About Time

Late last week, there was a report on ESPN that the Panthers were looking to trade DeShaun Foster. As a man who has loved fellow Panthers running back DeAngelo Williams ever since he was in college, I can only say, “What took you guys so long?”

Now don’t get me wrong, I think Foster is a solid back, but Carolina has been making a big mistake by not letting Williams, who left school with the NCAA record for career 100-yard rushing games (34) and 7,573 all-purpose yards. Heck, DeAngelo doesn’t need me to tell you about him, he has created his own website to do that. I will use this handy chart to help illustrate how good he has been in Carolina Blue.

DeAngelo Williams, Panthers

RUSHING

RECEIVING

Year	G	Rush	Yds	Yds/G	YPC	TD		Rec	Yds	TD
2006	13	121	501	38.5	4.1	1		33	313	1
2007	16	144	717	44.8	5.0	4		23	175	1

Need visual evidence of his elusiveness?

Assuming the Panthers can find a trade partner and don’t end up pairing DeAngelo with another back to split the load, Williams should get about 275 carries in 2008. Even his per-carry average falls half a yard from last season to 4.5 a carry, he will end up with over 1,200 rushing yards, and that doesn’t even count his receiving yardage. Heck, even if he drops to 4.0 yards per carry, he will still end up with over 1,000 yards.

As much as I love DeAngelo (and any long-time reader of Fantasy Football Weekly knows my love for him is endless), I still have too many concerns about the Panthers to include him in my running back top-10 if Foster is dealt. First off, he w is yet to prove he can handle the load of being a featured back for an entire season. Secondly, the interior of their line is very suspect. While their tackle situation is in good shape with Travelle Wharton and Jordan Gross (assuming he stays), guard Mike Wahle has been a titanic disappointment andcenter Justin Hartwig can’t stay healthy. Also, several serious questions remain about the passing game, not the least of which is, who will quarterback the Panthers in 2008? Without a reliable passing game to distract defenses, Williams’ ability to consistently post excellent yardage numbers will be limited, as will his chances to score touchdowns. Of course, Carolina can address some, if not all, of those concerns with an aggressive offseason. If they accomplish that and ship out Foster, Williams suddenly emerges as one of next season’s most popular sleepers, and you can bet I’ll be leading the charge.

Myth Buster

Sorry I have been so absent lately. I decided to join the Dharma Initiative , but things got a little dicey when a plane crashed on our island and now I have returned.

Previously on this blog, I promised to explore the question of if aces consistently face other aces during a season. The idea for this test hit me while I was listening to a recent CBS Sportsline podcast where the guys insinuated that fantasy owners should care that a pitcher is the No. 1 hurler on his team because it would result in more matchups against aces from other squads. After watching baseball for about 20 years, I’ve noticed a thing or two, and my keen intuition has never picked up a noticeable trend of aces consistently facing other aces, at least not any more frequently than they face pitchers in other slots in the rotation.

Test: I chose to examine a sample size of 10 teams, which is one-third of the league. To ensure it was random I simply went down the list of teams alphabetically until I got five teams from each league. In this experiment, an “ace” is defined as the team’s Opening Day pitcher because he is the man on the top of the rotation at the start of the season.

While on many teams these pitchers will not end the year with the best statistics, the purpose of this test was not to see how often a team’s best statistical starter faced off with another team’s because that is not helpful to fantasy owners in the preseason as we prep for drafts. Obviously, it is impossible to know for certain who every team’s top pitcher in 2008 will be before the year begins. Instead, this experiment was to see how often a pitcher slotted at the top of his team’s rotation went up against another hurler in that same position.

Hypothesis: Aces will face other aces roughly 20 percent of the time because they have an equal opportunity to pitch against any of the five members of the opposing team’s rotation.

