To say it’s been an up-and-down season for Chris Capuano is putting it more than a little mildly. After a solid first half of 2012, Capuano fell apart down the stretch so badly that he entered 2013 as one of three excess Dodger starters, with little path back to relevance short of a trade. But then Chad Billingsley got hurt, and Zack Greinke got hurt, and Josh Beckett got hurt, and Ted Lilly got hurt, and Aaron Harang got traded — not necessarily all in that order — and Capuano found himself with a chance.

That lasted all of two innings on April 16 before he left with an injured calf, and when he returned in May, he made five starts of varying quality before landing on the disabled list for a second time, this due to a strained lat. Capuano rejoined the rotation in June, but was told he was headed to the bullpen when the Dodgers acquired Ricky Nolasco… only for that plan to be abandoned when Stephen Fife found himself sidelined with a sore shoulder hours later.

So after all that, Capuano is still in the rotation, and it brings us to this: Capuano has been really, really good lately, and he’s got an incredibly easy run of opponents lined up. Read the rest of this entry »

Today’s Roto Riteup was written via hotel Wi-Fi. The present author wrestled against a great evil — throttled bandwidth — for many hours before finally coming away the victor.

On today’s agenda:
1. Rickie Weeks to the disabled list, Scooter Gennett recalled
2. It’s not too rough owning Darin Ruf
3. Michael Wacha to start Saturday
4. Is Alex Rios on the move?
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It’s been a pretty slow day in bullpen country, so here is what I was able to scrape together for tonight:

In today’s “Scheming For Relief” column that I use to rant about middle relievers for holds leagues, LaTroy Hawkins earned a slot in the third tier based on his past thirty days of performance. In the past thirty day prior to this evening’s outing, Hawkins owned a 2.45 ERA, 1.00 WHIP with seven holds and one save in 12 trips to the bump. He seemed like a solid option to continue gathering holds despite the awful strikeout rate (9.3% K%) over the last month. But with Bobby Parnell on the disabled list, the Mets signaled for the gritty veteran to do away with the Rockies in the top half of the ninth-inning with another save chance on the line. Hawkins needed just 11 pitches to induce a fly out and two ground outs to earn his second save in four chances this season. If you’re chasing saves to finish out the season, you may as well add “old man river” to your squad to see if you can scrape together a few more.
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Injury information is again on the slim side. For some additional information, I decided to look at pitchers with Zone%’s under 45% and took a request from a FanGraphs writers.

• Chris Archer was removed from his start last night with forearm tightness after only 30 pitches. I went back and looked at the game data and nothing seemed out of place. His velocity and release points were consistent. The Rays may have caught the injury in time.

• Ryan Madson was cut by the Angels. He was coming off Tommy John surgery and was not going to be able to pitch in the majors this season.

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Episode 48
Today’s episode of The Sleeper and the Bust stars yours truly and features RotoGraphs editor Eno Sarris. We discuss a trio of youngsters and another bullpen in flux.

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 47 min of joyous analysis.

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It sometimes takes a while for fantasy owners to buy into surprise performances. There are plenty of reasons for this. For one, smart owners are always preaching sample size, and are willing to be patient on a surprise player before buying in. There’s also the issue of career performance to date. If a player has a career .258/.317/.444 slash line, it’s going to take a lot of convincing for an owner to believe when that player hits .277/.370/.565. Those, coincidentally, happen to be Ryan Raburn’s stats. Based on what he’s done this year, it might be time to start buying in to his performance.

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The trade deadline, trips to the disabled list and suspensions significantly altered bullpens across the league in the last thirty days. Subsequently, fantasy baseballers in holds leagues were likely scrambling to find the “next man in” to continue their quest for the playoffs as each respective domino fell. Still looking to make a late-season surge? Here’s a quick look at my top sixty middle relievers over the past month.
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A few days ago, I wrote a post looking into some players who were putting up fairly pedestrian numbers but remained quite intriguing due to being young for their levels. I didn’t include White Sox outfield prospect Courtney Hawkins on the list, but I suppose I could have. Nobody would say Hawkins doesn’t have tools–he was the 13th overall pick in the 2012 draft for a reason–but he sure is struggling in High-A Winston-Salem this year. I mean, sure, he’s second in the Carolina League with 19 home runs, and he’s slugging a quite respectable .452–the elephant in the room is the strikeout totals.

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“Argue your limitations, and they will be yours.” — Illusions, Richard Bach

How I wish I had learned that phrase back when I was playing Little League. Defensively, I was rock solid. I could turn the double play from the second base side with ease or I could sit behind the plate for nine innings and call a game with the best of them. Put me in the batter’s box though, and my ineptitude at the plate was depressingly laughable. But rather than work my tail off to become a better hitter, I simply accepted the fact that I was never going to work my way up to the clean-up spot and when the coach said that a walk was as good as a hit, I took it as gospel. The bat barely left my shoulder and I led my team in walks. Of course I took a few cuts from time to time and even found my way on-base via an actual hit, but overall, taking a pitch was my specialty. I was the original Robbie Grossman. Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday we discussed the impact multi-homer games can have on a fantasy team. And then Leony Martin and Elvis Andrus went on to tear the house down, stealing three bases a piece off of Tommy Hanson and the Los Angeles Angels.

Multi-steal games are just as common as multi-homer games, which is a little odd considering there have been half as many steals as homers this year. However, steals are spread over a smaller pool than are home runs. There’s also the presence of guys like Hanson who change the stolen base environment far more dramatically than any pitcher could the home run environment. Basically, home runs are distributed more evenly over all games than steals are.

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