Michael Waldo

Welcome to the final edition of A Closer Look for the 2021 season! For those of you still battling for a championship, we'll continue to update you on all the news you need to know for the final FAAB runs...

It's Week 26 of the fantasy baseball season! Since we're two years removed from our last full 162 game season, it's important to remember that players' bodies tend to break down as the full grind of the season starts to...

With just three weeks left in the regular season, most head-to-head leagues will be finishing the regular season within the next week. This weekend also marks Week 1 of the NFL regular season, which coincidentally also marks the migration of...

For most of the regular season, this column focused on skillsets over immediate opportunity. In other words, when deciding between the reliever with access to immediate saves and the reliever with an elite skillset, it's generally a good idea to...

Ahh, playoffs! Can you smell that? Sweet, sweet playoffs. The fantasy baseball regular season is coming to a close and the fantasy playoffs will be starting within the next couple of weeks in most head-to-head formats. For those in roto...

The story of 2021, at least in the terms of bullpens, is largely a broken record. Many teams that headed into the season with a committee in the 9th inning have largely struggled to find consistency - with the exception...

We're in the stretch run in fantasy leagues! By the end of the month, head-to-head formats will be entering playoffs and rotisserie leagues will be making the turn for home. This is always an odd time of the year as...

A Closer Look August is upon us and the trade deadline is behind us! It's crunch time in fantasy leagues and we're to the point in the season where every activation in your starting lineup is important and every individual...

How's everybody feeling waking up from your trade deadline hangover? The 2021 trade deadline did not disappoint, particularly as it pertained to relievers. Both Brad Hand and Craig Kimbrel were traded, but those were just the headliners. Here's a summary...

The Major League Baseball trade deadline is just about a week away, which means one of the wildest times of the year is just a couple weeks away for fantasy owners. The FAAB period after the trade deadline is usually...

Happy second half, fantasy baseballers! With fantasy football just around the corner (have you checked out InsiderFootball.com, recently?), this is the time of the season that separates the championship teams from the pretenders. The All-Star break is the unofficial cutoff...

Welcome to the 15th edition of A Closer Look. Tuesday marks the unofficial halfway mark in the major league baseball season as the All-Star Game shifts to Colorado, so in honor of halfway mile marker, here's a view of the...

Welcome to the 14th edition of A Closer Look of the 2021 Major League Baseball season! It's officially July, which means the midway point of the season and the trade deadline are just around the corner. Several teams with dedicated...

The carnage is real, people! This week was a challenging one for several struggling closers and unfortunately, a pair of dedicated closers actually lost their jobs. Both Hector Neris and Stefon Crichton were removed from their roles (Crichton removed from...

A Closer Look - Week 12 Don't look now, but we're down to just seven closer committees in major league baseball! That may seem like a lot, but considering that over one-third of the league had one earlier this year,...

It's Week 11 in the fantasy baseball season and currently 9 teams are employing a closer-by-committee in the 9th inning. The interesting thing to note is that only one of those teams is in the National League while eight...

It's Week 10 of the fantasy baseball season, which means we're a little over one-third of the way through the regular season. In the closer landscape, there's currently one player on pace for 50+ saves (Mark Melancon),two on pace...

We're nine weeks into the fantasy baseball season and by my count, roughly one third of the teams in major league baseball are using a closer-by-committee approach in the ninth inning. This approach is slightly less detrimental for fantasy leagues...

We're roughly 8 weeks into the fantasy baseball season and the closing pool has been noisy, but it hasn't been a nuclear meltdown. We touched on the save leaders last week and this week, we'll touch on a slightly more...

Welcome to the 7th closer update of the year! This week, as I was reading the box scores, I had an epiphany. I can rattle off the strikeout rates, groundball rates and even the barrel rates for most of the...

Around the League: -More turnover in the Tampa Bay bullpen this week as Diego Castillo landed on the injured list with a groin injury. On the bright side, the team did activate Pete Fairbanks. Jeffrey Springs secured the first save...

Around the League: -More struggles for Amir Garrett in ninth inning this week and Lucas Sims also hit a speed bump of his own, leaving the door open for Sean Doolittle to convert his first save since 2019. Doolittle has...

By the end if this week, we'll be roughly one month in on the 2021 Major League Baseball season! After a flurry of late spring training news and earlier season uncertainty, we've seen a relative sense of stability over the...

Welcome to the Week 3 edition of A Closer Look! As it currently stands, the NL bullpens are beginning to stabilize, while the AL continues to be a rollercoaster of emotion for fantasy owners. The good news is that there...

Week one of the fantasy baseball season certainly brough a lot of closer news. As of this writing, roughly one-third of the teams have some level of uncertainty in their closer pecking order. That's great news if you waited on...

Happy Opening Weekend! As I alluded to last week, this year's closer pool seems to be as tumultuous as ever, which is both good news and bad news for those of who decided to wait on closers in the draft....

Buckle up, folks! The 2021 closer carousel has officially begun and it's not even April! From injuries to position battles, Spring Training has revealed just how fragile many of the closing situations are amongst most of the league. For fantasy...

Royals: Bounceback Candidate: Hunter Dozier After being one of the best breakout stories of 2019, Hunter Dozier failed to live up to that same level of performance in 2020, which has caused his ADP to drop to 222nd overall....

Dinelson Lamet's ADP Continues to Plummet Dinelson Lamet still hasn't made his Cactus League debut after recovering from a biceps injury that ended his 2020 season in September and required a platelet-rich plasma injection. Lamet has been participating in...

The Statcast age is upon us! Baseball stadiums around the league have joined the tech revolution and are filled with high-speed cameras and sensors designed to capture and measure every aspect of America's Past Time. The result? Statistical detail beyond...

Swinging strike rate, or the percentage of pitches that result in a swing and a miss, is one of the most powerful tools for any fantasy player to utilize when attempting to evaluate starting pitcher performances. The calculation of the...

Chicago Cubs News: Kris Bryant - Buy Low or Bust? At the end of the 2016 season, Kris Bryant was in the most enviable position in baseball - World Series champion and NL MVP. Unfortunately for the 29 year old...

Strand rate, or left on base percentage (LOB%), measures the percentage of baserunners a pitcher leaves on base over the course of an entire season. At its core, strand rate is simply a measure of the number of runners that...

Jake Arrieta Returns to the Cubs: Jake Arrieta and Yu Darvish have been linked together in many Cubs fans' minds since Arrieta departed and Darvish arrived before the 2018 season. For Darvish, he had nearly impossible shoes to fill, as...

Ask a sabermetrician what his or her favorite statistics are that measure the quality of a pitcher and xFIP is bound to be a frequent answer. So what is xFIP and why do statisticians prefer it over a more widely...

For years, baseball managers have practically competed in mini chess matches mid-game as they both sought the elusive "platoon advantage". In fact, these strategic moves - designed to give their team a higher probability of a favorable outcome - ultimately...