Welcome to the first installment of what will be a series of preview articles for the upcoming Major League Baseball season. Through these articles like I do every year I will cover each division while breaking down a players I am bullish on and ones that I am avoiding like the plague this season not only in seasonal formats, but also in betting and DFS as well. The DFS side of things will certainly change as we get into the season because every slate is unique with many variables on who is a good play and who isn’t. But there is still a good edge to gain by having a belief or theory going into the season.
Along with these divisional preview articles I will provide my usual Ballpark Breakdown article as well as my top overall predictions for the 2021 season, finished up by the 2021 Dongers Club Manifesto.
American League West
Anaheim Angels – OVER 83.5 WINS
I chose to do the AL West first specifically because of the Angels, a team that a month ago I probably would have just shrugged my shoulders at and said yeah they’ll be alright but what about the pitching staff, what about Ohtani, what about the lineup outside of Trout… Yada, yada, yada. All those things are trending way up right now for this team. Shohei Ohtani, the hyped two way player who is coming off Tommy John Surgery two years ago and then was essentially a limited DH only in 2020 is 100% healthy and playing without any restrictions this season. The plan for the Angels is to not only let him pitch on his usual 5 day rest but also plug him into the lineup when they can and so far this spring between the 100 mph velocity and 500 foot home run bombs to dead center, he’s showing he is healthy and ready to be the stud everyone thought he would be.
Peeling back more layers on the onion that is the Angels lineup there is so much to like. Anthony Rendon spent most of 2020’s limited season dealing with an oblique injury but is still only 30 and not far removed from a near All-Star season in 2019 with the Nationals. Top prospect Jo Adell had his cup of coffee in the big leagues a year ago and will be penciled in as the every day RF soon enough, while Ohtani David Fletcher and Jared Walsh offer the rest of productive bats around some guy named Mike Trout. Remember him? Yeah, it seems all these “sharps” who are doing seasonal drafts are forgetting how much of a lock button Daddy Trout is going to be all season long.
You won’t hear much argument from me that Acuna, Tatis and Soto are obvious studs too — but why is nobody taking Trout in the top 5? It’s a joke and he’s going to have more protection than ever with healthy Rendon and Ohtani around him.
The staff is where many frown on this team but they brought back Dylan Bundy along with veterans Alex Cobb (trade), Jose Quintana and Raisel Iglesias (trade) to bolster the overall pitching staff. In this division, that’s good enough to win 90 games.
Players to buy into: Shohei Ohtani, Anthony Rendon, Jo Adell, Andrew Heaney
Players to avoid: Dexter Fowler/Justin Upton (Holding the seat warm for Adell and Brandon Marsh)
DFS Outlook: Death. Taxes. Playing any dude who bats in front of Mike Trout. We have known this for years and it’s made almost anyone a good value who is batting ahead of ole Trout Boy. That will not change, but I expect Trout-Rendon-Ohtani when all in the lineup together to be a pricey but always great contrarian stack. Why? They’re not gonna be as popular as the White Sox, Dodgers, Yankees (when in good parks), Braves and other middling teams like the Nationals, Phillies, etc… The Angels aren’t in a stadium that to the common eye is considered a great hitters park — but with warm temps usually it can be a nice sneaky park to look at for offense and those guys have the power to mash. Not to mention Trout absolutely destroys Seattle pitching and the Mariners aren’t looking so hot overall — so expect this lineup to be one that wins some big $ early in the season. The pitchers can be attacked and the bullpen while nice on the back end is what I would rank in the middle of the road (or Switzerland) in terms of DFS.
Oakland Athletics
Oakland is not a team that I would project to make the playoffs, but they should manage to hold off a severely banged up Houston Astros team. Let’s start with the changes on the Athletics that are of relevance for 2021.
Marcus Semien is out at SS and Elvis Andrus is in. First off, congrats to Elvis on getting the hell out of a trainwreck situation in Texas but let’s not kid ourselves he is not going to give Oakland what Semien would or could have given them with another year. That said, Andrus, while not a stellar bat anymore does have some favorable history in Oakland Coliseum. He has hit more home runs as a visitor in Oakland than any other road park (tied with Houston) and that’s saying something considering the large dimensions here. But as much as I used to like using Beltre and Andrus when they went to Oakland I also have to recognize that 2016 called and it too would like America to be whatever the fuck it isn’t right now again — and that includes Andrus rubbing the head of Beltre as often as he can. Who knows, maybe he can saddle up with Ramon Laureano and the two of them can be come best pals?
