–Tony Watson collected the rare two-inning, six-out save this afternoon in a Pirates 5-3 victory over the Reds. With Bucs closer Jason Grilli and setup man Mark Melancon unavailable out of the pen today, Watson earned a second inning of work en route to his second save of the season. The southpaw dished an impressive eighth-inning, working through the heart of the Reds’ order — Joey Votto, Brandon Phillips and Jay Bruce — prior to cleaning up the last of Cincy’s bats in the last half of the ninth to seal the deal. While Watson may not earn a ton of saves this season, he’s a valuable asset in holds leagues. The lanky lefty’s ratios aren’t exactly sexy, but he’s notched 11 holds on the season and owns a reasonable 19.7% K% on the year.

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Episode 28
Today’s episode of The Sleeper and the Bust stars yours truly and features RotoGraphs editor Eno Sarris. We discuss a trio of disappointing upper echelon starting pitchers and a pair of hitters trending in the opposite direction.

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.

Intro by DJ Sinton (no, contrary to popular belief, I do not moonlight as a rap star)

Approximately 46 min of joyous analysis.

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Before Brandon Beachy had been pushed back with a bit of elbow soreness after his final rehab start, I posted my thoughts at Talking Chop on how the Braves would manage their rotation with the impending return of one of their best starting pitchers.
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When the Toronto Blue Jays, by way of Mike Aviles, picked up Esmil Rogers for John Farrell this offseason, I thought…well, not much. I don’t care for Farrell, and as far as returns go, Aviles for Farrell and then Aviles and Yan Gomes for Rogers seemed fine.

When I dove into his stats from 2012, I saw a guy who improved pretty dramatically when he got out of Colorado. I also saw a guy with a pretty strong profile for relief success – a fair number of strikeouts, a walk rate that wouldn’t kill you, and an above-average groundball rate.

So I thought the Jays had picked up a decent 7th inning guy.

I did not think they had picked up a solid 5th starter in this deal, mostly because Rogers only had 22 major league starts to his name, accompanied by an ERA over six in 100 innings or so. He also wasn’t a guy who had ever been successful at the Triple-A level as a starter.
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Injury information will be a little slim today, so I will examine in detail a few cases. Also, I will report the fastball speeds of three pitchers returning from the DL. Finally, I have adjusted PAIN and HURT so any value over 100 is a player at a high injury risk. Complete rankings are available.

• Albert Pujols stated he is finally feeling unhurt.

But Pujols swears he felt something.
“I was like … this is me right here,'” Pujols said. “That did it. I feel right now like my old me, like when I was in St. Louis.”
Did you ever feel that way last year?
“Not at all, man — I swear,” Pujols said. “There were some streaks here and there that I hit, but I was battling. I never got to a point where I could say, ‘Holy cow, that’s my bat speed.'”

Every player always states they feel better than they actually do, but it may be time to try to buy into Albert’s hot bat. His ISO (power) is trending up.

Month: ISO
April: .165
May: .173
June: .254

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Back at it with another edition of “Scheming For Relief” after a well-deserved two-week vacation. I apologize to the middle relief “die-hards” out there for the absence of this piece over that time, but I know my colleague Ben at the Bullpen Report kept y’all up to speed nicely.

This week I went an arm on the rise, an arm on the mend and an unowned arm. While the first is likely owned in holds leagues, he’s on the verge of being owned in all formats. The other two, well, read for yourself and hope it helps! Cheers!

All ownership percentages reflect Yahoo! leagues.

Steve Delabar | Blue Jays | 3%

Over the past two weeks, Steve Delabar owns a 0.00 ERA with three holds and a league-best 14 strikeouts among relievers. On the season the Blue Jay boasts a 30% K% and a 13.6% BB%, but his numbers against the most recent 28 batters he’s faced are far superior: 50% K% and 10.7 BB%. The right-hander is inducing swinging strikes at an 18.1% clip over that time frame, up from 13.9% SwStr% on the year and 15% SwStr% for his career. It appears as if he’s been using his slider a tad less and relying on the splitter a bit more as of late, which could be one cause for the jump in missed bats. At any rate, Delabar is moving from the “should be owned in holds leagues” classification to the “useful middle reliever in all formats” category for those in need of steady whiffs, ratios and the occasional scab win. If your WHIP is a major concern, keep an eye on the 29-year-old’s walks to make sure the recent improvement isn’t just a mirage.

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Entering the 2013 season, it was seemingly a foregone conclusion that Billy Hamilton would lead the minors in steals for a third straight season, assuming he was healthy and was not promoted to the big leagues. After all, Hamilton swiped 27 more bags than any other minor leaguer in 2011 and 64 (!) more than the second-place finisher (Delino Deshields Jr., who himself had 101) last year.

Hamilton has indeed stayed healthy and played the entire year in the minors, but his stolen base throne has surprisingly been usurped; his still-whopping 42 steals in 67 games ranks third in the minors (fourth if you count the Mexican League), a full dozen behind White Sox second base prospect Micah Johnson, who has blazed his way to 54 thefts in 66 contests.

Anybody who produces that sort of stolen base volume will pique the interest of deep keeper fantasy owners, especially when the player in question is a middle infielder with a robust .339/.422/.525 triple-slash. But how much of Johnson’s production is true substance?

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With the start of every month, we like to adjust the position tiers to help guide you towards expected risers and steer you away from some of the expected fallers. But obviously, the beginning of the month doesn’t always coincide with the best time for waivers, so I thought a mid-month stock report might help put guys on your radar that may not necessarily have been there before. Or, conversely, take them off your radar to save you some aggravation. Not every catcher will be mentioned so if your favorite doesn’t appear here, it’s not a personal slight. But feel free to mention him in the comments should he actually be doing something notable. So without further ado… Read the rest of this entry »

I’m going away for the weekend. Normally I cover the Saturday and Sunday daily fantasy posts, but this weekend I’ll only be handling Saturday’s edition, and I’ll be writing it Friday morning. The blurb that day will be about taking safer players with assured playing time when you set a daily roster that far out.

All of that is to say, I might have a tough time being in the money on the weekend, so there’s added pressure to go HAM on today’s daily fantasy and really cash in. Let’s swing for the fences, folks. It’s just too bad we don’t have Jeff Francis to pick on today.
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Jered Weaver has made a career out of outperforming his expected ERA metrics. In his first seven seasons, he has posted an ERA below his SIERA in six of those and sports a career 3.27 ERA versus a 3.94 SIERA. Along with Matt Cain, he has become the poster boy for the outlier group whose luck metrics don’t regress to the league average like the majority of Major League pitchers. He’s the exception to the rules.

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