MLB Best Bets – Free (Wednesday 5/15)
Josh Gross
The wait was grueling, but we’re finally into the MLB regular season. No more draft talk. No more draft strategy. If you’re reading this, you’ve accumulated a week’s worth of statistics on your fantasy baseball teams. I’m sure our reactions to that sample will be perfectly rational (shrugs shoulders).
I always get a kick out of the first 5-7 games of the MLB season. Crazy stuff happens. Players get hurt. Projected starters ride the bench. Someone we’ve never heard of smacks three home runs and ends up atop the top of Sunday’s FAAB list. All that draft prep goes up in flames and we overreact. That will be the topic of this week’s edition of Small Ball. Overreactions.
But first, a quick story. Opening Day is always a special day for me. Every year, like clockwork, I call my 94-year-old grandfather on Opening Day. My grandfather and I have always shared a special bond with sports, specifically baseball. He played stick ball with Whitey Ford when he was a kid. He sneaked into games at the Polo Grounds and would even carry in the umpire’s equipment before games to secure a spot at the ballpark. He was a catcher who nearly made the major leagues himself. He’s also still a die-hard New York Mets fan living in Southern California surrounded by Los Angeles Dodgers fans.
Rule number one when I call him is to never mention the Dodgers. So of course, I break that rule every time just to hear him go on a two-minute tirade. For a 94-year-old man, I love the passion in his voice when he talks about the game of baseball. It hasn’t changed since I was a kid and he was much “younger.”
I thoroughly enjoyed hearing him go off on former Mets manager Buck Showalter last season. Being an old-school mind, he still hasn’t wrapped his head around the bullpen usage we’ve seen around baseball for the last 5-10 years. He can’t stand watching players whiff at the plate with a runner on third and less than two outs.
“Just put the damn bat on the ball.” I know, grandpa. I know.
If he could script the perfect start to a New York Mets game, it would look something like this: A Brandon Nimmo walk, followed by a stolen base. A Francisco Lindor sacrifice bunt would move Nimmo to third before a fly ball to center by Pete Alonso would bring him home on a sac fly. 1-0 Mets.
That’s how they played back in the day. It was “small ball” (how fitting). Can you imagine the outrage if Aaron Judge put down a sac bunt today in the No. 2 spot? The game is different now, and I don’t think my grandpa will ever fully accept that. It hasn’t stopped him from watching, though. And I doubt it ever will. I just hope one of these days, the Mets can give him one final World Series to celebrate. He deserves it.
OK, now to the overreactions.
Max Fried Wasn’t Worth the Draft Risk
When Max Fried toed the rubber Saturday for his first start of the season, it was an intoxicating moment for Atlanta Braves fans and fantasy managers alike.
About 30 minutes later, Braves manager Brian Snitker made the slow walk to the mound and took the ball from Fried after just 0.2 innings. Fried allowed two hits and three walks to go along with three earned runs. He struck out one.
Queue the Matty Davis tweet:
As you’ll note, Fried’s velocity was up a tick. That’s good. The results, however, couldn’t have been worse.
My first thought when I saw the box score was “uh oh, Fried got hurt again.” Luckily, that wasn’t the case. He had some control issues, which is something to watch. But he also had to endure one of the worst missed ball/strike calls you’ll ever see. It’s a call that would have gotten Fried out of the first inning unscathed. Talk about one call changing an entire outing…
That’s 98 mph cheddar right down the pipe. Perhaps Fried’s first-inning jitters would have disappeared had he gotten that call. We’ve seen pitchers struggle through the first inning before settling down and putting together a quality outing. The lefty never got the chance on Saturday. Instead, it was a ratio killer and a poor way to start the 2024 season.
I’m not concerned about Fried at all. So if anyone is panicking, just tell them “Goosfraba.”
Despite an injury cutting his 2023 season short, Fried was excellent in his 14 starts, posting a 2.55 ERA and 80 strikeouts in 77.2 innings. If you drafted him this year, it was likely for the elite ratios, solid strikeout rate and win equity. Literally none of those things have changed after one start. His velocity being up a tick actually makes me more confident moving forward. His injury history was baked into his draft ADP. But when healthy, Fried is one of the most valuable pitchers out there. We’ll see if he gets back on track in today’s start against the Diamondbacks.
Jason Foley for $350?
I know the first week of FAAB can get a little crazy. What I didn’t expect was to see managers blow up to 35-45% of their budget on Detroit Tigers reliever Jason Foley in the opening week of waivers. Foley has some nasty stuff, I’ll give him that. He can crank it up to 100 and clearly is better suited for a closer role than Alex Lange, who is all over the place at times. Shelby Miller is also supposed to be “involved,” but Foley nabbed the first two saves of the season and people went ballistic.
I wouldn’t have bid 35%-plus on Foley in that spot. Remember, it’s Week 1 of the season. There will be minor-league call-ups, there will be massive injuries (looking at you, Royce Lewis). You will need to stream two-start pitchers. The moral of the story is – there’s a lot of ball game left. Manager A.J. Hinch still hasn’t officially named Foley the closer. In fact, Foley’s first two saves required him to only record two outs in each outing. Andrew Chafin began the ninth on Opening Day to get Andrew Benintendi, presumably because left-handers hit .299 with an .844 OPS against Foley last season.