The Athletics in the Andrus trade shipped off Khris Davis to the Texas Rangers and I really want to know which DFS tout is going to be the first to highlight Davis’ Texas ballpark splits in reference to a stadium which is now used for tractor pulls, football games and burying all the dead bodies that were left behind in Texas due to their massive COVID spreading which by the time you are reading this have likely claimed all of our lives. Anyways, he gone.
That leaves us with a projected DH platoon between nobody’s (Except Mississippians) favorite 1B Mitch Moreland and christ, I guess the dating app himself Chad Pinder depending on who they are facing on the mound. Laureano, Canha, Chapman, Olson, Murphy, Piscotty … they’re all there. The same up and down band remains and yes Chapman and Olson are going to have double dong games and yes this team is still going to have nights when they go into Baltimore or Cleveland or Detroit or Boston and they’re gonna put up 8 or 9 runs. Usually in the first game of the series and then they suck ass the rest of the way. But something about this same ole song and dance just feels like it’s gonna get tiresome after a while. Oakland has been a slow starting team for years and eventually that’s gonna catch up with them.
The pitching on the other hand has one of the toughest decision points we will face in the month of April. What to do with most likely under priced Jesus Luzardo? Luzardo has the front end talent with + Fastball, Insanely + Slider and a pretty damn good Change-Up all wrapped with improving command and oh yeah — he’s a southpaw & who doesn’t wake up in the morning dreaming of a deadly LHP who is gonna strikeout 25%+ batters when he reaches his prime? But Luzardo will have bumps in the road, it’s the nature of the best with young arms and I caution you to just blindly roll him out there in April/May in DFS without first considering his recent form.
The rest of the staff looks good with the Bassitt Hound dog, Frankie Montas and “Hall and Oates” only much much much fucking worse Sean Manaea. Look, Manaea is a former Royal, but he sucks. Period. Oooh, here it comes, watch out boy he’ll chew you up. Here it come’s, he’s a Manaea, he’ll only come out at night…..
Not to mention Mike “Fire Woman” Fiers rounding things out and ladies and gentlemen, we have ourselves the bad song pitching staff. I mean, I guess if you are out at a throw back 80’s/90’s bar and trying to pick up some chick then these songs have some value but otherwise you cannot honestly be telling me that you really want to listen to these songs in your head every time you roster one of the Oakland pitchers knowing they have a tendency to be pulled after 5 Innings to utilize their solid bullpen, do you?
Players to buy into: Jesus Luzardo, Matt Olson
Players to avoid: I usually do not like the non Luzardo pitchers on this roster because of limited IP upside.
DFS Outlook: Same ole Athletics. A good enough lineup to put up lots of crooked numbers, but also bad enough overall to lose a lot of games 4-2. This team needs that one stud bat and they do not have it. Sorry Olson/Chapman truthers.
Houston Astros
Peace out Springer, I was all set to push the Astros up to the #2 spot but they just cannot seem to get off on the right foot in regards to injuries. Hot take alert. This is still an elite offense and while that might not be a hot take to those who have been doing lots of Fantasy projections already, it will be a hot take to the casuals who are on the radio talking about the upcoming season. So what if Spring is gone and Altuve can no longer hit. The real batters on this team are Alex Bregman, Kyle Tucker and Yordan Alvarez. Those three alone would compete with the majority of the American League for best 3 hitters together in a lineup and with Michael Brantley back they have that steady OBP veteran to balance out the swing for the fences mentality of Alvarez and Tucker. Tucker has shown to be slightly better against LHP with a lower K% rate so far and his EV, Launch Angle and x splits were all slightly down last year from his initial 2019 numbers. Some might say regression, but those of us who have been around the block (in a good way) know that this is the norm little dip before the surge. I love the Houston lineup just as much as before.
The pitching on the other hand … Yikes!
Justin Verlander? Busy banging Kate Upton….
Zack Greinke? Guy can’t make it past the 4th inning. It happens to all of us sadly, either that or he’s banging Justin Verlander.
Framber Valdez? This guy here’s dead now too. Or maybe he’s banging Kate Upton now that Greinke is banging Verlander. Think about that one over your breakfast…
Lance McCullers Jr remains and is now the Ace of this staff. Good luck to the son of Mr. Lance Mcullers.
Jose Urquidy and Christian Javier at times showed some favorable qualities when his control is on allowing for his FB to setup a solid Change-Up that has about a 28% whiff rate. However, underlying expected stats indicate he was merely getting lucky too often and is more closer to a 1.5 HR/9 IP guy that’s gonna yield 3-5 runs per start more often than not. His best tool will be his CB to lefties, but unless he starts getting it across vs RHP he’s gonna remain someone you can destroy with a RH power bat. I know he is older than dirt, but an Albert Pujols like hitter comes to mind as someone that should just destroy Urquidy.
