Yesterday afternoon the author made a passing comment on twitter about not seeing the apparently beloved movie The Princess Bride. He was subsequently mocked and ridiculed in a handful of states spread across the continental United States. The author will be sure to rectify this situation…eventually.
On today’s agenda:
1. Welcome back, Scott Kazmir
2. A big day for Lorenzo Cain
3. Assorted roster moves
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One can imagine that today’s date, April 20, is probably a big deal in the San Francisco Giants clubhouse. After all, today is Brandon Belt’s birthday.
On today’s agenda:
1. Brett Anderson leaves after the first inning
2. What to make of Wandy Rodriguez
3. Two homers each for two New York Mets
4. Jhoulys Chacin’s season to date (and potential injury)
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Let’s first start with results:
Week 1: 1-3, 30 IP, 3.00 ERA, 5.4 K/9, 2.4 BB/9 (Kevin Slowey, Ubaldo Jimenez, Joe Saunders)
Week 2 (incomplete): 1-2, 12.1 IP, 7.30 ERA, 5.8 K/9, 2.0 K/BB (Joe Blanton, James McDonald, Eric Stults)
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Total: 2-5, 42.1 IP, 4.25 ERA, 5.5 K/9, 2.2 K/BB
Based on a personal preference due to time I am allotted, I will not update previous week’s results until the next week, so each week will result in a half-week listed as ‘incomplete’, because most of these guys will start tomorrow or the next day. Sorry for any inconvenience.
Last week was pretty disappointing, but could have been worse. James McDonald was absolutely bombed in his outing, but only three of the runs were earned. And that’ll happen in short weeks. Oh well.
I’m confident this week will be better, because these are three really good pitchers rather than trying to make matchups work. Thanks universe! A special thank to Twitter pal @eblack35 for his help pulling Yahoo! ownership numbers this week. Read the rest of this entry »
The value of a stolen base may vary from daily site to daily site, but on the site where I play my daily cap contests, a steal is worth five points. Throw in the fact that a runner has to get on base to be able to steal another one and a steal becomes worth seven or eight points. And that’s assuming they don’t come around to score or do anything else in their other plate appearances. You could certainly do worse than seven or eight points from a slot. Needless to say, I like guys who can run a little (or a lot) in daily leagues.
In order to be able to better pick base stealers in daily salary cap formats, I decided to look at the pitchers and catchers who are the most and least friendly to base stealers. Read the rest of this entry »
As of Friday morning, Matt Kemp is hitting .182/.217/.255 with zero home runs and zero stolen bases. His .207 wOBA ranks third-worst amongst qualified outfielders in all of baseball — ahead of only Aaron Hicks and David Murphy — and he currently owns a 28 wRC+ and a -0.6 WAR.
In short, he’s been dreadful, and many fantasy owners who drafted him in the first round have been limping through the month of April, waiting for Kemp to rebound and become the .362 wOBA hitter he’s been throughout his career.
Lots of speculation exists that this slump is either related to his offseason shoulder surgery or the result of a mechanical compensation from his injury last season. While Kemp has repeatedly told reporters he’s physically fine this week, the numbers indicate something has negatively changed at the plate.
Last year, there were exactly three catchers who had at least 15 homers and a .390 on-base percentage: Miguel Montero, Buster Posey, & Carlos Ruiz.
Let’s look at those three again, but with a different number added: Montero (100%), Posey (100%), Ruiz (4.9%). That’s the ownership percentage for each of the trio in ESPN leagues right now, and the difference is clear. One of these things does not look like the others, and that’s obviously because Ruiz was suspended for the first 25 games of the season after testing positive for a banned stimulant. Read the rest of this entry »
Let’s all agree to just put this week behind us. Tomorrow is the weekend and that should bring better days.
On today’s agenda:
1. Patrick Corbin’s strong outing
2. Brandon Crawford’s hitting
3. Rajai Davis keeps running
4. The return of two injured sluggers
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–Edward Mujica snuck himself out of a jam tonight to earn the four-out save, his first since May 2012, in a 4-3 Cardinals victory over the Phillies. Mike Matheny called for the 28-year-old Mujica to bail out young gun Trevor Rosenthal with two down and two on in the eighth. The veteran subsequently fanned Laynce Nix to end the Phillies’ rally. Mujica then surrendered two consecutive singles of his own to start the ninth-inning, but was able to finish off the Phils with two infield groundouts and a strikeout, securing his first save of the season. Quickly after the save, our friend Drew Silva tweeted this:
Edward Mujica, acquired last July for, umm, Zack Cox, now has a 1.11 ERA, 0.90 WHIP and 28/4 K/BB in 32 1/3 innings with the Cardinals.
— Drew Silva (@drewsilv) April 19, 2013
Episode 1
It’s the inaugural episode of The Sleeper and the Bust starring yours truly and the man with the hair, Eno Sarris! It took awhile, but RotoGraphs finally has its own fantasy baseball podcast. Join me every Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday for shenanigans and perhaps some useful advice. On tonight’s episode, we discuss debuts, early struggles and hot starts.
Don’t hesitate to direct pod-related correspondence to @mikepodhorzer or @enosarris on Twitter.
You can subscribe to the podcast via the feed. iTunes coming soon.
Approximately 33 min of joyous analysis.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: RSS
From now on I am not going to look at individuals heading to and from the DL, but a more detailed look if an injury is affecting a player with the MASH Report. If any reader wants an opinion on a player, let me know. I am going to start by looking at a request from KMen in yesterday’s Roto Riteup.
Question 1:
Mat Latos has decreased velocity from 93 to 91mph over first 3 starts. Apparently velocity is pretty much stabilized after 3 starts, so that’s a significant drop. However, his SwStr% is just as good as always, and he’s definitely still getting the results (off to best start in his career). What do we make off all of this?