Data:

Team	Player	Starts	vs. Ace	Percent
ARI	Brandon Webb	34	5	14.7
ATL	John Smoltz	32	8	25
BAL	Erik Bedard	28	7	25
BOS	Curt Schiling	24	2	8.3
CWS	Jose Contreas	32	3	9.4
CHC	Carlos Zambrano	34	6	17.6
CIN	Aaron Harang	34	10	29.4
CLE	C.C. Sabathia	34	6	17.6
COL	Aaron Cook	24	7	29.2
DET	Jeremy Bonderman	28	6	21.4
TOTAL		304	60	19.7

Conclusion: Aces faced off with each other 19.7 percent of all starts, almost exactly one-fifth of the time. This confirms my hypothesis and makes sense since, statistically, every time they take the hill they have a one-in-five chance of battling the opposing team’s top starter. This is important to fantasy baseball players to know as we prepare for upcoming drafts because it proves that there is no reason to downgrade any starter because of his location in his team’s rotation. So while there are a variety of reasons (new ballpark, run support, ect…) to adjust your rankings for Erik Bedard, Dan Haren, and other hurlers who switched teams this winter, do not do so because he now occupies a different rotation slot than he did a year ago.

TUESDAY LINKS

It looks like the Erik
Bedard trade is almost complete. And kudos to the Baltimore Sun for using a timely reference for the title of the story.

Once the deal is complete I will be back with a breakdown of the players involved and compare what Baltimore received for Bedard with the package the Twins got in return for Johan Santana. Is it possible the Orioles actually got a better deal?

Speaking of the Santana deal, Fanball’s Christian Peterson takes a stab at defending the Twins in a blog entry.

If you are looking for a very good mock fantasy baseball draft, check out the latest one
from Mock Draft Central. You should recognize the man who is drafting out of the No. 5 because he is Chris Bracke, whose blog 108 Stitches is linked on my blogroll. You can also check out MDC’s Top 30 Prospects, also done by Mr. Bracke.

CBS Sportsline has posted another fantasy baseball podcast. There is nothing groundbreaking in this edition (unless you are privy to their inside jokes perhaps), but they say one thing that caught my attention enough to conduct an experiment. Do No. 1 pitchers really face other team’s aces on a consistent enough basis that it should worry fantasy owners? Check back to the Pooch Report on Thursday for my conclusion using mounds of data from the 2007 season.

When they construct a Hall of Shame for terrible announcers, there will be a wing dedicated to Emmitt Smith’s rookie season.

Scott Wright’s NFL Draft Countdown has a mock draft that was posted Friday and it looks like it takes all the right things into account. We’ll be all over the NFL Draft here like stink on a hobo.

Spy Gate II (and some fantasy links)

Let’s kick this off with a discussion of Spy Gate. Nothing bothered me more over the weekend than the “us vs. them” attitude many football fans (and, disappointingly, some in the media) are displaying now that congress may be forced to get involved because the NFL destroyed the evidence from the first Spy Gate controversy. On top of that there are more allegations of cheating by the Patriots. The question “doesn’t Congress have anything better to do?” has been asked repeatedly over the last couple days. While there are plenty of other more important issues for Congress to tackle, don’t forget this is much more than simply a football issue. If a referee misses a holding call, that is a football issue that would not warrant congressional interest. But the fact the NFL, which has an antitrust exemption and is a billion dollar American industry, has destroyed evidence about a potential cheating scandal and refused to answer questions about it seems like an important matter.

In the interest of fairness, it should be pointed out that the man who is spearheading this matter, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter (R -PA), has received a great deal of contributions from Comcast, a company which is fighting the NFL over the cost of carrying the NFL Network.

However, regardless of what Specter’s motivation is, football fans should not be so provincial as to feel they are part of the NFL family and somehow Congress is trying to hurt them. ESPN’s Gregg Easterbrook hits the nail right on the head when he concludes his February 3 contribution to ESPN.com
by saying

“When news of the second act of Spygate hit the sports world Friday, there was considerable backlash. Many radio and TV analysts initially reacted angrily, as if to say, “This is our private universe. In our private universe, everything is perfect. Keep reality out.” But if you love athletic competition, if you want sports to be important and generate lots of money and attention, the games must be honest. Any indication of dishonesty should be deeply unsettling.”

There is no reason to blindly defend the NFL, even if you believe Commissioner Goodell at his word. Football is only a game, but is also a billion-dollar industry that looks out for only its best interest and may have committed a form of fraud if they knowingly for destroyed evidence in Spy Gate.

