RSL Fantasy Outlook, Week 2: Sunny provides good value, Plata retains top spot

Week Two for Fantasy Soccer – how did your team fare? I made a good choice by keeping Sunny on my squad and was quite fortunate. Better yet for my team, having David Villa as captain delivered really nice points for the week, as he was top forward on the weekend. Dom Dwyer and Giovinco followed right behind him on the weekly points totals - a bit of a classic list. Midfielders came up big this week, with Andrew Wenger helping crush Dallas to top the league with 16 fantasy points. Ignacio Piatti continued his streak with a goal, an assist, and bonus points to come in right behind Wenger on points. On the unfortunate side, if you had any Dallas players like I did, the horrible collapse to Houston by 5-0 crimped your players point totals on the week.

For this past weekend, RSL fared pretty well. Joao Plata continued his place on top for RSL in the weekly Fantasy performance. This week however, he was tied with Olave and Sunny with 9 points for each player. Luckily for RSL and your Fantasy points, there were no red cards, so no players with negative point totals for the week.

For this week’s game, Sunny provided the best points per dollar for RSL. His cheaper fantasy price than Olave or Plata meant he was a bit better value on the week. Due to his better performance this week on defense and in particular offense, Olave scored second highest for the round with 6 points for his goal. Both Olave and Plata benefited from scoring this past weekend, but don’t count on them too regularly for that. In an ironic twist, Olave got an extra bonus point for getting fouled and Sunny got bonuses for defensive plays. Normally it’d be the other way around, but we should expect Sunny to be able to pick up defensive bonuses in his role assisting Kyle Beckerman as a two way midfielder. Finally, Plata tied for top points due to getting credit for two assists. All in all it was a decent week for RSL and a few decent point scorers for the week.

Looking at the season so far for RSL players fantasy totals, Plata is the clear winner with 22 points from two games. That’s a great 11 points/game average – behind just one other player league wide. In second place for RSL in terms of points/game is Jamison Olave if you can believe it. While some people don’t like his performance so far this season, particularly on defense, Olave’s periodic scoring provides more upside than other defenders. Burrito Martinez comes in third on the season-wide list with 12 points. Hopefully we’ll see him score more this season and jump even higher.

You’ll notice the tables I’ve had all show points/$. Just as important as total points are the ratio of points compared to the price for the player. When you’re looking for affordable players, watching points/$ can help you make tradeoffs on which players. We’ll look at some other metrics to evaluate players for your roster in later articles this season. In this week’s summary for the season, we can see that Sunny and Burrito are on the same point/$ totals, even though Martinez costs almost 20% more. If you’re looking at cheaper options for points, then Sunny would be a bit better choice.

For this weekend, who should you look at picking up or who to avoid? Word from Wednesday indicates that Morales’ and Olave’s health are improving and they might be playing this weekend. Given that Olave seems to be a bit slower on recovery from a quadricep injury and Portland has a turf surface, Olave is a higher likelihood for missing the game or at least not starting. If he doesn’t start, expect either Wingert or Glad to enter the lineup in the Center Back position. We’ll also see Phillips eligible this week after sitting out for his red card in the season opener. If you’re feeling risky – try him out, but sadly you don’t get bonus points for being daring. If you’re looking for backup forwards, it seems like most of RSL’s forwards are getting a run out through the season, as Coach Cassar seems to prefer swapping them out more often than other positions. On the forward line, only Garcia is questionable this week due to an ankle injury in practice. Phanuel Kavita will also be out with a longer term injury, but the odds of him having made the bench this early in the season was remote anyway. Maybe later in the year he’ll get some time. Perhaps Omar Holness will get a runout as a sub? Maybe – but I’d expect Stertzer if the game if RSL is ahead or Mulholland if it were tied. If Allen doesn’t start this week, there’s a reasonable chance he’ll come in off of the bench late in the game.

Looking around the league, there aren't enough games in the rearview mirror to get a clear read on the expected outcomes just yet. With a hot Montreal in Dallas this week (before the sauna of summer) - it wouldn't be surprising to see Piatti and Oduro score heavily again. In New York, NYCFC takes on Orlando in what could be another high scoring duel. Out west, the likely higher scoring games would seem to be RSL at Portland and Vancouver at Seattle. None of these teams have locked down their defenses yet - so you're probably better off picking offensive talent and staying away from the defensive side of the ball.

So here’s hoping for a good RSL game on the field and some great points from RSL players. Don’t forget the weekly deadline and don’t forget the injury report.