{"id":87,"date":"2010-04-06T14:41:07","date_gmt":"2010-04-06T19:41:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thegoldensombrero.com\/wordpress\/?p=87"},"modified":"2010-05-09T04:26:40","modified_gmt":"2010-05-09T09:26:40","slug":"work-that-wire-by-griffin-phelps","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/thegoldensombrero.com\/wordpress\/archives\/87","title":{"rendered":"Work That Wire"},"content":{"rendered":"
April 6, 2010<\/div>\n

Working the waiver wire; who wants to worry about that?\u00a0 Not many people work the waiver wire correctly.\u00a0 Too often I hear people talking about, \u201cOh I don\u2019t need to worry about that.\u00a0 My guys are doing just fine.\u201d\u00a0 Or, \u201cWho could there possibly be that is better than anyone I have on my bench already?\u201d\u00a0 Sure, you might not need <\/em>a guy, but why not take a flyer once in a while?\u00a0 Find a guy on a hot streak to replace that cold bat.\u00a0 Or how about finding that arm for a quality spot start?
\nWorking the wire is all about timing.\u00a0 More often than not, if you are willing to take a risk, an educated one, it pays off big time.\u00a0 Me, I have three different times where I try to use the wire to my advantage; spot start SP\u2019s, a bat due for a good streak, or just to horde a guy before anyone else in my league can grab him.\u00a0 Let\u2019s take a look at spot starts.
\nSpot starting a pitcher is an excellent way to take advantage of quality matchups to help boost your pitching stats.\u00a0 Before I go grab just anybody off the wire though, I always check trends.\u00a0 The first trend I check is the pitcher\u2019s home\/road splits.\u00a0 Don\u2019t check just for the current season though.\u00a0 Make sure to view career trends.\u00a0 Obviously, the larger the sample size, the more accurately you can make your decision. \u00a0I like to use Baseball-Refernce.com for this.\u00a0 They have a vast amount of data that can be used for just about anything you want.\u00a0 If a guy has a huge difference in is home\/road splits, let\u2019s say road for this example, then take a look at his next couple of starts.\u00a0 Who is he facing?\u00a0 Where is the game played?\u00a0 If you like who the pitcher is going against, i.e. the Pirates, take a look at line-ups.\u00a0 How many lefties\/righties is he facing?\u00a0 What are the pitcher\u2019s splits there?\u00a0 Also, I recommend taking a look at what the pitcher has done over the past two-three years.\u00a0 Two years ago, I was able to grab Cliff Lee off the wire after two starts.\u00a0 Most people in my league laughed, and told me he was a fluke.\u00a0 What they forgot to recognize was that only two years prior, Cliff Lee was being called a future Cy Young candidate by scouts.
\nWhat about hitters?\u00a0 How do you find the guy that nobody is talking about?\u00a0 I like to take a bit more risk with these type of guys, because if it doesn\u2019t work out, so what.\u00a0 It\u2019s not like you’re losing much if you drop a guy from your roster that never plays.\u00a0 Once again, I like to take a look at the next three or four pitchers that said hitter is facing in the coming days.\u00a0 What type of success rate has he had over his career versus these guys?\u00a0 I especially like to look at a hitter\u2019s isolated power in this scenario.\u00a0 That tells you a lot about how often the guy squares up balls, and that is the most important.\u00a0 Even if he has a multitude of K\u2019s, I am always willing to take a chance if the majority of balls hit are hit hard.\u00a0 I also always take a chance on a guy riding a hot streak.\u00a0 He\u2019s 9 for his last 15?\u00a0 Fuck yea I can find a spot on my bench for that guy the next few days!
\nThe last reason I like to scour the wire is a simple one.\u00a0 I want to prevent the other teams from getting something that I could potentially<\/em> have.\u00a0 Even if he just sits on my bench and I don\u2019t record his stats, at least I know that nobody else is going to either.\u00a0 This comes in handy late in the season when a few SB\u2019s or RBI\u2019s means trading spots in the standings.\u00a0 Once again, don\u2019t be afraid to subscribe to the theory of, \u201cEven if I get nothing out of this guy, I didn\u2019t lose anything in the player I dropped to clear roster space.\u201d
\nAll in all, working the wire can turn out to be pretty fruitless.\u00a0 I easily make more than 100 transactions a year.\u00a0 I may only keep a guy for a day and turn around and drop him for the guy he replaced the previous day.\u00a0 With bench players, there is never a reason to fret over dropping them.\u00a0 Most importantly, don’t be afraid to take a risk.\u00a0 So go out there, find that diamond in the rough, and turn it into a thing of beauty.\u00a0 One.
\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

April 6, 2010 Working the waiver wire; who wants to worry about that?\u00a0 Not many people work the waiver wire correctly.\u00a0 Too often I hear people talking about, \u201cOh I don\u2019t need to worry about that.\u00a0 My guys are doing just fine.\u201d\u00a0 Or, \u201cWho could there possibly be that is better than anyone I have […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[12,76,17],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/thegoldensombrero.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/thegoldensombrero.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/thegoldensombrero.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thegoldensombrero.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thegoldensombrero.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=87"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/thegoldensombrero.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":192,"href":"http:\/\/thegoldensombrero.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87\/revisions\/192"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/thegoldensombrero.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=87"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thegoldensombrero.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=87"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thegoldensombrero.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=87"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}