Christian Javier is going to be your every 5th day “Hey how much is this guy as an SP2” on DraftKings play. Guess how many times though he went 6 IP, or in other words, was in consideration for FanDuel? Just three and never in back to back starts. Something to expect from a young arm like him and with all the other injuries I just can’t see him leaping up to eat up 200 Innings for the Astros.
Which brings us to Jake Odorizzi who just showed up to replace Valdez. Think of ole Eggs Odorizzi to be here to simply give them 100+ pitches as often as he can and that my friends concludes our Jake Ororizzi analysis.
The bullpen better get right quick and in a hurry because they’re gonna be busy to start the season off. Houston has potential, but they also seem to have this weird set of bad karma going on right now and I just can’t put my finger on the pulse of why that is…
Players to buy into: Alex Bregman, Kyle Tucker, Yordan Alvarez
Players to avoid: Jose Urquidy and Christian Javier
DFS Outlook: Houston should hit bombs, especially when they’re park shifting into some smaller American League parks that will benefit their lefties more than the home Minute Maid Park does (it’s middle of the road when roof is closed as it often is). But with a questionable bullpen and some questions in the rotation we should be looking at lots of Astros overs in 2021.
Seattle Mariners – Under 72.5 Wins
I really would like to start off by saying something nice about the Seattle Mariners.
Instead I’ll just say that hey, they aren’t the Texas Rangers and in Seattle’s defense they have a pretty stout farm system, but now they seem to not have any young players willing to stick with their organization after some poor leadership history came out this off-season. Hopefully for Mariners fans all of that is behind them and they can one day move away from the gimmick of trying to find the next Ichiro to keep a Pacific Northwest style fan base interested in their team. Let’s be honest here, they have more of an Asian following than any other team and I just don’t think they’re all that into guys like Daniel Vogelbach hitting baseballs with their pants on. So the Mariners have shipped off some quality bats over the years and are now left with Two Kyle’s, a Mitch, an Evan, a Tom and J.P. Probably not a great thing you say. And no, it’s not.
We should be serious for a moment and all raise a glass for Mitch Haniger who is back after … I’m just not gonna mention why he was out, but we are all glad to see Mitch Haniger back on the field and playing Baseball again. Unfortunately given his history he’ll probably be back on the IL by April 12th with a sore shoulder. Kyle Lewis is gonna hit around .240 with 20 Homers. If he was the 6-hole hitter for a team like Boston that would be cool. He’s not. So, he’s worthless for seasonal purposes — sorry.
J.P Crawford might be one of the most exciting players to watch defensively but unless he’s gonna be turning double plays by himself all year long I just can’t find a valid reason to stay up late at night to watch him do that — although the ballpark is great even if it has a dumb name like T-Mobile, which every smart person knows is short for Trout, Mike Field. Trout has played 81 games in Seattle with a .333 BA, .693 SLG, 27 HR and 15 Doubles. Mike Trout has hit more 2 or more homers in Seattle every year since 2014 and has not had a sub .333 average in Seattle since the days when TommyG was a good Baseball DFS tout.
The Mariners do have a little bit of a 2023 dominant team feel to them though so load up on them in the MLB Show Dynasty Mode. Julio Rodriguez, Jarred Kelenic and Taylor Trammell all are going to be legit stars in the big leagues and of the three I’m expecting Kelenic and Trammell to make it up this season but likely not until June or July at the earliest because Seattle is SMART to actually not rush them and have them come up and lose 100 games.
Trammell (sorry, no relation to Alan) was part of the deal that sent Trevor Bauer to Cincinnati (and Franmil Reyes to Cleveland) and then eventually went to the Mariners in the Austin Nola trade last season. He’s going to have to figure out how to hit consistently but all signs early in camp are good for him and he might be the first to show his big league talent of the three first. Seattle has hope, just not until 2023.
I hate the Mariners pitching. HATE. IT. They decided to bring back James Paxton, which isn’t say much for Paxton considering the Yankees had had enough of his constant nagging injuries and now on the wrong side of 32, Paxton is quickly becoming the next ‘James Shields’ in our game. A guy who at one point was actually a very reputable pitcher but now is on a bad team and will lose 16+ games just because he’s gonna pitch 4+ innings every time and enough to be on the hook for the Loss. No bueno.
Speaking of Spanish, Marco Gonzales returns, all married up now and ready to be the Ace of the staff. I’ll consider him every once and a while but let’s be frank. This is J.A.G.
So if Marco and Paxton are the 1-2, then what does that say about failed experiment Yusei Kikuchi?
