We have all survived one week of fantasy baseball and can live to tell the stories of it. Some of our sleeper candidates gave us a dose of reality (thanks, Michael Morse) while some old names showed new life and we already had a fair share of injury scares. Ah, yes, it was a fun week. Now, let’s look back with the first look at the 2011 WERTH roto values:
I put this out on Google Docs for everyone to be able to enjoy since it doesn’t necessarily need to be in Excel format like the preseason customizable sheets. You’ll see two tabs in there with pitcher and hitter data. After the initial stat columns, you’ll see five columns for WERTH totals (how many points in the standings the player contributed in that week for the season total) and WERTHy totals (how much they would have contributed if everyone got the same amount of playing time).
The top ten hitters in Week 1 included some first round picks like Ryan Bruan, Joey Votto and Miguel Cabrera. Nelson Cruz showed what he can do when healthy as he took the top spot and Paul Konerko showed us that his 2010 season was not a fluke. But the most surprising names were Willie Bloomquist, Howie Kendrick, Jose Tabata and Asdrubal Cabrera. For most of those guys, this is the best week that you will get out of them in their careers and I wouldn’t rely on those hot streaks to continue throughout the season. However, I do think that Jose Tabata is a name to keep an eye on. He’s going to rack up a ton of plate appearances and has some decent power to go along with his great speed. It’s really not unrealistic to expect a .300 average with 10 HR and 40 SB on the year.
As far as WERTHy leaders, Mike Napoli leads that category there as he did quite a bit of damage in only 19 plate appearances. Until Michael Young’s possible exit, there may not be enough at-bats to go around that lineup.
For pitchers, it comes as no surprise that the guy who has not one but three dominating starts is the current WERTH leader as Jered Weaver was mowing down hitters with only a 0.87 ERA after three starts. He’s had a little luck on his side with his low BABIP thus far but is still dominating regardless. There were quite a few surprise pitchers in the top 10 including Matt Harrison, Jeremy Guthrie and Zach Britton. Out of those three, as I touched on last week, I think that Britton has the best chance of producing this year and I need to see a bit more of Harrison before endorsing him for a full season.
Take the time to browse around the Week 1 results and let me know if you have any ideas/suggestions for this new feature as it appears throughout the season.
