Looking at some of the surprising starts among the top 50.

One of the tools that RotoTimes has is a Player Rater that allows you to rank players by using the custom fields that pertain to your league. It is a very interesting function and can be quite revealing.  Here are some of the early season surprises so far, on the good side of the ledger.

Standing atop the list like a colossus is Daisuke Matsuzaka. Off to a 3-0 start, he is on fire, but there is reason for caution.  He has walked 15 so far and his xERA is a robust 4.75. I still think he will have a very good year, but there may be a short term correction in the offing.

Number two is Mark Reynolds.  The strikeout machine is actually showing a very good eye so far, walking in 15% of his plate appearances, and is only hitting .269 so we cannot say he has been lucky (with a 29% hit rate).  His contact rate still stinks at 69% so expect huge swings in his performance month to month. Sell high if you can.

Brian Bannister comes in at number 8. He has an 18% hit rate and an 87% strand rate, but that said his xERA is still only 3.97 which is very respectable.  He has 13 K with a K rate of 5.6 and if he can maintain that rate he may continue to succeed despite general gainsaying of his ability.  He is a very smart guy and perhaps he is using his brains to perfect the craft of pitching, but he has been a surprise just like last year, so at what point do we say he isn’t a surprise and give him the respect he may have earned?

At number 12 is one of my sleeper picks and a guy that I auctioned at $6 in my high stakes league, Nate McLouth.  Lots of people will jump on the bandwagon, but we were touting him on the radio show in week two well before he even had made the team. So we welcome the bandwagon jumpers to the party.  So far so good for McLouth as he is off to a huge start, hitting over .400.  Some indicators of his success in the long term are his excellent 88% contact rate and his 8% walk rate, so he should be able to hit near .290-.300 if he can hit for league average power.  He is becoming an excellent lead off hitter type right before our eyes, and he looks to me like Johnny Damon.

Chris Young comes in at number 22. We mentioned him in radio show number two also as a huge OF sleeper. He has been very unlucky in his hit rate and we were forecasting a huge correction this year.  So far we have been wrong, as he is hitting a mere .233, but he is showing his power/speed skills and remains an intriguing player with multiple All-Star ability.

There are lots of expected players in the top 50 but some are still underperforming, like David Wright (#39) and Carl Crawford (#35).  Another such player, depending on what you thought of him, is Alex Rios, who comes in at number 41.  This may not seem like a bad start, and number 41 is close to his overall draft position.  It is how he has gotten here that is surprising.

Rios is hitting .316 but only has 1 homerun and a lowly 74% contact rate.  He is showing a good eye with a .80 BB/K ratio but has a 41% hit rate and an xBA of .259.  This merely shows some small sample size fluctuations I hope, since these stats are pretty much the opposite of what was expected across the board.  

Finally, back from the dead at #50 is Kerry Wood. Wood has been both lucky and unlucky to start the season with a 19% hit rate but a 50% strand rate. He is showing the top skills of a closer and so far this is an experiment that looks like a success.  I bring him up since he is a guy that owners in your league might be willing to part with on the “sell high” theory, since they probably expect him to get hurt.  The conventional wisdom is that Marmol will win the job, but I see problems ahead for him this year so you may get lucky with Wood under the right circumstances.