I’m writing this on Friday afternoon, so forgive me if any of the insight in the Daily Five becomes stales by Saturday morning, or line-up changes or injuries occur. You do the best with what you have.

Anyway, I believe in this space someone had previously highlighted guys who did well against same-handed pitchers (“reverse split” players), and I thought it would be a good time to have a fresh look at these tables. Below you’ll find the best Left-vs-Left and Right-vs-Right and the worst Right-vs-Left and Left-vs-Right hitters, covering 2012 and 2013 (to improve our sample size a little bit) with a minimum of 200 plate appearances.

Let these serve as a reminder that not all players require platoon protection in your daily leagues, and not all players with a platoon advantage are sure bets.
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Rather than celebrate National Mustard Day, the present author will listen to some semi-local music in Mustard Plug instead.

On today’s agenda:
1. Brandon Belt finally plays, hits
2. Welcome back, Curtis Granderson: Part II
3. Another quality start from Hector Santiago
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Just a quick note, but you’ll only see ESPN ownership figures from this point on — barring someone really feeling that’s not acceptable. I haven’t done a Yahoo! league this year, making pulling ownership figures a bit more difficult on this cranky old work computer.

Also, there hasn’t been a single instance this year where a pitcher I wanted to use was under 50% ownership in ESPN and not the same way in Yahoo!, so this just makes sense.

Also 2.o: The boards will return next week.

Onto this week’s recommendations:

Jose Quintana – 10.4% ESPN – v. NYY (.295 team wOBA), v. MIN (.306)

The Quintana rec isn’t so much about the season that he’s having, but about the matchups this week. The Twins are sleepwalking towards a third-straight 90-loss season, and Quintana gets the “not your older brother’s”-version of the Yankees. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s often said that almost anything can happen in a single month of a baseball season. We can list endless examples of unexpected hot streaks from replacement-level players to illustrate that point, and as fantasy owners, we often get cajoled into trusting those small sample sizes. We all want to admit we don’t attempt to “ride the hot streak,” but we all do it. For example, I owned Brian Dozier in June for a couple weeks because I was desperate up the middle.

Luckily, it worked out, as my team was simply trying to hold it together up the middle until Jose Reyes returned from the disabled list.

When looking at the “last 30 days” split on the leaderboards, though, some hot streaks don’t appear to be out of place. Mike Trout owns the highest wOBA (.477) in all of baseball over the last 30 days. No one should be surprised by that. The second-highest wOBA (.470) in the last 30 days belongs to third baseman Kyle Seager. Considering he’s been a four-win player already this year and has a .300/.363/.496 slash line, he also shouldn’t trigger any alarms.

Hold on a moment. Kyle Seager — the same guy who was the 14th-ranked fantasy third baseman last year — suddenly doesn’t appear out of place amongst the top hitters in the league? Well, that’s significant.

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Yesterday Blake Murphy recapped the impact of some of the bigger names that moved at the trade deadline. Today I want to touch on the potential impact that a few of the smaller names could have in new places.

Jose Iglesias moves to Detroit – Of the 90 qualified starters in the league, the Tigers have four starters that rank top 20 in BABIP. Anytime a team has four starters with a BABIP of .308 or higher, the defense is obviously a problem. And Detroit is no exception this year as they rank 27th in defensive efficiency. They turn only 69.6% of balls put in play into outs. For comparison’s sake, the Pirates lead the league in defensive efficiency with a rate of 73.3%. Detroit’s struggles aren’t entirely Jhonny Peralta’s fault, but he’s not helping. He has a UZR/150 that is slightly below average for his career (-0.7), but Iglesias’ career UZR/150 is 22.2. If Peralta is in fact suspended, Iglesias should help those Tiger starters lower their BABIPs. Read the rest of this entry »

Anyone remember who the unexpected darling of spring training was this year? Okay, fine, it was Yasiel Puig. But if we stick to either Florida or the mound, then the man collecting the most acclaim in March was Detroit pitcher Rick Porcello, who struck out 21 in 24 innings without allowing a single walk. Now, you know as well as I do that spring training numbers don’t really matter, yet it’s hard to ignore a 21/0 K/BB.

That kind of buzz made Porcello something of an early darling among fantasy players, especially as he entered his age-24 season with a solid (if small) four year trend of declining home run rates and increasing K/9 rates behind him. Porcello had lowered his FIP and his xFIP each year of his career, and so far in 2013 he’s continued that trend (see table at right). By all indications, Porcello has continued improving as a pitcher, and he’s right ahead of James Shields, Gio Gonzalez, and Cole Hamels on the FIP charts.

Yet here we are in the first week of August, and Porcello has only a 4.49 ERA. He’s still owned in fewer than 20% of ESPN and Yahoo! leagues. What gives? Read the rest of this entry »

For our under-21 readers, happy Ice Cream Sandwich Day! And for everyone else, happy International Beer Day! Assuming you are of age, check out Beer Advocate (and of course cross reference with our brethren over at Beer Graphs) to see the top rated international beers. You know what? It’s practically the weekend. Why not celebrate both holidays?

On today’s agenda:
1. The slow recovery process for Wandy Rodriguez
2. Albert Pujols won’t undergo surgery
3. Ryan Raburn keeps hitting
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–Steve Cishek surrendered a leadoff single, but an induced groundout sandwiched between two strikeouts got him out of the ninth-inning unscathed enroute to his 23rd save. The lanky right-hander is now 23-of-25 on the season — his last blown save coming on June 4th against the Phillies — and sports a 3.08 ERA (2.94 FIP) and a 1.15 WHIP. As we look further into (some of) Cishek’s numbers entering tonight, it seems as if he’s pretty close to being the same pitcher he’s been since entering the league. His velocity appears to be holding steady on each of his offerings, both his swinging strike rate (9.2%) and whiff rate (23.9%) are right inline with his career numbers and his batted ball profile hasn’t changed all that much.
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Episode 45
Today’s episode of The Sleeper and the Bust stars yours truly and features RotoGraphs editor Eno Sarris. We discuss a flurry of trade deadline deals and a star outfielder playing through injury.

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 43 min of joyous analysis.

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Not much injury news with the trade deadline taking all the headlines, bylines and small print. I looked at a few players (Moore, Beachy and Butler) and ran an updated SLOW ranking.

• Matt Moore was placed on the DL with elbow soreness. A 2-mph drop in his average fastball velocity from last season was a big red flag to go along with some command issues. Last off season I was able to identify his high walk rate as an injury red flag.

Moore looked to have a bright future a couple season ago, but it is getting dimmer and dimmer by the day.

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