A fairly quiet day in the world of bullpens, so this rapidly turned into the “Rays Closer Report.” Make of it what you will.

• So, yeah. Grant Balfour doesn’t think the baseball gods are smiling upon him. Tampa Bay’s closer had a horrendous ninth inning today, allowing five runs after being tasked with keeping a scoreless game, well, scoreless. His BB% now sits at a beyond ugly 18.5%. That figure might be even a little palatable if he was racking up strikeouts at a Marmol-esque clip, but he only has one more K than BB on the season. His fastball velocity is down 2 mph and he is only inducing swinging strikes at two-thirds the rate he did last year. His SIERA has jumped from 3.06 last year to 5.14 this year and is still climbing.

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In the past week or so, we’ve looked at a couple of different ways to evaluate an opponent from a starting pitcher’s perspective. First, with an offense’s fantasy output as the measure, and then with a rough approximation of a pitcher’s output against an offense.

For today, I had the time to actually pull all of the game logs so far in 2014, allowing me to break down the actual, not implied, production of pitchers against each offense in baseball. Those tables are after the jump, should probably be bookmarked and will probably be updated in this space once a month moving forward.

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Agenda

1. Ideal Hitters
2. Daily DFS
3. Monday Picks
4. Table

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Sticking with the 1980’s film theme from yesterday, today is the 31st anniversary of the film “Trading Places.” This scene depicts the scheme and events to get even with some shady bosses.

On today’s agenda:
1. Kendrys Morales finds a home
2. Thoughts on Khris Davis
3. Russell Martin: on-base machine
4. The daily five

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Thankful to be able to contribute to another Bullpen Report after spending a few days away in the mountains with the in-laws. Truth be told, I’m actually still out here but have been out of the mix, so if I miss something crucial, pick me up in the comments…

Here are a few notes I was able to put together:
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I don’t have much for a cool intro today. I’ve spent most of my time the past day and a half reading scouting reports of draft picks. Put it this way, I’ve spent way too much time on YouTube watching footage of batting practice, especially considering I have no idea what in the hell I’m looking for. Feel free to ask me questions, though. I’ll make up something that’ll make you feel good about someone who has a pretty solid chance of letting you down in the future!

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Today is the 29th anniversary of “The Goonies” being released. Here is a clip of Chunk’s confession because I can’t help but laugh every time.

On today’s agenda:
1. Solid outing for Drew Smyly
2. Jedd Gyorko to the disabled list
3. Thoughts on Asdrubal Cabrera
4. Marcus Stroman’s strong start
5. The daily five

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Agenda

1. What you want from a pitcher
2. Daily DFS
3. Sunday Picks
4. Table

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Martin Prado had a lot of things going for him headed into the 2014 fantasy season. His projections weren’t difficult to accept given a solid, if unspectacular, body of work since 2009. He had position eligibility at second base, third base, and the outfield. And given the dearth of risk, the cost to acquire him was relatively low. And then Martin Prado went out there and tossed up a stinker in March/April, hitting just .263/.317/.342 with no home runs, and demonstrated an uncharacteristic 17% strikeout rate and miserable 20% infield fly ball rate. He even started appearing on the occasional waiver wire.

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First a look at the running totals through half of week nine:

14-8 record
3.86 ERA
7.8 K/9
3.0 K/BB
1.20 WHIP

Here’s a look at this week’s recs, with team wOBA in parentheses:

Ryan Vogelsong – 33.3% ESPN/31% Y!/68% own, 43% start CBS – v. WAS (.315), v. COL (.348) Read the rest of this entry »