Think about that for a minute…one-third gone.
So if your best hitter is hitting .250 and you banked on him hitting .300 this year, he is going to have to hit .325 for the rest of the season to get there. Sorry buckaroo, that is not likely to happen. OTOH, there are so many offensive players struggling in another ‘year of the pitcher’ that as you may have noticed the batting averages in almost all your leagues is down.
So here is Part I of my Memorial Day advice: Don’t give up a contributing member of your fantasy team to try and fix your batting average. For, the situation will either right itself or it won’t, but you really cannot afford to lose production in one area to gain production elsewhere, for that isn’t going to fix it. Maybe Tulo will hit .325 for the rest of the year (but I would bet against).
Let’s look at your team’s hitting. What categories are you strong in? Where are you lagging behind? Is there a category where it would be realistic to make up several points if you rearranged your lineup?
You will have to fill in the answers for the first two questions, but I am pretty sure the answer to the last one is a maybe.
Maybe the rates of production for players on your team and on your opponent’s teams will stay the same. Maybe not. Hitters tend to go in streaks – lots of them – during the season. Sure if you got Jose Bautista you could gain some points in home runs; yes if you trade for Jose Reyes you will gain some points in stolen bases. (And, stolen bases -- adding a Reyes, Michael Bourn, or Jacoby Ellsbury-- is the easiest of all the categories to have a likely outcome of gaining points.)
The question is, what will you have to give up to get one of those guys? And yes there are several more who might work – Elvis Andrus, Coco Crisp, Rajai. Davis, and Juan Pierre – with "might" being the operative word, as those players will have to both continue to be successful and have their respective clubs to let them run.
But, if you give up more points in other categories than you are going to gain in stolen bases your trade not very effective. And, a deeper look suggests you may have introduced more instability in your lineup by making such a trade, which will break down and thus have a lower rate of production than your team has now.
The same is true on the pitching side. The easiest category to gain points in is saves. Add a good closer--or a couple of guys who are/will get save chances--and, you can gain a point or two (or even more). But again what is the cost to your team?
In either hitting or pitching, Part II of the Memorial Day advice is to look carefully to see which categories you can gain points in and of course the flip side – where you will lose points. It is rare that there is a clear play there that you are already not aware of but a nice, quiet, objective view if the categories and points and the your roster will help.
Finally if you find a good prospective trade based on the statistics of the players on your team please try and ignore who you should be trading. It doesn’t matter if Mariano Rivera cost you $23 on draft day, for if you have three closers you are just going to get further ahead in saves by keeping all three. But, it will not help your overall point totals.
Thus, you can and should trade Rivera for a player who cost ideally cost your trading partner a dollar on draft day, or was added as a free agent later. However, the names of the players and what they cost months ago are no longer relevant.
The question is will the trade help your team team gain points in the standings? Sometimes those answers are much clearer with no names on the player’s stat lines.