Who needs a catcher? We all do! Find your new one here. In addition, jettison your 5.00 starter for this studly middle reliever.

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You know, when I was picking my last player yesterday, I looked Brett Gardner squarely in the eye and said “I bet you hit an unexpected home run today.” Then I took Andrelton Simmons. Because duh. Gardner went on to hit two homers.

AGENDA

1. TDG Invitational
2. Weather Reports
3. Pitchers to Use and Abuse
4. SaberSim Says…
5. Rebound Leader

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How I expected the Pirates to treat Anthony Rizzo yesterday:

Yikes, right in the bloopers. pic.twitter.com/V6bl6QLSzx

— Cut4 (@Cut4) May 30, 2018

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If there is such a thing as a flyball revolution for pitchers, it appears that Blaine Hardy wants to be a part of it.

The Tigers’ 31-year-old reliever-turned-starter induced grounders at a mere 33.0 percent rate last season, but this season, he has gone extreme with a 24.1 percent rate. That might not seem like a good career move for someone who coughed up seven home runs in 33.1 innings a year ago, but he is making it work. In his 20 innings to date, Hardy has allowed two homers and a .143 Iso (which is 23 points below the American League average).
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The emergence of the fireman reliever hit the fantasy landscape a couple years back when Dellin Betances and Andrew Miller proved themselves to be entirely too good not to roster despite not occupying a traditional saves role. From there we’ve seen Chris Devenski, Chad Green, and the new king of the role, Josh Hader, emerge as lockdown fantasy options across just about every format.

Here are seven more relievers putting up big numbers that might be worthy of your roster as strikeout and ratio stabilizers. Plus, there’s always a chance that they ascend into the closer’s role as Betances, Miller, and Hader have at times over the last couple years.

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The phrase “Buying Low” gets thrown around in the baseball community. I’m not sure if owners can actually buy low on many of these frustrating but talented players. Owners need to be willing to sell. I going to try to redefine the concept of buying low concentrating on drop rates and go over a few potential targets.

When I hear or read about buying low on a player, the touts are focusing on buying a good player during a cold streak. Paul Goldschmidt fits this label with his .208/.324/.380 slash line. Owners paid first round prices for replacement level production. But are Goldschmidt’s owners selling low? Probably not.

Going over some recent trades at the Yahoo trade tracker, Goldschmidt is being traded straight up for players such as Clayton Kershaw, Joey Votto, Patrick Corbin, and Shohei Ohtani.

His value is down some (and should be with the K% spike) but not horribly. He’s still owned in 99%+ of leagues at ESPN, Yahoo, Fantrax, and CBS. Even the most frustrated owners in shallow leagues aren’t moving on. So why should owners focus their time and energy on players who even the most frustrated owners aren’t moving on with?

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We had a real swell chat today, heavily focused on panicked Hoskins owners.

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Here is the transcript from my weekly chat. Join me next week at Noon EST on Tuesday! May try to do an extra long one then.

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I still get this Ken Griffey Jr. song stuck in my head sometimes. It picks up around 1:50 to the part I remember.

AGENDA

1. TDG Invitational
2. Weather Reports
3. Pitchers to Use and Abuse
4. SaberSim Says…
5. May Marketing

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Back from Portugal! Thankfully, technology is amazing and I haven’t missed a baseball beat. Before I left, I listed and discussed the starting pitchers who had posted significantly worse wOBA against marks than their Statcast xwOBA marks. So today I’ll look at the pitchers on the other side of the coin, those who have most outperformed their xwOBA marks, and therefore may be in for some serious regression.

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