Fantasy Links
Pats Pulpit (A Patriots Blog) is not a fun place to be right now, although the writers there seem to be more gracias about the loss than Bill Belichick. (Link courtesy: Awful Announcing)

Rotoworld’s Matthew Pouliot takes a look at the Orioles top prospects.

Over at Baseball HQ, take a look at Ron Shandler’s examination of why baseball’s drop in popularity may be an indirect result of the internet.

Any time there is a new post at Fire Joe Morgan it is cause for celebration. Celebrate!!

The Santana Trade

The economic inequality in baseball was on display once again last week when the Twins were forced to deal ace Johan Santana , who was going to leave town after this season to sign a six- or seven-year contract from a team in a large market. Signing a hurler, even an elite one, to a six-year contract extension worth in excess of $20 million per season simply is not possible for a team like the Twins because pitchers are historically more fragile that hitters and that contract would likely represent over 20% of the Minnesota payroll for at least the next four years. However, instead of landing a gaggle of quality prospects like they had in previous deals for Chuck Knoblauch and A.J. Pierzynski, Minnesota learned the hard way that big-market teams are realizing the value of holding onto their youngsters.

The closest the Twins came to getting full value for Santana was when reports surfaced during the Winter Meetings that the Yankees were offering a package of Phil Hughes, Melky Cabrera and at least one other quality prospect, possibly Austin Jackson, who is the team’s No. 2 prospect according to Baseball America. That offer seems like a steal compared to what the Twins got from the Mets, even if the Yankees had ended up insisting the Twins take Jose Tabata or Brett Gardner in lieu of Jackson. The reason I feel this truth is self-evident is because there is less risk involved with Hughes, who has been a blue-chip prospect since being a first-round pick in 2004, and Cabrera, who already has 1,024 major league at-bats under his belt. Add in another high-end prospect and it becomes clear the package the Yankees offered was the best the Twins could have netted for Santana.

Boston was the other team to offer the Twins an attractive group of players in return for Johan. The Red Sox reportedly offered shortstop Jed Lowrie and pitcher Justin Masterson to Minnesota along with (a) Jacoby Ellsbury or (b) Jon Lester and Coco Crisp. I’m on record as saying the Lester/Ellsbury package didn’t offer enough long-term upside, but I really liked what was cooking with the Ellsbury deal. The Twins would get a blue-chipper in center field, as opposed to a blue-chip prospect on the mound in the Yankee deal, and prospect that could potentially fill needs in the rotation and at shortstop. Even if Masterson ends up in the bullpen as a major leaguer, he would have been a welcomed member of the Twins pitching staff. Lowrie’s glove needs some work and he may be a third baseman in the bigs, but it just so happens the Twins have a long-term spot to fill at the hot corner, as well.

Instead a deal was done with the Mets that brought no blue-chippers to Minnesota, which is inexcusable in a trade that saw the best pitcher in baseball leave town. Aaron Gleeman does a great job of covering the Twins in his blog, so I’ll like you to his analysis of the four Mets the Twins got in return. In my opinion, the four players the Mets sent to the Twins all should be major leaguers before everything is said and done. In fact, Carlos Gomez and Deolis Guerra have All-Star potential, although both figure to be years away from reaching it.

Reports are that both the Yankees and Red Sox pulled or lessened their offers for Santana after the Winter Meetings. If that is true, I actually have a harder time blaming Bill Smith for accepting this deal because it is the best of what is left. There really is no logical reason that a deal for Santana should be any less in January than it was in December. In fact, he had reason to believe those offers might have actually been improved when the Mets entered the picture as serious bidders. Then Smith had the rug pulled out from under him again when Johan forced the trade to be completed when it was by threatening to invoke his no-trade clause. The end result is the worst deal any of the three teams were offering.

If you think Mets fans aren’t wetting themselves with excitement over landing Santana, check out “The Johan Santana Song” that can be found on Mets Blog .

How Valuable Is Chambers?

Note: This article was written on October 17, 2007. The pick SD gave to Miami will be the 57th of the 2008 draft

The Dolphins shipped Chris Chambers out of town at the trading deadline in exchange for a second-round pick in the 2008 draft. The moves makes sense for both teams, as the Chargers add a quality receiver to go along with Vincent Jackson and Miami adds another piece to help them in the rebuilding process they’ve clearly begun.

