Our journey this week into the waters of the deep league waiver wire brings us to two familiar faces, AL-only players who have shown flashes of their talent in the past and quite possibly stand to benefit owners in the short term.
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If “The Daily Show” were a person, said person would be old enough to vote. Yes, probably my favorite late-ish night show celebrates its 18th birthday today. Without delving too deep into the realm of quasi-politics, I’ll just say one of my favorite clips is the retrospective of John Oliver (warning: language).
On today’s agenda:
1. Thoughts on Wily Peralta
2. A rough outing for Cliff Lee
3. Two Giants to the disabled list
4. The daily five
Well, I finally got through all the news after a week in New Mexico with my family. No injury prediction reports (PAIN or HURT) today, but will look at publishing them on Thursday (if not before).
• At the Hardball Times, Dan Farnsworth goes into detail on how wrist injuries affect hitters. Here is his conclusion:
From these case studies, I suspect that hitters who tend to flatten out the bottom hand early and keep it flat through contact put greater strain on their wrist joints. This forces them to use more of their bones and ligaments to stabilize their swings, rather than their muscle mass. Muscles can be strengthened, while bones and other connective tissue cannot. Just like pitchers who are suffering from diminished velocity due to developing elbow instability, I expect hitters with this type of movement pattern to be more likely to suffer downturns in productivity.
Arismendy Alcantara came in fifth on the Cubs’ preseason Top 10 prospects list here at FanGraphs, and was a consensus Top 100 prospect in baseball. His stock only rose further as this season went on, as he put up consistently great numbers in Triple-A. His .307/.353/.537 slash — with ten homers and 21 steals — made it seem like his arrival as a five-category fantasy middle infielder was more a question of ‘when’ than ‘if.’
Since he arrived in the majors just over a week ago, Alcantara has been every bit as good as advertised, hitting .286/.316/.543 with a homer and three steals in 38 plate appearances. His performance thus far should be more than enough to keep him in the major-league lineup; expect either Mike Olt (.142/.226/.361, 38.9% K-rate) or Junior Lake (.219/.246/.385, 34.1% K-rate) to be the odd man out on the 25-man roster when Emilio Bonifacio returns, and Darwin Barney (.230/.265/.328) sure isn’t doing anything to demand his starting job back.
It’s not shaping up to be a great fantasy season for me actually. But this is despite most of my pitching staffs being generally excellent. At least the names on those staffs are excellent — not all of them are active. Lots of red DL tags. That’s the way of pitching.
But pitching changes in fits and starts, and it’s my favorite aspect of the game, so I’m going to make this a Monday column of sorts. The Change will look for changes in pitching mix, look at pitch types to see if newcomers have a promising pitch (maybe a change), and will generally try to help you decide what to do about a few pitchers every Monday, after their last start has provided us some change to analyze.
Today, though, one pitcher is bizarre enough to take our entire attention.
Agenda
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I went more-or-less all in on Danny Salazar this year. I loved his strikeout ability and while I was worried about his home runs I was not worried enough to avoid him in any drafts. In my redraft and keeper leagues I drafted him without hesitation and expected him to be one of my top performers, which I similarly did with Michael Wacha. Unfortunately, Salazar struggled mightily and earned himself a demotion after just 10 starts.
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Yesterday in this space, we outlined some of the hitters who gain the most and the least in the switch from DraftStreet scoring to DraftKings scoring, where strikeouts no longer hurt a hitter.
If you haven’t yet, by the way, you can transfer your account here.
For pitchers, things change far less, though there are a few points worth noting. For one, relievers are out – saves and blown saves don’t do anything, and you only have two pitcher spots to work with. For another, strikeouts are slightly more valuable now relative to other stats, gaining 186 percent in value compared to 150 percent for innings pitched and 140 percent for hits and walks allowed. A final note is that losses no longer cost you anything, so pitchers on bad teams with strong matchups can be dialled up with less hesitation.
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The MLB Trade Deadline is coming up quickly, and fantasy deadlines will follow over the next few weeks. For dynasty owners, particularly those near the top of their standings, there is a big question of how you balance making a run in 2014 vs. staying in a good position for 2015.
I am in the midst of a marathon trade dialogue with fellow Rotographer Brad Johnson. Brad is sitting in fourth place, but has the 8th best offense and 4th best pitching staff and has determined that puts a top-three finish out of reach. And as he has shipped off one star after another (Miguel Cabrera, Craig Kimbrel, Adam Wainwright) he and I have repeatedly debated the merits of those stars and my young up-and-comers.
As we continue into the second half of the season, it’s time to check back into the batted ball distance leaderboard. As usual, I am identifying potential HR/FB rate improvers by comparing a hitter’s mark to his distance. However, distance alone doesn’t tell the complete story, so this isn’t a perfect analysis. I found that batted ball angle and the standard deviation of fly balls were also quite important. But since this data isn’t publicly available yet, we have to do the best with what we have. So without further ado, here are your power surgers.