A happy birthday to Darin Erstad. The present author will fondly remember the Fire Joe Morgan glossary description of you. The funny thing is, looking back at Erstad’s career, his stats read much better than one would have guessed. Also of note, happy birthday to Bar Refaeli. No explanation necessary.

On today’s agenda:
1. The Los Angeles Dodgers outfield
2. The early bird gets the Wheeler
3. A shake up in Milwaukee
4. Joe Blanton shows up
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A light(er) and (less) important load today with a few teams off, but some bullpen notes for your reading pleasure below.

• Chris Perez isn’t joining the Indians quite yet, but he’s set to start throwing in a few days. In his place closing games for the Indians has been Vinnie Pestano and although he hasn’t pitched all that well this year (5.57 FIP) he’ll still get the ball in the ninth. Setting him up has been and will continue to be Joe Smith, Bryan Shaw and Cody Allen. Mr. Allen might be the farthest away from getting a save but he’s also the most effective reliever in Cleveland, leading the bullpen in WAR(0.5), FIP (2.49) and K/9 (11.92). The Indians lost today against the Yankees, but Cody Allen finished the seventh inning with Joe Smith pitching a scoreless eighth. Whether it’s in a winning or losing effort, that distribution should continue for the Indians with everyone entering the game a little earlier once Chris Perez returns.

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If a show can find a way to shoe-horn Mark Paul-Gosselaar, Beau Bridges, Heather Locklear and Malcom McDowell into the same office, I can find a way to relate Nick Franklin to Yasiel Puig. Hey, they’re both hot young things that deserve a thorough brief directed at those in redraft or shallow keeper leagues. Done!

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With two months under our collective belts in the fantasy baseball season, guys are really starting to move in the rankings. Some slow beginnings have lingered longer than expected, and some scorching starts have surprisingly possessed staying power. As with most rankings lists, there will be some (read: a lot) of disagreement, so without any further ado, here are the tiers:

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As is the goal in real life, the goal in daily fantasy with pitchers is to avoid giving up hits, walks and runs while pitching deep into the game and striking out a lot of batters. But which of those objectives helps a pitcher earn the most fantasy points per game in Draftstreet’s daily salary cap format? Read the rest of this entry »

Last week, I published the results of my expected strikeout rate study. I used the looking, called, and foul strike rates data from Baseball-Reference.com. It is important to understand that the regression formula I concluded with is meant to estimate what the pitcher’s K% should be given his different strike rates. This is not meant to be predictive. Instead, in smaller sample sizes, it might be a more accurate picture of the pitcher’s true strikeout ability so far, which would then help shape your projection of him going forward.

With that said, here are the top 10 pitchers whose xK% is higher than his K%.

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The author of today’s Roto Riteup has been anxiously awaiting the start of this week; not because of having to please you plebeians with my words, but because of other reasons.

On today’s agenda:
1. A Point about Ike Davis
2. Justin Smoak to the DL
3. Hyun-Jin Ryu misses start, should be ready for next go
4. Hanley Ramirez still a day or two away

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A relatively quiet Sunday in the world of bullpens…

• Phillies heading into the ninth with a three-run lead and out trots… Antonio Bastardo? Bastardo ended up nailing down the save (a little present for his holds owners!) although he wasn’t terribly sharp, giving up an earned run amid four baserunners. Bastardo’s 2.25 ERA certainly is nice and tidy, but with a low BABIP (.269) and a high strand rate (88.2% LOB%), his xFIP is a less delicious 4.95. His career xFIP is 3.77, so he’s probably not this bad, but if I had to own a non-Jonathan Papelbon reliever in Philadelphia, it would be Mike Adams. Oh, by the way, don’t fear Papelbon owners, he is merely battling some sort of illness. Day-to-day.

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Episode 20
Today’s episode of The Sleeper and the Bust stars yours truly and features RotoGraphs contributor David Wiers. We take the nerd quotient up a couple of notches and also eventually talk some baseball, including a trio of top starting pitcher disappointments.

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 39 min of joyous analysis.

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Sometimes, it’s better not to be clever. A lot of the time I feel the fantasy ‘die-hards’ get caught up in out-thinking their opponents, and it can sometimes lead to sub-optimal decision making.

For the whole season, I’ve recommended weekend streaming options – the nature of streamers is that they’re owned in less than 50% of leagues, so there’s serious selection bias when looking at the results. With 29 recommendations, the streamers I suggested posted a 4.29 ERA and 4.15 FIP, with 12 wins (41%) and an average of 4.2 strikeouts in nearly six innings. These are, to ignore humility for a moment, pretty good numbers given the criteria for streamers.

They are not, however, excellent numbers, since starters league-wide have a 4.13 ERA and 4.05 FIP with 4.5 strikeouts in nearly six innings per start and wins in 35% of starts. That is, even ‘good’ streaming success adds league-average stats to your fantasy team.

But when it comes to daily leagues, you occasionally run into ownership/usage levels that indicate people are getting too clever, looking for good streaming options when excellent, though more expensive, ace options exist. Today is one such day – should we avoid Matt Harvey in a daily league because he comes with a heftier price tag?
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