This week marked the start of month 2 in the Banished to the Pen ottoneu SABR points league. We haven’t quite reached the June 1^st date in which all stats magically become credible but there are some ottoneu stories worth following. Thankfully, I don’t have to worry about whether or not Kris Bryant will ever hit a home run (I just watched him hit his second, in fact), so here are other players worth your consideration.

Jung-ho Kang Is Good (for Now)

Jung-ho Kang was sniped away from me for $3 this week by Victorious (who also spent a good part of the last hour of our draft sniping players I’d saved my hard earned ottoneu bucks for). If I didn’t respect his ideas about fantasy baseball so much, I might hate him. Kang was originally drafted for $4 but cut after his horrific first four weeks. Since then, he’s been the fifth best shortstop in the SABR points format and picked up 3^rd base eligibility, where he finished 11^th (which is still above replacement level in this format). Maybe he’s turned a corner?

Bryce Harper: Leading Allocation Candidate?

Let’s say you have a $46 Bryce Harper. Pretty good deal, right? He just led all hitters in points in the SABR and Fangraphs points formats over the last 7 days. He’s expensive, but not nearly as expensive as Mike Trout (36^th over the past week). At $46, you might actually keep him through arbitration since, if this is just the beginning of what he can do, who knows what he’ll do next season? That’s where the allocation process comes into play. At the end of the season, teams must allocate $25 to players on every other team, with at least $1 toward a player on every team and no more than $3 allocated to any one team. With arbitration likely to raise the price on Mike Trout and other expensive players by a few dollars, it’s possible a player like Harper will become a candidate for allocation targeting. One to three dollars doesn’t sound like a lot of money but, if every team allocated $3 to Harper, I’m guessing Victorious wouldn’t want a $82 Bryce Harper.

Marlon Byrd: Not Dead Yet

At the time of writing, Marlon Byrd’s .341/.471/.780 line and 5 home runs over the last 2 weeks meant he was 3^rd among all outfielders with 125 points. And he’s spent every single point in Ryan Webb’s Save Chances lineup at the cost of $1. As a Team Albers member, I refuse to allow Webb to prevail, but I have to give him credit for a job well done in picking up Byrd for $1. Byrd has been durable and shown a lot of old man power in recent seasons and he’s well on his way to a third straight season with over 20 home runs (ZiPS projects 22 more home runs for Byrd at this point). His early season .221/.293/.442 line looks bad but, for $1, Byrd has more than made up for his rough start.

Good Closers on Seemingly Bad Teams

Neftali Feliz picked up 3 saves and 40 points in 3 innings of work last week. His performance thus far is enough to make me wonder if he’ll spend the entire season with the Rangers or if Jon Daniels might want to flip the closer for a player who might help the team win the in future. I’m not saying the season is over for the Rangers, but their DL just doesn’t ever seem to get any smaller. The Twins, on the other hand, refuse to accept their place in the universe. They have not hit, pitched, or played defense exceptionally well this season, but the team keeps giving leads to Glen Perkins in the 9^th inning and Perkins is a save machine that just keeps percolating.

The Week Ahead

Maybe you’ve heard of this Noah Syndergaard kid? His fastball was making good major league hitters look foolish last year in spring training, so it’s a little bewildering that the Mets waited this long to call him up. Granted, his ERA was a little high in AAA last season, but that’s what you get for waking up in Vegas. Syndergaard will make his debut Tuesday night (that’s tonight since you’re reading this on Tuesday!) in Chicago. I’ll be curious to see if Millville Meterologists go for broke and start him right away of if they wait to see if he can continue to build on the god-like AAA numbers he’s posted so far this season (34 K’s against 8 walks in 29 2/3 IP). If you happen to attend the debut, be sure to bring ear protection because I worry about your ear drums if Kris Bryant is able to make hard contact against one of Syndergaard’s fastballs.

Standings As of Now