Justus Sheffield? Sure. Just admit it. You are considering him to be relevant because
- A: He’s a former Yankee prospect.
- B: He’s got a cool last name
- C: He’s left handed.
Chris Flexen? Seriously? KBO Chris Flexen? Get out of here. I can’t wait for him to be had chalk every week at $5600 on DraftKings as an SP2 when the Mariners are gonna lose 10-3. This bullpen is so bad, it has Kendall Graveman AND Nick Margevicius in it. I really hope there are some entertaining fans at Mariners games this year, because we’re gonna be watching them give up runs all season long after Midnight on the east coast. DFS Gold Jerry… DFS GOLD!
Ok, enough bashing of the obvious bad spots on this team. They do have one really flashy looking pitching prospect in Logan Gilbert, who was their first round pick in 2018 and is progressing so far to potentially debut in 2021 if Seattle chooses to go that route. We have a rule that we don’t touch rookie pitchers 95% of the time in DFS and that’ll likely be true with Gilbert this year too — but he is a name to know and watch right now.
Players to buy into: The young kids. Trammell, Kelenic, Rodriguez, Gilbert
Players to avoid: Kyle Seager, Justus Sheffield
DFS Outlook: There are going to be many a long night when the Pacific Northwest Hammer comes down on those who fall asleep thinking they have a profit coming their way. Games in Seattle where the visiting team secures that 9th inning will be hard to avoid in DFS as you can expect the Mariners pitching staff to finish near the bottom of the league.
Texas Rangers
Time to come clean here as I must admit I had Texas as a sneaky team last year and then everything just imploded. The offense got worse, the pitching staff fell apart and the stadium was 10x worse than I expected it to be — and I was down on it to begin with!
As I write this, Joey Gallo has once again homered in another Arizona Spring Training game and another sucker was just born who thinks that the Government is gonna hand out a stimulus check to them. Right. Let’s get some facts on Joey Gallo out of the way. He could hit 40 home runs and still suck because the batting average is going to remain around .212 at best.
The stadium is NOT good and those are his own words talking about the Texas Graveyard that they built. It’s as if the Rangers went out and said hey lets go build the worst fucking stadium (Tropicana Field), but lets do it in Texas Style and make it look like a giant Costco Warehouse but with high priced suites, lots of televisions and a really cool retractable roof that operates exactly like the stadium in Houston. Typical Dallas fashion, just copy someone else’s shitty design and call it your own — only they fucking named it the same damn thing as the OLD BALLPARK.
I cannot believe that they actually built this stadium and launched it last year during a pandemic and couldn’t get people to vote on a better name? But then I guess we shouldn’t be shocked about the lack of imagination in Texas since they’re all DEAD FROM COVID. #RIP. #TOOSOON. #THOUGHTSANDPRAYERS. #THANKSBIDEN. #THANKSTRUMP. #HASHTAG.
I’m getting off topic. You are likely this far wanting to know something about Texas for DFS or seasonal purposes?
Ok.
Yeah, this isn’t good. You sure?
New hitters include David Dahl and Khris Davis
New pitchers include Mike Foltynewicz
… and Kohei Arihara who in real Texas fashion they “purchased” from Japan in December. So while the rest of us are out here locked down and shit the fucking state of Texas took their baseball team and went out and stole some dude from Japan. I guess that’s why they are called the Rangers, which somehow managed to not get canceled even though they were on the short list last year? What happened with that, did we just look at it and say oh fuck no they’re so pathetic we can’t cancel them because their idiot Owner went out and built himself this giant fucking COSTCO Warehouse for a home stadium and killed all the excitement of the Baseball team?
Or did we not cancel the Rangers because … wait for it … yep, you guessed it.
THEYRE ALREADY DEAD FROM COVID!
Players to buy into: Leody Tavares
Players to avoid: Nate Lowe, David Dahl, Khris Davis
DFS Outlook: Texas is bad. Very bad. They haven’t been able to hit for a couple years and there are no signs of that changing this season. Joey Gallo could come out and legit hit 40-50 bombs for sure but still bat in the low .200’s and at best they might be a couple 2 run homers in there, but eventually teams will just pitch around him if that is the case and I’m sorry but David Dahl is not a good hitter.
AMERICAN LEAGUE WEST RECAP
Division Winner: L.A. Angels
Over Bet: Angels OVER 82 wins.
Under Bet: Mariners UNDER 72.5. They should finish neck and neck with the Rangers and although they are better, the 6 extra wins of padded cushioning help here.
Best young players: Jo Adell, Jared Kelenic
DFS Thoughts on this division:
- Attack Mariners pitchers
- Attack Rangers hitters
- Stack day games in Anaheim