Patience. I’ve been preaching it for as long as I’ve been dishing out fantasy baseball advice. Patience has always been one of my strengths as an owner. I rarely get too high or too low. Patience is especially important in the early stages of the season, when the sample size is so small. Overreacting, based on one week’s worth of stats, whether it be by making a panic trade or prematurely dropping an underachieving player, usually leads to disaster. But, to tell you the truth, sometimes I too need to fight the urge to do something stupid and let emotion overtake reason. And what better way to calm myself down than to write about what I’m frustrated about? You should try it sometime.
So, focusing on my Mixed Auction Tout Wars squad, which has gotten off to a solid but far from dominant start, here are some of the players who are stressing me out right now.
Orlando Arcia – I’m hoping that Arcia’s game-winning single on Friday night will get him going, as he’s swinging an ice cold bat out of the gate, hitting .167 (4-for-24) with two RBI and one run scored through seven games. When I purchased Arcia for what I considered to be a fair price of $10 to serve as my starting shortstop, I was expecting the 23-year-old to build on last season’s promising campaign in which he came one stolen base short of joining the 15/15 club. It’s still very early, but maybe my hopes were too high, and maybe I underestimated the overall negative impact that hitting near the bottom of the Milwaukee lineup will have on his runs total. And then, when revisiting the auction results, I see that Didi Gregorius went for only $8. And then I get a little queasy.
Mike Moustakas – Sure, it’s probably crazy to worry about Moustakas five games into his 2018 season, but I’m beginning to think that the Royals third baseman, who sports a .211 batting average with no homers and two RBIs, will come nowhere close to duplicating his career-best 2017 season. The loss of both Lorenzo Cain and Eric Hosmer could hurt Moose even more than I had anticipated, as it will not only limit him in the RBI and runs departments but it might also result in a significant dip in longballs as opposing pitchers will be more inclined to pitch around him.
Johnny Cueto – What? How could I possibly be concerned about a pitcher who boasts a 0.69 ERA and a 0.85 WHIP through two starts? Well, strikeouts is a category in fantasy and the veteran righty doesn’t have many of those, just five across 13 innings. In Wednesday’s outing against the Mariners, Cueto recorded only one strikeout in six innings. One strikeout! For the most part, Cueto has not been an elite strikeout pitcher over the course of his career, but wow, this is a new low. I’m going to write off the 3.5 K/9 rate as an anomaly for now, but if the minuscule strikeout totals become a trend, I’ll be in trouble.
C.C. Sabathia – Sabathia was such a pleasant surprise for both the Yankees and my Tout Wars team last season, that I, like the Yankees, sought a reunion, purchasing CC for $1 in the endgame. From a performance standpoint, I’m fairly certain that Sabathia will provide me with a positive return on investment. But only two starts into his 2018 season, the big lefty is already injured, as he’s been placed on the 10-day DL with a hip strain. The good news is that Sabathia isn’t expected to miss more than one start. The bad news is that this whole situation has exposed the lack of depth in my starting rotation. I didn’t draft enough innings, and when you draft a guy like Sabathia, who you know isn’t going to deliver more than 160 innings, you need to make up for the innings deficiency, even at the expense of ERA and WHIP. I didn’t do that, so barring a trade, I’ll need to find innings on the waiver wire without completely ruining my ratios, which is no easy task in a 15-teamer.
Joakim Soria – It was all going so well for Soria, until Thursday. After converting each of his first two save chances, the 33-year-old veteran took the mound in the ninth inning with a three-run lead and promptly gave up the entire lead. Soria might have the shortest leash of any current closer, and Nate Jones looms as a potential replacement. I wasn’t expecting 30 saves when I drafted Soria as my third closer, but let’s say I was at least cautiously optimistic that my two auction dollars would net me more than two saves. Seriously, would double-digit saves be too much to ask?
Then again, maybe Soria will be fine. His days as a high-end stopper are over, but he can still get the job done.
Maybe I just need to relax.
Zach Steinhorn is the 2016 Mixed Auction Tout Wars champion. Follow him on Twitter @zachsteinhorn and at Baseball Prospectus.
