By Dan O’Shea
Is it too early to panic if your fantasy baseball team is ending the first month of the season in a downward spiral toward last place? I think it is too early to panic, but don’t let me stop you. A little panic actually might help you make some aggressive bench moves or pick up some of this year’s surprise stars before someone else gets them. But the key to managing your panic is to not make any rash decisions about getting rid of proven players who haven’t been pulling their weight yet.
Don’t move Hanley Ramirez or David Wright just because they have yet to earn Top 100 rankings for their performances this year, let alone played up to their pre-season status as Top 5 players. Don’t give up on CC Sabathia or Cole Hamels either, unless someone is ready to offer you a trade that values them at their pre-season rankings (No. 35 and No. 45, respectively, in Yahoo!). Something tells me Ramirez and Wright will get it going, and that Sabathia and Hamels will at least crawl out of the earned-run holes they are in already.
Hang with your stars for now. If you’re feeling really fidgety, then bench them for a while, trade or drop other players on your roster and pick up a few flash-in-the-pan back-ups and don’t expect too much (Remember the Emilio Bonifacio era? It lasted less than a week earlier this month).
Meanwhile, if guys like Wright and Ramirez, haven’t been performing up to snuff yet, then who has? It’s time for the Fantasy Fix Players of the Month Awards:
April’s MVP: Ian Kinsler, 2B. I had him ranked pre-draft ahead of Dustin Pedroia and others for a reason. We got an abbreviated glimpse of his tools in an injury-shortened season last year, but he’s really just nearing his potential in an offense and home park (The Ballpark in Arlington) built for his skills as a hitter and baserunner. Though Apr. 28, he had 7 HRs, 20 RBIs, 7 SBs.
April’s Cy Young: Zack Greinke, SP. I know – you were expecting Johan Santana. I was, too, but Greinke has fulfilled his hype as a chic high pick among SPs and then some. Kansas City also is letting him pitch deep into games (2 CGs already). Through Apr. 28: 4-0, 36 Ks, 29 IP, 2 CG, 1 shut-out.
April’s Sleeper of the Month: Raul Ibanez, OF. He is notorious for starting slow and really taking off in the second-half, but now in Philadelphia, he has jumped out as the top performing outfielder stat-wise: .342 Avg., 6 HRs, 16 RBIs, 3 SBs – that last stat is a fairly shocking development for a guy who had 2 SBs all of last year.
April’s Rookie of the Month: I think Nelson Cruz, OF, will get plenty of chances, so I’ll pass up his 6 HRs for Dexter Fowler, OF, who is hitting .302 and has 9 SBs, including an incredible five in one night earlier this week.
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Moving on to the expert wire, what fantasy gems might we find unearthed for us?
* Closing Time at Yahoo! highlights the exploits of new SP darling Jordan Zimmermann, who shut down the Mets pretty well. Still, Zimmermann plays for a team – the bedraggled Nats – that is not going to give him much help winning games, and he hasn’t yet shown the strikeout potential that can make up for it. Closing Time also discusses a blowout suffered by phenom Clayton Kershaw, but it took place at the artillery range otherwise known as Coors Field. I’ll bet that by June, Kershaw will be looking better than Zimmermann.
* Bleacher Report takes a look at some fairly highly-touted players (Garrett Atkins, Mike Aviles, Dioner Navarro, among others) who earned some hype last season but have failed to follow up strong this season. Aviles might be the one on this group who actually comes back and lives up to his mid-round sleeper draft status.
* Marc Normandin of Baseball Prospectus has a column for ESPN’s MLB Insider that also looks at slow starters (the most popular fantasy baseball column topic this time of year). Normandin says Dioner Navarro’s problem is simply that he is a proven slow starter. I’ll buy that, but it also must be said that his team, the AL defending champ Tampa Bay Rays, has gotten off to a slow start as a whole. Depending on how long it lasts, it could affect Navarro’s numbers as he had a lot of at-bats with speedy players on base last year.
* Fantasy Baseball Cafe showcases Chris Duncan, 1B/OF, as their Sleeper of the Week. Duncan’s a great story because a severe back injury almost ended his career after he was a break-out player in 2006. So far, it looks like Duncan’s swing is right back where it was then. He’s capable of above-average HRs, RBIs and doubles, and will probably score a healthy number of runs for the high-scoring Cardinals. But don’t expect him to maintain his above-.300 average for too long.
* Fantasy Phenoms, a site I checked out for the first time this week, takes a closer look at Josh Anderson, the speedy outfielder for the Detroit Tigers (you know how much we like speedy outfielders). Anderson has bounced around, but finally seems to have a starting job and already has 6 SBs on the young season. FP compares him to Willy Taveras, and that’s not a bad thing in my book (This month, anything’s better than a Lastings Milledge comparison).
NFL Draft Note
* A quick list of names from the first round of the 2009 NFL Draft that will have some impact on fantasy football rosters next fall: Matthew Stafford, QB; Mark Sanchez, QB; Knowshon Moreno, RB, Michael Crabtree, WR; Brandon Pettigrew, TE; Jeremy Maclin, WR; Chris Wells, RB; and maybe, just maybe, Darrious Heyward-Bey, WR.
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Dan O’Shea’s Fantasy Fix appears in this space every Wednesday. He welcomes your comments. You can also read his about his split sports fan personality at SwingsBothWays, which isn’t about what it sounds like It’s about.
Posted on April 29, 2009