Fantasy Focus: Savvy Vets Update

Since it's a rain day, I thought I would give everybody an update on how my Savvy Vets fantasy baseball team is doing.  Well, the answer is it is doing just fine, thank you.  We have now completed 3 weeks of Head-to Head(H2H) competition:

Week 1:  7-1-2

Week 2:  6-3-1

Week 3:  8-1-1

Overall Record:  21-5-4.  That's good for first place in the league!

I pretty much have the same team I drafted.  The only changes being Kyle Farnsworth to the DL to start the season replacing him on the active roster with Bartolo Colon who has proven to be a great pickup, and dropping Brian Wilson when it was announced he was done for the season.  I grabbed Santiago Casilla to replace him.  It remains to be seen how that works out.  Then there's the big trade of Ricky Romero for Jordan Walden which was finalized about 1 day before it was announced Brian Wilson was out for the season.

I've been lagging a bit in HR's due to slow starts by Jose Bautista and Prince Fielder.  It's been partially made up for by hot starts from Matt Wieters and Freddie Freeman.  One thing I noticed in past years is that just a couple of low batting averages can kill your BA category, so I stayed away from low BA guys like Justin Upton and Mark Reynolds in my draft.  As a result, I have won my BA category quite handily each week.

I always try for high strikeout pitchers, but in past years, I've suffered in ERA and WHIP.  This year I really scoured the draft board for pitchers who would give me K's but also keep their WHIP's down.  I figured that with a high K and low WHIP, ERA would take care of itself.  W's are a crapshoot, but I try to win as many of those as I can by filling my bench with starters who I shuttle in and out of the rotation on a daily basis.  So far, some of my K pitchers have not been getting that many K's so I've struggled with K's each week, barely winning the first two weeks and losing this week, but the WHIP's have been good.

Anyway, I thought I would post my roster once again along with stat lines to give you an idea of what kind of team the Savvy Vets is"

C    Matt Wieters-             .283, 5 HR, 6 R, 12 RBI, 0 SB.
1B  Prince Fielder-           .327, 2 HR, 10 R, 8 RBI, 1 SB!
2B  Dustin Ackley-           .246,  0 HR, 6 R, 3 RBI, 0 SB.
3B  Jose Bautista-             .200, 2 HR, 6 R, 6 RBI, 1 SB.
SS  Dee Gordon-              .235, 0 HR, 9 R, 2 RBI, 8 SB.
IF   Pablo Sandoval-         .333, 2 HR, 9 R, 10 RBI, 0 SB.
OF  Andrew McCutchen-  .337, 0 HR, 9 R, 2 RBI, 3 SB.
OF  Melky Cabrera-         .316, 1 HR, 11 R, 7 RBI, 2 SB.
OF  Alejandro De Aza-     .268, 3 HR, 13 R, 7 RBI, 2 SB.
UT  Freddie Freeman-       .276, 3 HR, 12 R, 13 RBI, 0 SB.
UT  David Ortiz-              .436, 2 HR, 9 R, 12 RBI, 0 SB.
SP  Zach Grienke-             1-1, 5.09 ERA, 1.13 WHIP, 19 K's in 17.2 IP,
SP  Madison Bumgarner     2-1, 3.63 ERA, 1.33 WHIP, 7 K's in 17.1 IP.
SP  Bartolo Colon              3-1, 2.63 ERA, 0.80 WHIP, 19 K's in 27.1 IP,
SP  Cory Luebke                2-1, 2.52 ERA, 1.16 WHIP, 20 K's, in 25 IP,
SP  Brandon Beachy           2-1, 0.47 ERA,  0.88 WHIP, 14 K's in  19.1 IP.
RP  Joe Nathan                   0-2, 5.14 ERA, 1.29 WHIP, 9 K's in 7 IP, 3 Saves.
RP  Grant Balfour               0-0, 1.00 ERA, 0.56 WHIP, 5 K's in 9 IP, 4 Saves.
RP  Santiago Casilla            0-0, 1.93 ERA, 1.29 WHIP, 2 K's in 4.2 IP, 1 Save.
P    Jordan Walden              0-0, 4.91 ERA,  1.64 WHIP, 6 K's in 3.2 IP, 1 Save.
P    Vinnie Pestano              0-0, 2.35 ERA,  0.78 WHIP, 10 K's in 7.2 IP, 0 Saves.
BN Matt Harrison                3-0, 1.66 ERA, 0.97 WHIP, 13 K's in 21.2 IP.
BN Chris Capuano               3-1, 4.50 ERA, 1.31 WHIP, 15 K's, in 16 IP.
BN Jordan Zimmerman        0-1, 1.29 ERA, 0.71 WHIP, 10 K's in 21 IP
BN Brandon Morrow           0-1,  4.50 ERA, 1.10 WHIP, 9 K's in 20 IP.
BN  Ervin Santana               0-3, 6.75 ERA, 1.45 WHIP, 12 K's in 18.2 IP.
DL  Kyle Farnsworth

Santana and Morrow have been disappointing so far.  Matt Harrison, who I picked up as a FA after the draft, has been a real revelation.  Beachy and Luebke have been solid.  I caught Luebke pitching against the Phillies in TV and he is the real deal.  FB 92-95 MPH with a very nice changeup and breaking ball to go with it.

I'm worried about Dee Gordon.  He's helped me win SB's each week, which is really the only reason why I drafted him, but he's finding out you cant steal 1B and has been losing PT to Jeff Sellers. I am confident Bautista will come around, but that's what I thought about Adam Dunn last year.  I saw Big Papi on TV and he's not such a big papi anymore.  He's lost a lot of weight and seems to be happy poking the ball where it's pitched for a high BA.  He looks downright frisky out there!