Since the Chargers will likely make the playoffs and advance past the first round, the pick they are giving up will be somewhere between the 56th and 63rd selections. To give you an idea of what kind of player will be available there, let’s look at who was selected in that area during the last five drafts. Keep in mind the Chargers’ selection will come one pick sooner than it would have in previous season because the Patriots will lose their first-round pick as a result of cheating, meaning the first round will have only 31 slots.

2003
56. N.Y. Giants – Osi Umenyiora, DE Troy State
57. San Francisco – Anthony Adams, DT Penn State
58. Indianapolis – Mike Doss, SS Ohio State
59. Pittsburgh – Alonzo Jackson, DE Florida State
60. Tennessee – Tyrone Calico, WR Middle Tennessee State
61. Philadelphia – L.J. Smith, TE Rutgers
62. San Diego (via Green Bay through Philadelphia) – Terrance Kiel, FS Texas A&M
63. Oakland – Teyo Johnson WR Stanford

2004
56. Cincinnati (via Miami through New England) – Madieu Williams, S Maryland
57. Tennessee – Antwan Odom, DE Alabama
58. San Francisco (via Philadelphia) – Shawntae Spencer, CB Pittsburgh
59. Cleveland (via Indianapolis) – Sean Jones, S Georgia
60. New Orleans (via St.Louis) – Courtney Watson, ILB Notre Dame
61. Kansas City – Kris Wilson, TE Pittsburgh
62. Carolina – Keary Colbert, WR USC
63. New England – Marquise Hill, DE LSU

2005
56. Denver – Darrent Williams, CB Oklahoma State
57. New York Jets – Justin Miller, CB Clemson
58. Green Bay – Terrence Murphy, WR Texas A&M
59. Atlanta – Jonathan Babineaux, DT Iowa
60. Indianapolis – Kelvin Hayden, CB Illinois
61. San Diego – Vincent Jackson, WR Northern Colorado
62. Pittsburgh – Bryant McFadden, CB Florida State
63. Philadelphia – Matt McCoy, OLB San Diego State

2006
56. Baltimore (from Giants)- Chris Chester, C/G Oklahoma
57. Chicago – Devin Hester, WR/KR Miami (FL) (This worked out well)
58. Carolina – Richard Marshall, CB Fresno State
59. Tampa Bay – Jeremy Trueblood, OT Boston College
60. Jacksonville – Maurice Jones-Drew, RB UCLA
61. Denver – Tony Scheffler, TE Western Michigan
62. Indianapolis – Tim Jennings, CB Georgia
63. Seattle – Darryl Tapp, DE Virginia Tech

2007
56. Denver – Tim Crowder, DE Texas
57. Philadelphia – Victor Abiamiri, DE Notre Dame
58. Detroit (via New Orleans) – Ikaika Alama-Francis, DE Hawaii
59. Carolina (via New York Jets) – Ryan Kalil, C USC
60. Miami (via New England) – Samson Satele, C Hawaii (run on centers!)
61. Detroit (via Baltimore) – Gerald Alexander, S Boise State
62. Chicago (via San Diego) – Dan Bazuin, DE Central Michigan
63. Green Bay (via Chicago thru Jets) – Brandon Jackson, RB Nebraska (whoops)

Not Ready For Prime Time

Note: This blog was originally published on November 21, 2007

When I was asked by former colleague Jesse Logan if I wanted to be part of the local television show that he and his friend host, I figured it would be a good idea. And it was because Jesse and Jeff Pearson do a great job and have a lot of fun. However, like Ron Burgendy when he jumped in the pit of bears, I immediately regretted the decision once I saw myself on television. This is actually the second time I’ve appeared on their show and, inexplicitly, I forgot how ugly I am and that I move my hands a lot when I talk, two regrettable qualities to have when on YouTube. Regardless of my shortcomings, I want to thank Jesse and Jeff for having me on again. Check out more of their work here.

Guys to Target
1st Set of Matchups
2nd Set of Matchups
3rd Set of Matchups (Web Exclusive)