Brandon Crawford might be a nice short-term replacement for Jose Reyes.
Photo courtesy of John Pastor.
Well, if you are a Jose Reyes fantasy owner, then you are the same place I am in, scrambling to find a way to replace him in your lineup. Watching the top rated SS go on the DL for 3 months is NOT a pleasant feeling.
However, this early in the season it doesn’t necessarily leave you dead in the water. Of course you are not just going to find a guy sitting in free agency that you can insert into Reyes’ spot and get the exact same production from. Also, the task of replacing Reyes in your fantasy lineup get markedly greater the deeper your league is.
If you are like me, you will have also looked around at potential trade options. Which again, will be a bit tougher in deeper leagues, as people aren’t all that eager to trade reliable production at a position like shortstop. Also, some leagues require 2B, SS and a MI (middle infield) position, and most leagues have UTL (utility) spot that they may have an extra SS in.
The key to this is, how much do you have to give up? Well if you have any trade possibilities and need a second opinion, feel free to shoot me an email (nash@fantasybaseballcrackerjacks.com) and I can tell you if you are giving up too much.
Most times it is a bit tough to throw out a blanket about who to trade for in one of these instances, so for replacing Reyes we are going to focus on free agency.
I immediately went to the free agency page of my leagues and found a few good options available: Jean Segura, Marwin Gonzalez, Zack Cozart and Daniel Descalso. Really, with Segura being available, I struck gold, and snatched him up! Unfortunately he was available in less than 50% of leagues, so that means most of your Reyes owners were not so lucky.
Gonzalez, Cozart and Descalso are available in more than 80% of leagues though, so you should be exploring those options heavily.
Of those three, none seem to offer too much in terms of Reyes’ stolen base production. So if you were banking on the 30-40 steals from Reyes, you will have to look elsewhere. However, in the meantime, quickly grab one of these guys and see what happens, I would suggest going for Marwin, he is a bit more of a wildcard, BUT he could really come on to become a sleeper stud this season.
For those of you in deeper leagues, I have a short list for you as well: Brandon Crawford, Ruben Tejada, Eric Sogard and Cliff Pennington.
Crawford has been off to the best start of these four players, and he should continue to produce well. He will get consistent at bats, and does not have much pressure on him. Even though he bats at the bottom of a National League lineup, he also has good players around him to be on base and hit him in. If he’s on base with less than two outs, the lineup will turn over to Angel Pagan and Marco Scutaro. So, if crawford is available I say grab him up!
The nice thing about Sorgard is that he is likely to serve as the A’s primary 2B (while keeping his SS eligibility) as Scott Sizemore is done for the season. There is of course no guarantee that the A’s do not recall Jemile Weeks to share time at 2B, but as long as Sorgard is producing, he should get the bulk of the at bats.
Again, you aren’t going to get a perfect replacement of Reyes’ hopeful production of 110+ runs, 20+ homers, 60+ RBI, 30+ swipes, and a.300+ average. However if you can figure out a way to compensate at other positions, then any of these can help you.
The way I see it, perhaps you pick up Brandon Crawford, Crawford is hitting in the 8th spot for the Giants currently, with a few at bats in the 2 hole on Scutaro’s days off. If Crawford could move permanently into the 2 spot then he could really pick up some nice RBI production. If he could get his stats on pace with 75-15-75-10-.280, then you will have a little wiggle room to trade a solid RBI guy for a bit more a steals guy.
Of course, if you unload a Dan Uggla type for Jose Altuve, you are really shaking up your projected team stats. I am thinking a bit more a subtle move, like Josh Reddick for Shin Soo-Choo or something like that. You can recoup the loss of steals and not lose much else in the process.
Also, you must remember that while we do our best to set up or statistical goals in the preseason that we believe should win us our league championship, fantasy baseball strategy must be fluid. You need to monitor closely the standings to make sure that your numbers will hold up, otherwise you will be scrambling to catch in areas later in the season.