April | 2012 | The Golden Sombrero Baseball Blog | MLB, Fantasy, College & High School Baseball News

Articles from April 2012



Golden Sombrero: Matt Joyce (4/6/2012)

Date: April 6, 2012

Bottom 2: Matt Joyce struck out swinging against C.C. Sabathia (6 pitches)

Bottom 4: Joyce struck out swinging against Sabathia (4 pitches)

Bottom 6: Joyce struck out swinging against Sabathia (5 pitches)

Bottom 8: Called out on strikes against David Robertson (5 pitches)

Final Line: 0-for-4, 4 K 

RE24: -1.1

WPA: -0.222

Notes: Clearly an off night for Joyce, who batted ninth in Joe Maddon’s ever-changing lineup mash-up. Okay, so he can’t really hit left-handers. But that doesn’t explain why Jeff Keppinger hit cleanup.

Total 2012 Sombreros: 3

 

Golden Sombrero: Matt Garza (4/12/2012)

Date: April 12, 2012 vs. Milwaukee Brewers

Bottom 3: Matt Garza struck out swinging (missed bunt) against Zack Greinke (3 pitches)

Bottom 4: Garza struck out swinging against Greinke (3 pitches)

Bottom 6: Garza struck out swinging against Manny Parra (7 pitches)

Bottom 8: Garza struck out swinging against Tim Dillard (4 pitches)

Final Line: 0-for-4, 4 K

RE24: -1.2; WPA: -0.033

Notes: Considering he scattered three hits and struck out over 8.2 innings, you can’t really blame Garza for wearing the Sombrero.

Total 2012 Sombreros: 2

Golden Sombrero: Brent Morel (4/6/2012)

Date: April 6, 2012 at Texas Rangers (Opening Day)

Top 1: Brent Morel struck out swinging against Colby Lewis (6 pitches)

Top 3: Morel called out on strikes against Lewis (6 pitches)

Top 5: Morel struck out swinging against Lewis (5 pitches)

Top 7: Morel struck out swinging against Alexi Ogando (6 pitches)

Final Line: 0-for-4, 4 K

RE24: -1.1

WPA: -0.121

Total 2012 Sombreros: 1

 

The First Trade of the 2012 Denslow Cup Season

This afternoon the Towel and I completed a trade in the Denslow Cup that we had been discussing since last week.  It involved David Wright and Ryan Zimmerman as the centerpieces, and since I had Zimmerman, my side was going to be bigger.  We play in a league that uses both OBP and Slug% as well as the traditional rotisserie categories.  Obviously Wright’s projected numbers year in and year out are going to give him a little more spring value than a guy like Zimmerman in our league because the couple percentage points Wright walks more than Zimmerman essentially cancels out the 5 or 6 extra points of contact percentage that Zimmerman will throw up come October.  Wright will steal roughly 10-15 more bases most years than Zimmerman, though, which gives him the edge.  Both are injury prone to an extent as well.

What I’m getting at here is that a trade involving these two guys should simply not involve any other truly valuable players beyond these two guys because they are strikingly similar players in a league like The Cup.  To further solidify my point, Wright’s ADP in ESPN league’s right now is 36.0, and Zimmerman’s is 39.0.  It does not take much value to square up a trade between two players that are 3.0 draft positions apart.

What that means is that I got hosed, because I threw in Josh Beckett and John Axford to go along with Ryan Zimmerman to bring back an oft injured 29-year old whose best season was now five years ago.  What’s more, Wright is in the middle of one of the hottest periods of his career at the dish and has a fractured finger.  Finally, the Mets are awful.  There is no realistic reason to think that anyone in that lineup will bang in 100 runners or score 100 runs himself because it’s basically a lineup comprised of refuse, Wright, Ike Davis, and Daniel Murphy.  Beckett is currently being taken at the 103 spot on average and Axford is going ten spots earlier.  What that means is that according to ADP, I gave up three guys in the top 100 for the guy I just described.

How could I do that?  Well, in short, I didn’t like looking at my squad every day and not seeing Wright’s name.  I hated watching highlight shows of him performing so well and playing so courageously through injury while on another manager’s squad.  David is my favorite player.  As I write this, I occasionally drift off and take in the objects in my room.  Directly under my television is an autographed photo of David driving in Luis Castillo from second that Whitney got me for my 26th birthday.

David Wright is my favorite baseball player ever (tied with Nomar…duh), and I don’t mind if I got hosed in April to get him on my squad, because he is the kind of player that will keep me motivated and interested for the next six months.  If I didn’t already have Jimmy Rollins, Andre Ethier, or Shane Victorino, I’d be making the same kind of boneheaded moves to get them too.

That brings me to my final thought of the day.  I love the squad that I drafted this season more than any season in the past.  I have an entire lineup of my kind of guys.  When I say that, I mean that my squad collectively knows how to hit.  They crush strikes and take balls.  They hit the ball in the air.  They are either terrific athletes or young enough that it doesn’t matter yet.  And now, I have David.  If I don’t win this season, I’m going to be pretty upset, but what I’m fairly sure of is that my team hits, and that’s a really, really big deal to me, because for the next six months, they are an extension of myself.  When I look at my lineup before I go to bed, my team’s performance over the previous 24 hours is going to have a large and meaningful impact on the next 24 hours.

That’s just life in The Denslow Cup, bro.

GIF of the Moment: Rick Ankiel’s Hose, Part II

You know you’re doing something right (or very wrong) when you make multiple appearances on GIF of the Moment.  Can you imagine if the runner had tested Rick Ankiel? Dude might have been out by 15 feet.