Let’s first start with results:

Week 1: 1-3, 30 IP, 3.00 ERA, 5.4 K/9, 2.3 K/BB, 1.13 WHIP (Kevin Slowey, Ubaldo Jimenez, Joe Saunders)
Week 2: 2-3, 25.1 IP, 5.69 ERA, 6.8 K/9, 2.4 K/BB, 1.74 WHIP (Joe Blanton, James McDonald, Eric Stults)
Week 3: 1-2, 32 IP, 3.66 ERA, 7.9 K/9, 3.1 K/BB, 1.22 WHIP (Wade Davis, Carlos Villanueva, Patrick Corbin)
Week 4: 2-1, 22 IP, 6.14 ERA, 7.8 K/9, 2.1 K/BB, 1.95 WHIP (Julio Teheran, Jason Hammel, Garrett Richards)
Week 5: 2-2, 30 IP, 3.60 ERA, 5.4 K/9, 1.6 K/BB, 1.23 WHIP (Scott Diamond, Nick Tepesch, Andrew Cashner)
Week 6: 2-3, 32.2 IP, 4.96 ERA, 5.5 K/9, 2.0 K/BB, 1.44 WHIP (Justin Grimm, Juan Nicasio, Hector Santiago)
Week 7: 1-0, 29 IP, 3.41 ERA, 6.8 K/9, 1.8 K/BB, 1.34 WHIP (Julio Teheran, Phil Hughes, Scott Kazmir)
Week 8*: 1-0, 18.1 IP, 3.44 ERA, 6.9 K/9, 7.0 K/BB, 1.04 WHIP (Jhoulys Chacin, Kevin Slowey, Dan Straily)

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Total: 12-14, 219.1 IP, 4.19 ERA, 6.5 K/9, 2.3 K/BB, 1.38 WHIP

Slowly but surely we’ll get back to .500, and then after that start shooting for a sub-4.00 ERA or maybe a league-average strikeout rate. But until then, it’s been a pretty solid two weeks. Hopefully this week stands up. Read the rest of this entry »

Chances are many of you drafted Jonathan Lucroy to be your regular backstop this season. Chances are most of you don’t use him as your regular backstop anymore — and if you do, you probably don’t want to. The question, of course, is whether anyone should rely on him to contribute to their fantasy team from here on out because Lucroy kind of dangles in the purgatory as a guy people are loath to cut but nobody probably wants to trade for.

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In this week’s edition: A backstop in the middle of the best stretch of his career; a candidate to replace one of MLB’s slumpingest hitters; and an under-the-radar closer of the future candidate.

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If you play salary cap contests on daily fantasy sites like Draftstreet, you are fully aware that starting pitchers are more expensive than hitters. This is quite obviously because the scoring systems are such that starting pitchers score more points than hitters. I’m sure the goal of whoever does the pricing is to make hitting and pitching of equal value. But in my experience I’ve had more success in these contests when I spend more on pitching, which makes me think that’s where the value lies. Read the rest of this entry »

Coming into the season, right-hander Chris Archer was widely considered the Tampa Bay Rays’ best pitching prospect. Our own Marc Hulet ranked him the Rays’ second-best prospect overall. So when the Rays announced he was getting promoted and would start against the Cleveland Indians on Saturday, many fantasy owners jumped on the waiver wire and submitted claims for Archer.

The excitement makes sense. The 24-year-old features a dynamite fastball-slider combination on the mound and has struck out at least a batter per inning in the last two seasons. In fact, Archer appeared in six big-league games a year ago and compiled an 11.05 K/9 strikeout rate in 29.1 innings, so he’s already shown that he’s capable of missing bats in the majors.

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Over the winter, we went through every team’s roster in our Depth Chart Discussions. The Dodgers outfield chart was done very early on, before camp had even really begun to get rolling, and so the focus there was as you’d expect it to be. Would Andre Ethier be a platoon outfielder? What could you expect from Matt Kemp, coming off shoulder surgery? Would Carl Crawford even make it back at all?

Valid questions, each and every one, but two full months into the season, they seem now laughably simplistic. Crawford, of all people, has been durable and productive. Ethier has been at odds with manager Don Mattingly. Kemp has been atrocious and is now injured, and all of a sudden Scott Van Slyke and Joc Pederson are names to know just as much as Yasiel Puig.

So with all that’s happened, let’s reset this mess and get you all up to speed, because there’s value to be had here. Read the rest of this entry »

Today’s Roto Riteup was written while listening to The College Dropout. This album in general — and Kanye West specifically — led the present author to sport popped collar(s) for the second half of junior year and all of senior year. Yes, on occasion there were multiple collars popped simultaneously. There are pictures of this currently circulating the internet. Comment away.

On today’s agenda:
1. Michael Wacha’s debut
2. Atlanta Braves call up Alex Wood
3. Matt Kemp to the disabled list
4. Is it Chris Archer time?
5. The (probable) return of Josh Reddick
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Bobby Parnell notched his ninth save of the year in a 3-1 Mets victory over the Yankees tonight. For the Metropolitans, the win surprisingly sealed a series sweep against their crosstown rivals, providing them with some momentum as they head back into divisional play against the Marlins, Nationals and the Marlins again over the course of the next two weeks. For Parnell, it was his third consecutive save and the third outing in-a-row without surrendering a hit. The lanky right-hander whiffed one-of-three batters this evening, bringing his whiff rate to 25% on the season. The current 25% K% is actually higher than he’s had in the past two seasons — 23.9% and 21.2% respectively — despite missing fewer bats (8.6% SwStr%) than he has over that same time (9.8% SwStr% in ‘11, 10.1% SwStr% in ‘12). The previous data leads me to believe that Parnell’s strikeout rate could continue to rise if his ability to miss bats regresses toward his career 9.6% SwStr%. His recent success parlayed with the news that Frank Francisco was transferred to the 60-day disabled list today with continued elbow issues further proves that Parnell’s grip on the closer’s role in Flushing continues to get stronger.

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Episode 19
Today’s episode of The Sleeper and the Bust stars yours truly and features RotoGraphs editor Eno Sarris. We discuss a pair of breakout youngsters and more pain for owners of a first round pick.

Don’t hesitate to direct pod-related correspondence to @mikepodhorzer or @enosarris on Twitter and tweet us any fantasy questions you have that we may answer on our next episode.

You can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes or via the feed.

Approximately 43 min of joyous analysis.

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Finally, the “Updated Middle Reliever Tiers” are complete, for now. Each of the five standard pitching categories — and of course holds — played a role in determining these tiers.

The first two tiers were pretty simple to establish. Horses like Mark Melancon, Jesse Crain and Trevor Rosenthal seem to have separated themselves from the rest of the pack through the first two months of the season and are elite middle relief commodities at this point. But when it came time to find homes for the Aaron Loups and Cody Allens of the world, I felt like I was splitting hairs.

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