Jose Bautista

am I wasting my time with this guy? should I have known to stay away all along? 172 ab's into a season at Wrigley and he's 7th among my starters in average, 7th in hr's, 6th in rbi's, and 5th in runs. 172 ab 20 r 41 h 10 2b 0 tr 5 hr 15 rbi .238 av should I cut bait right now, a game out of the division lead and 2 up on the wild card? I was thinking of plugging in cuddeyer, and using the spare change to improve somewhere else. if joey bats usually produces well I will be happy to give him more time to improve to the mean. thanks for the help.

Bautista's value is highly drived by the damage he can do vs lefties? Are there many lefties in your division? If there's not, then going with Cuddyer won't be the best solution.

But overall, in Wrigley, if you face 30% of lefties, Bautista has a neutral value, in my opinion. I got him at 9.46M for Wrigley, very close to his actual pricetag (9.39M).

One thing: Bautista has very few hits vs rhp, tons of walks though. and he has 6 BP. I would not make him my clean-up hitter---not my 3rd either because of the 20 gbA---unless you don't have better options.

Would be useful if you tell the cut (5%? 10? 20?) if you go to the FA pool?

I started this team about 2 weeks before the new rules, so 20% penalty. his obp is good, so I think i'll try him 1st or 2nd. cruz has been tearing it up so I can try him in the 3rd slot. it is a rh dominant division, as he's had 39 ab vs leftys and 133 vs righties. I think the whole league is righty dominant as the most any team has faced is 15 lefties (13 l and 38 r for me). blanco, moss, neuwenhuis, snider, polanco, and granderson would be the top lh batters to be available for rf. I could also stick cruz in r and duda in left, but that sounds like a defensive dumpster fire.

He is a very expensive walk machine IMHO.

I see, 23% of lhp sure hurts his value. Probably closer to 8-8.5M than 9.3M, but a 20% cut is quite harsh...

Is the rhp/lhp even worse within your division? You're gonna play almost 50% of your games from now on...

Duda in lf would be disastrous IMHO.

I could really use some extra dough to shore up a couple other weak spots too. blanco seemed to be the best fit. I've won 6 in a row despite joey, so I pretty much can't make a move right now. I've made seemingly right moves before on winning teams and screwed up everything. got 2 sub 4.0 mil lefties against me tonight, so maybe he can get of the snide.

Using my ratings (leap of faith), I plugged in the ballpark value of Wrigley, and I set the lhp/rhp ratio to 24%/76%, I have Bautista at roughly 5.1 adjusted WAR, which corresponds to a 9.17M value, so below his pricetag but not worth the 20% cut.

Of the players you listed,
blanco, moss, neuwenhuis, snider, polanco, and granderson

I'm not too thrilled by any of them. I haven't looked at your lineup, but Wrigley favors right-handed sluggers, so the only reasons I would go for lefties in Wrigley is either:
a) at lead-off (since on-base is slightly better for lefties)
b) to plug someone down in the lineup with a very strong glove
c) to balance a line-up vs extreme unbalanced 9R starting pitchers

None of those players fit the bill. None has sufficient on-base to be lead-off. No gold glove (Blanco becomes 2e2 in rf, Nieuwenhuis becomes 3e2). Moreover, Blanco, Granderson and Moss are better vs lhp, and it seems to me you might want to get better vs rhp. Moss in particuler would be terrible---he would lose his power in Wrigley. So unless you're in the c) situation, I would stick to Bautista.

I would perhaps move him in your lineup vs rhp, as you suggested, in a spot where his walks and lack of hits will contribute positively, like leading off.

thanks so much marc. I will hold onto him for now. like you say, the 2 million hit is huge.

cruz, encarnacion, and Negron are my other rh only power hitters.

an update on jbat's season. after 150 games he's scored 73 runs, driven in 60, and smacked 27 hr's. his numbers are .258, .365, and .462. definitely overvalued but not killing me at least. the team is 8 up on the division and looking at a 2 seed. jpav is a strong number 1 so I may be playing for 2nd at this point.

Wrigley is a Lefty singles park and RH HR Park. It helps to have RH Reverse hitters there (Frazier, Kemp, Encarnacion, Pujols etc.) to hit the RH reverse SP's. LHH with good BA Avg are good fits as well. What's not a good fit are LH * Power hitters.

Cano, Lind, Peralta, Revere(for LH reverses and Eaton, Pagan vs the right side in CF is a good cheap Leadoff combo with Revere.) Vic Martinez is a very good fit at 1B because his BA Avg vs right is good as a switch hitter and his power is great vs the LH side as a RH hitter. You can have speedy LHH with good OBP/BA in the OF and middle IFs. RH Power at the corners and at C. Posey although pricey, is worth the money at C and he can double at 1b. Mesoraco is also a good fit at C for 1.7M less.