Wheelings and Dealings: Spencer

I figured I'd take a look at Spencer's trades so far this season. Before giving up on the season Spencer's keeper situation looked something like this (age; draft pick forfeited for remaining time as a keeper):
1. A-Rod (33; 1)
2. Teixeira (29; 1, 1, 1)
3. Felix Hernandez (23; 2, 1, 1)
4. Kevin Youkilis (30; 9, 8)
After that there were some big question marks with Joba Chamberlain, Francisco Liriano, or even Johnny Damon.

After his latest batch of trades, Spencer has a lot more depth and value, but also less high end talent. I'd view Nelson Cruz and Carlos Quentin as fairly risky keepers as well, for performance and injury reasons, respectively. They also both have the potential to be spectacular values.
1. Kevin Youkilis (30; 9, 8)
2. Dustin Pedroia (25; 8, 7)
3. Nelson Cruz (29; 22, 20)
4. Matt Wieters (23; 24, 22, 20)
5. Carlos Quentin (26; 22, 20)
6. Nolan Reimold (25; 24, 22, 20)

Reimold is much more of a "In Case of Emergency, Break Glass" kind of keeper, as he has limited upside. If Spencer ends up keeping Reimold, something has likely gone wrong with one of his other keepers. With Travis Snider, Brandon Wood, and Matt LaPorta on his bench Spencer has some potential break out players as well. Spencer will be very reliant on the draft to construct a good team around his "value" keepers. I'm not sure his deals make his team better for next year, but it does give him a lot more "upside" then he did before. While on average I would say his team is likely going to be worse next year than if he had kept Teix, A-Rod, and Felix, oddly enough I think he's more likely to win a championship next year thanks to his trades. But for the rest of this season the questions become 1. Can he find any useful keepers from the waiver wire or his bench? and 2. Just how low can he go? My money is on 19 points.

Third base solutions

While Lowell's hip injury is hopefully only a short term problem, the Sox may need to make a trade to address the position in the following month. These are a few of the guys I thought of off the top of my head, but with Beltre hitting the DL the pickings are slim for cornermen.

Mark Teahen 1B/3B/RF. I think Teahen would be a great fit for the Sox both short term as a 3B fill in and as a super utility guy longer term. A natural 3B with the ability to play 3 of the 4 corner positions (and 2nd base in a pinch) he would be able to be a "super sub" for the Sox. He's hitting .290/.344/.449 this year after a disappointing 2008. Alex Gordon will be coming back soon, so it is still unclear how Teahen would fit into the Royals' long term plan. If Julio Lugo continues to show signs of life with the bat, Lugo+cash and a second or third tier prospect might get the job done. With Dayton Moore's love of hack-tastic players perhaps the Sox could pawn off another semi-useless guy for a valuable contributor.

Hank Blalock 3B/DH - Blalock always seems to be the topic of trade discussion as the trade deadline nears, but also always seems to get hurt. I'm not sure the Sox would want to count on his ability to play the field on a regular basis and his hacktastic approach (.290 OBP) is certainly unexciting, but he can still hit for power (.591 slugging). Blalock would likely be a free agent at the end of the season, unless his 6.5 million option gets picked up.

Aubrey Huff 1B/3B/DH - Huff may be the best bat to get moved before the deadline. He would strictly be a rental and but hasn't played 3B at all this season. He might need to continue to play 1B and shift Youkilis across the diamond. After a resurgent 2008 his OPS has slumped back to 2007 levels (~.800). Interestingly, Huff is projected to be a type A free agent by a good margin - as preposterous as it seems he was the top rated AL 1B/OF/DH as of June 26th. This might make him more appealing as a rental unless his type A status cripples his free agent value.

Horrible No Good Terrible Very Bad Decisions, the prequel!

Drafting Mike Aviles! Mr. Aviles is now done for the season, as his ligament injury never healed, and he is having Tommy John surgery. His final line for Consistently Erratic? 14/87, with 5 runs, 1 HR, 6 RBI, for a whopping .161 average. And I still like him more than Yuniesky.

Horrible No Good Terrible Very Bad Decisions Part Deux

On Sunday I decided to bench Jermaine Dye this week. Dye had been fighting a nagging calf injury and had sat out two of the three games of the weekend series, plus Nolan Reimold was facing 5 lefties this week. Sadly, this decision did not work out well.

Reimold did all right, going 5/18 (.278) with a homerun, 3 RBI, and 5 runs. Dye had his best week of the season, hitting 12/24 with 3 homeruns, 6 RBI, and 5 runs. As if to rub it in, he also hit 4 doubles. During this week alone Dye raised his average from .268 to .287 and would have raised my team average a full two points from .274 to .276.

At least my pitching had a great week.

As a HNGTVBD bonus, here is Trevor Cahill's line while in and out of my lineup. Impressive, isn't it.

	IP	W	ERA	WHIP	K	K/9
Out of Lineup	50.67	4	3.38	1.28	30	5.33
In Lineup	30.67	1	5.87	1.60	13	3.81

Weekly Update June 28

I'm the big winner this week, although I could have done even better had I not benched Jermaine Dye. Tough weeks for Mark, Taylor, and Kate and Spencer's team shows some signs of life after his mammoth fire sale (although before said fire sale actually goes into effect).

Weekly Update		R	HR	RBI	SB	AVG	W	SV	K	ERA	WHIP	IP	Total Pts	Net Pts
1	Oh Balls!!!	35	5	34	8	0.001	3	2	52	-0.09	0	62.1	58	1
2	Mr Bill's Boppers	46	10	42	5	0.003	6	1	43	-0.03	-0.01	54.8	55	3.5
3	I Ain't Got My Taco	35	10	31	3	-0	1	5	33	-0.01	0.01	33.8	50	-0.5
4	Soap Box Yakkers	33	4	25	9	-0	3	2	40	0.09	0.02	46.9	48.5	-2.5
5	Smell The Glove	38	6	31	1	-0.001	3	4	32	0.04	0	39	45.5	-4.5
6	Soo Choo Train	32	7	34	6	-0.003	4	1	33	-0.03	-0.01	38.1	40.5	-2.5
7	The Chones	32	9	31	3	0.001	4	2	24	-0.15	-0.03	36.1	38	3
8	A-Roid's RagingRotos	32	4	29	5	-0.002	3	4	44	-0.14	-0.02	43.1	24.5	2.5

I've also included a chart showing the overall standings since I started keeping track of daily stats. The biggest 1 month gain has been 12 points for Andrew (49 on April 27 to 61 on May 27), 9.5 points for me (45.5 on May 27 to 55 on June 27) and 8.5 for Luke (26.5 on May 20 to 35 on June 20). Luke also gained 13.5 points over a shorter period of time (26.5 on May 20 to 40 on June 10) but unfortunately (for Luke at least) he proceeded to give back 7 of those points over the next week. While it will be harder to gain points later in the season, this should give hope for some potential punters. What won't is the fact that Andrew has been in first place since May 5th, when Taylor briefly tied him and Caleb got within 1 point on June 16th, but other than that he has been unchallenged. However, since his peak total of 64 on May 10 his overall score has slowly but steadily dropped.

Ouch, Mark.

DeRosa traded and Beltre out for 2 months, both on the same day? That'll put a solid dent in your CI situation.

Don't suppose you're interested in Mike Lowell...

trading waiver priorities

So, I may have asked about this before, but can we trade waiver wire priorities? If I remember right, Mark can set them manually. If he can, are people OK with this?