Time to cut bait on struggling fantasy baseball players?
Victor Caratini hit .349 this spring for the Chicago Cubs. That didn't move the needle at all on him in terms of getting drafted. However, despite being rostered in less than 1 percent of ESPN leagues, the catcher entered play Sunday in the top 10 in terms of fantasy points earned this season.
Meanwhile, Gary Sanchez hit just .211 this spring for the New York Yankees. Fantasy managers ignored this as well. Still, although he was rostered in upward of 99 percent of ESPN leagues, he entered play Sunday with fewer fantasy points than Caratini -- in three times as many starts.
So, obviously, it would have made perfect sense for fantasy managers to make a roster move here, right? Everybody should have gotten up early Sunday morning and cut Sanchez in favor of Caratini before lineups locked. (Excuse me for a moment, as I rolled my eyes so hard at that statement they popped out of my head and I had to go pick them up off the floor.)
Obviously, the sample sizes at this stage of the game are extremely small -- but because they make up the entirety of a player's statistical identity for the very young season, the outliers appear to be far more glaring than these same streaks would seem to be should they occur in mid-July. Only the biggest of Chicken Littles would have been worrying about Sanchez, and all it took was one game against a hodgepodge of Baltimore Orioles pitchers for a 3-for-6, three-homer, six-RBI afternoon to shoot him all the way up to No. 1 at his position for the season -- and well past Caratini in the process.cheap nike nfl jerseys free shipping
In other words, don't panic in fantasy baseball -- especially in weekly head-to-head formats, where attempts to slice the numbers to a paper-thin daily basis will more often than not lead you down the road to disaster. Nobody is suggesting that treating your lineup with a "set it and forget it" philosophy is the wisest course of action, but in terms of roster construction, barring injuries, you drafted these guys for a reason. It's way too early to be pointing fingers and looking to make any drastic overhauls.
Brandon Nimmo has already been dropped in 17.6 percent of the leagues in which he was drafted. Presumably, this is because of his slow start to the season, in the form of a .103 batting average and 17 strikeouts. There are many reasons why this is too soon of a knee-jerk reaction. Just to name one, it's not as though Nimmo hasn't had similar cold streaks in the past. Last season from July 9-24, he hit just .189 with 20 K's. Over his next 20 games, he hit .328 with 13 extra-base hits and 15 runs scored. Hitters tend to have a way of working their issues out.cheap nfl jerseys china nike
Nimmo's ADP this season was 181.6. Ian Desmond, on the other hand, saw an ADP of 153.3, so one might assume there were higher expectations on the Colorado Rockies outfielder. Yet, even though an empty roster slot would have earned you more points than Desmond so far this season, thanks to his 15 whiffs and a grand total of negative-6 points, Desmond is still on rosters in 80.3 percent of ESPN leagues (compared to Nimmo's 66.8). This is a guy who hit an anemic .236 last season. Why is there so much more confidence with him? I don't get it.