That’s not a nothing-burger for Foley truthers. In Sunday’s save, Foley again only came on in the ninth after Tyler Holton retired lefty Gavin Sheets for the first out of the frame. On Monday against the Mets, Foley came in for the ninth inning in a tie game. That’s a high-leverage spot. But being the road team, you would have expected Foley to have been deployed if the Tigers grabbed the lead in the top of the 10th.
In the end, Detroit scored five runs in that frame, and Miller came on to finish off the game in a non-save situation. If the Tigers had scored two runs, would it have been Miller on for the save? Probably.
Note: The same situation repeated itself Thursday, and Miller came on for the 10th with a tie score and the 11th to finish out an eventual 6-3 lead (winning pitcher).
Perhaps Foley ends up being “the guy” long-term. If so, 35% of your budget would pay off if you were in dire need of a closer. I’m assuming there will be closer value that pops up throughout the year with even more secure roles. For example, if Josh Hader blows out his elbow, I’d be much more comfortable with Ryan Pressly knowing he’d get virtually all of the team’s save opportunities on an elite Astros club.
Kevin Ginkel popped up right before the season started as a trusted closer. Last year, we had Tanner Scott become a valuable FAAB addition. Two years ago, it was Félix Bautista. There are 20-plus weeks left of the fantasy baseball season. This is nothing against Foley. It’s more about overreacting to small samples when we make our FAAB decisions. I don’t think up to $450+ (yes, someone won Foley for that amount) is a prudent way to react this early in the year.
Time to Drop Esteury Ruiz
Those who drafted Esteury Ruiz in the offseason were expecting him to receive more regular at bats for the Oakland Athletics after a promising end to the 2023 season. That and, of course, a boatload of stolen bases. Drafting Ruiz, who swiped 67 bags last year, should have given you comfort in the stolen base category and allowed you to focus on the other four categories. Unfortunately, things took a poor turn right before Opening Day when reports surfaced that Ruiz had lost his starting spot in the lineup. Those fears were confirmed when Ruiz wasn’t in the starting lineup in the season-opener.
Expectations were lowered – and rightly so. But no one expected this Monday’s headline that Ruiz was optioned to Triple-A. This came just one day after a 2-for-4 day in the leadoff spot with a stolen base that helped lead the A’s to their first win.
Yikes. Ruiz relegated to the minors probably leaves a major stolen-base gap on your fantasy team (mine included). I’ve seen touts advising managers to outright drop Ruiz in NFBC leagues. I’m not sure I’m ready to do that. You drafted Ruiz for a reason. Sure, being in the minors isn’t going to help your team. It isn’t going to fill that major gap left on your roster in the SB department. But dropping him? What does that do? Unless there’s someone like Victor Scott or Brice Turang hanging around on waivers, I think the best course of action right now is to hold.
Perhaps Ruiz’s stay in the minors won’t be a long one. There’s also a chance an injury to an A’s outfielder could necessitate a quick return to the big league club. There are many factors in play here. But I’m not going to cut bait on a player who can still steal 40-plus bags this year if he lands back with Oakland. There’s also the less likely but still possible scenario that he’s traded at some point. In NFBC leagues, there’s simply no point in dropping him right now. Is it disappointing? Sure. Does it put most managers behind the eight ball in a major way? Absolutely. But why compound the problem by dropping him just a week into the season? I’m exercising patience here before doing anything drastic.
Note: In shallower leagues or home leagues, I’m completely fine with dropping Ruiz. There are adequate replacements on the wire and other ways to keep your team competitive. I’m also fine with dropping Ruiz in NFBC leagues if your team is already elite in the stolen base department (though if that’s the case, what was the case for you drafting Ruiz in the first place?).
General Overreactions
Instead of focusing on a specific player, I’m going to address something I know is happening in almost every fantasy baseball league out there – recency bias.
Our own Discord wasn’t immune from this. I saw questions like “should I drop (insert ice cold player here) for (insert red-hot, .650-hitting second baseman with a career .250 average here)?” The answer is almost universally a no. We don’t want to drop a player we felt comfortable drafting just because he had a poor start to the season. Here’s a short list of players who got off to cold starts and had some managers frustrated (but not dropping): Bryce Harper, Aaron Judge, Yordan Alvarez, Bo Bichette.
Funny story … Just one day after media personality Christopher “Mad Dog” Russo speculated that Harper was dealing with a bad back and “struggling to hit fastballs,” Harper smacked three home runs, including a grand slam, against the Reds. Even funnier, Judge hit his first homer of the season Wednesday afternoon, just hours before Alvarez went yard twice against the Blue Jays.
And what did Bichette do? Well, nothing yet. Back to the original point …
Fringe starters that you took in the 15th or 16th round don’t need to be dropped after 4-5 quiet performances. Even a pitcher like A.J. Puk, who’s off to a horrendous start after two outings, isn’t worth dropping at this point. I’d be fine with benching him if your pitching staff is deep. Just don’t make a rash decision. It can take up to a month for players to get back into rhythm sometimes. It’s why the best fantasy baseball managers are often the ones who don’t overreact. The cliche says baseball is a game of failure. The direct comparison for fantasy baseball is that it’s a game of patience.
That’s it for today. As always, hit us up in the FTN Fantasy Baseball Discord. Things are starting to heat up there, and our analysts are answering your questions around the clock.
