Kluber and Sale - I agree there are risks to both of them, but they are also pretty consistent over the course of an entire season. Kluber always seems to do really bad in April.
The Red Sox are projected to lead the majors in Runs scored / game (5.42) with the Indians in 4th (4.83), so I expect both of these aces to rack up wins, which is crucial in Roto format where each start eats away at your inning limit and thus you want to maximize your # wins / outing.
Yu Darvish - This guy's upside is ridiculous. If he stays healthy, he could be a top 3 pitcher easily this year. His walk rate has dropped each season in the majors, and K-rate has generally climbed. Most projections have him putting up lower K-rate and higher BB-rate than last year, and an entire 1K/9 at that. I don't buy that at all.
Schwarber - He's young, built like a truck, and
potentially batting lead off for the Cubs . Also, he's a Catcher on Yahoo, which is ridiculous but w/e. I'm not super worried about him being in a major platoon, because he has generally crushed in the minors.
Fangraphs says it takes 910 AB to stabilize your AVG - Schwarber has only 278 thus far - so I don't buy his projected AVG of 0.253. What does stabilize in under 278 PAs? BB% - of which he posted 13%. 13% walk rate is GREAT - it would have put him in the top 10 of MLB last year had he qualified. What does that mean? It means I don't think he is that in danger of losing his lineup spot in a platoon situation - the guy can get on base. And that's all you need to do if you have those hitters behind you.
Just as an exercise I loaded up fangraphs auction calculator and put in the Yahoo league settings. For a $260 budget, Schwarber (non catcher) has a value of $15.4 ($13.2 of that from the "OF" position). Looking at Buster Posey, he has a value of $30.8, and $30.8 of that is coming from the "C" position.
So right away you can see that Fangraphs like's Schwarber more than Posey if he has catcher eligibility. A value of $15.4 + ($30.8 - $13.2) = $33 which is as high as Nolan Arenado. Ok, so that might be a bit ridiculous. But even if you only take half of that $18 catcher boost, you are looking at a value of $24 which is a George Springer or Giancarlo Stanton type level.
Oh and by the way, that projection is for only 534 PA, which if I'm right and he avoids a platoon situation, will be closer to the 570-600 range, especially since he likely won't be playing catcher at all this season.
If this was an OBP league, Schwarber would be the lock of the millennium of the draft at this stage for me if unpicked. I'm still happy to grab him here in an AVG league, but I do realize his value is significantly reduced in such a format.
BTW - even if it isn't a 2 catcher league, Yahoo has pretty shallow rosters for # of hitters compared to ESPN. This raises the relative value of a Catcher even further, since towards the end of the draft the pool of non-catchers to fill your UTIL positions is significantly higher than if you were in a league with MI, CI, 5OF, and a UTIL.