Fantasy baseball draft: Week three review

With three weeks on the books, the 2014 MLB season is starting to settle into a groove, players are getting comfortable with their new teams, and the Houston Astros are still historically bad. Fantasy owners, on the other hand, are starting to realize what their team needs and are looking to give their roster a shakeup.

As with every year, managers are errantly trying to compensate for a quick 0-3 record with adding as many phony quick starters as possible while conversely dropping slumping stars that have done it for years.

This week saw some major add or drop percentages across ESPN, but not all of those numbers are deserved.

Hitters

Billy Hamilton, Cincinnati Reds OF (-8.5% owned)

Congratulations to anyone who thought it would be three weeks before people would start thinking Billy Hamilton was a fraud. An even bigger congratulations to everybody else who still has Hamilton on his or her roster.

Yes, he’s hitting just .214 on the year, with a paltry three walks to compensate, but that just makes his six stolen bases more impressive. To top that off, four of those have come in the past three days. That is to say, he’s heating up and natural progression and experience look to be the culprit.

If he doesn’t heat up, though, and remains a .214 hitter the rest of the way, he’ll still swipe 60 bags for your team. That’s the low-end projection. He should bounce back, as will the Reds offense, and he should be producing across all leagues soon enough.

Devin Mesoraco, Cincinnati Reds C (+33.1% owned)

I could have talked about Neil Walker or Mesoraco here, and I chose the latter because he’s less known and, spoiler alert: Walker will produce more or less the same amount as he did last year with a couple more homers than expected.

Mesoraco, on the other hand, was probably not expected to be on the fantasy radar unless you really know a team’s prospects or you’re in a three-catcher league. One of the Reds’ top prospects, Mesoraco started the season irrelevantly sitting on the disabled list, letting Brayan Peña start in his place. Upon his return, he’s hitting .483 with three home runs in just under 30 at bats.

While those extrapolated 60 home runs won’t hold up, I can definitely see another 20 on its way onto a top five season out of the catcher position. This guy should be owned in all formats.

Pitchers

Jesse Chavez, Oakland Athletics SP (+77.2% owned)

I’ll be honest, I had no clue who this guy was before his first start. Only after my friend had told me that the only reason he heard of him was because he was perusing spring training stats and found that this guy from Oakland was killing it with a 2.22 ERA and 25 strikeouts in 28.1 innings.

I guess spring training does mean something, as Chavez has continued to baffle the rest of the league with an even more miniscule 1.35 ERA and 22 strikeouts in just 20 innings. The best part for those in points leagues is that in addition to the 22 k’s, he’s only served up two walks.

Well folks, I have a strong feeling this is no fluke. Two of his three starts weren’t even in the spacious O.Co Coliseum, and with the Athletics’ propensity to churn out quality starting pitching every year, add Chavez to the list of names of guys that’ll break out with the A’s and be traded in a few years. The strikeout rate might decrease a little bit and the ERA will obviously regress to the mean soon enough, but he will be dependable and useful for the rest of the year.

Everyone

Honestly, with the exception of those that have been placed on the DL (excluding Alex Cobb, who needs to remained owned throughout his injury) and Wade Miley, every pitcher who has been dropped by 10 percent or more of teams needs to be picked back up.

To name them all, that’s Bartolo Colón (NYM), Danny Salazar (CLE), R.A. Dickey (TOR), Drew Smyly (DET), Rick Porcello (DET), A.J. Burnett (PHI), Tyler Skaggs (LAA), Nate Eovaldi (MIA), the previously mentioned Alex Cobb (TB), Ubaldo Jiménez (BAL), Dan Straily (OAK), and Justin Masterson (CLE).

Each of these, except for Eovaldi, are being dropped because of a couple poor performances. Eovaldi is being dropped because many aren’t familiar with the former Dodgers prospect.

But here’s a fun fact for anyone that released the aforementioned pitchers: all pitchers have a run of bad starts. For these talented individuals, it just happened to occur in the beginning of the year. They’ll all bounce back and reward patient owners.

Daniel Scheiner is a sophomore majoring in music industry. His fantasy baseball draft picks run Mondays.