Nathan Dokken 169 posts

If you're not paying attention to player trends throughout the season, you're gonna get left behind in a hurry. This week we have a player who has been left behind by his team already in Jose Peraza, and another in Brandon Woodruff, who is working to establish permanence. In most leagues, dropping this week's Ice for the Fire is a no-brainer, which is not what we would have expected on draft day. Fire - Brandon Woodruff In last weeks Fire & Ice, I teased writing up Brandon Woodruff. Since then, he has only piqued my…

Trust. It's an important thing to have in an esteemed fantasy analyst. Consider this a fantasy trust fall. I've got you, fam. You know this because I do not have Mike Fiers ranked inside the Top 100 of my starting pitcher rankings. Mike Fiers just hurled the second no-hitter of his career against the Reds. He walked two and struck out six. Do you know what that did to his ERA? Dropped it to 5.48. His 6.65 K/9 ranks 75th among qualified starters. Do not trifle with him. Let's move on and discuss some starters you should be…

This week we have a pitcher and a hitter that are the early epitome of Fire & Ice. This is why it behooves us early on to take a stab at hot starts and also not wait too long to cut bait on a bad investment. Remain vigilant, fantasy enthusiast, as we analyze the early returns from Caleb Smith and Brian Dozier! Fire - Caleb Smith You're not going to find anyone to defend the Marlins on the trade they made which sent Giancarlo Stanton to the Yankees. Marlins fans (if there truly are any out there) lost sleep that night.…

I was on the road for eight hours today. I say that for two reasons. First, it's as an apology to my editors, who may shake their heads at what I write. Second, when I first left the cozy confines of my hovel, it was incredible foggy for the first 45 minutes of my quest. Eventually, it cleared, as it always does. It reminded me of the fog that is trying to figure out April pitcher rankings. Some players establish new baselines. There are velocity spikes and declines. It can be hard to parse the facts from the noise. Now…

Despite the snow falling here in the upper midwest as I write this, we're now a full month into the baseball season. Some of the metrics I like to reference are tightening up. We're getting a firmer grasp on the 2019 fantasy landscape. It might even be time to start looking at your league standings and addressing deficiencies. Our first player was part of Eric Cross's waiver wire piece a week ago and might address a deficiency on your team. Let's take a look. Fire - Hunter Dozier If you had told me in March that I'd be…

My goodness, ladies and gentlemen. It isn't even May yet and already we're down so many pitchers that I'm looking at Lance Lynn and considering him for the back end of the list. He has a 6.51 ERA. A 3.87 FIP, but still, a 6.51 ERA. SP80-100 is basically warm bodies that you can plug in and pray they don't actively kill your ratios. There are a lot of names that dropped off the list this week due to injury. Some lengthy, some not so much, some whose timetables remain to be determined. That means new blood on the list! Let's…

It took everything in my power not to write about Christian Yelich in this week's Fire section. I have just one share across my multitude of leagues, but he has been a one-man wrecking crew. He has finally embraced the glory of the Fly Ball Revolution (or Air Ball Revolution, Launch Angle Revolution, whatever you want to call it). His launch angle is up from 4.7 degrees last year - when he was already an MVP - to 16.9 degrees to this point in 2019. He was already one of the game's best hitters, and now he is taking yet…

Guys and dolls, I knew starting pitching was rough coming into the season. The fact that seemingly half of our "aces" have been imploding early on hasn't helped things. There's some chatter of the balls being "juiced" again, which not only makes me want to squeeze some kiwis but also makes me fret about my starting pitchers. The rankings have felt surprisingly malleable outside of the top 30 already. There was also a cluster of starters I expected a bit more from who have been so bad I dropped them from the list. Speaking…

I named this series Fire & Ice as a bit of a nod to Game of Thrones and the A Song of Ice and Fire book series, so it's exciting for me to have the show back. What isn't inspiring is that I have to focus on Jose Ramirez this week in the Ice category. He is my personal favorite player in baseball, but I assure you that my analysis is separate from my player fandom. First, however, let's begin in Pittsburgh where a promising young starter has opened the season with 15.1 shutout innings. Fire - Joe Musgrove While Pirates…

It's week three of the SP Barometer and there is no shortage of movement. We tend to over-analyze everything early on one hand and try not to overreact on the other. It's an issue. The reaction of Mike Clevinger owners was to discolor their briefs when it was announced that Clevinger would be shut down for at least six weeks with a back issue. He had weaseled his way all the way up to 11 on the list early on already, so it's sad to see him go. There was yet more bad news as Luis Severino strained his lat, pushing his…