#2xSP: 7.25-7.31

Hey everyone, we’re back after a bit of a hiatus to bring you #2xSP again. We missed a week for the All Star break, and frankly last week the matchups weren’t available early enough to give you any sort of advantage. We hope you enjoyed the time off, as we did as well.

Here are the numbers for how we’ve done through 13 weeks this season:

29-26
4.01 ERA
8.2 K/9
2.9 K/BB
1.33 WHIP
47 quality starts

In my estimation, those are reasonably solid numbers, and hopefully we’ve helped some teams along the way. Questions, comments and encouragement are always welcome, so let us know what you’ve thought so far. We’re going NL East-heavy this week as I think we’ve found a somewhat exploitable run with a couple guys as well as hopefully a pretty safe third option as well. Without further ado, here are this week’s recs (with opposing team’s wRC+ in parentheses):

RHP Jerad Eickhoff – 37% ESPN – @MIA (95), @ATL (74)

We profiled Eickhoff in our most recent column as well, and he did fine in his first start — against the Braves, we might add — before the Rockies got to him at Coors, which we feared *could* happen. Still, this is a righty who has allowed three or fewer earned runs in each of his last nine starts — with the Coors exception — and for the most part has mixed in strikeouts at a reasonable rate while limiting his walks. The Marlins offense isn’t a pushover, but it’s in the lower half of teams across the league and the Braves, well, they’re where they’ve been all season long — in the cellar. This should be a very good set up for Eickhoff to grab a couple quality starts.

RHP Jeremy Hellickson – 27.6% ESPN – @MIA (95), @ATL (74)

Hellickson gets the same options as Eickhoff, with the possible caveat that he could be moved at some point during the week as he’s a prime trade chip. That would really hurt the back end of the week for him, as he’s guaranteed to find a tougher matchup than this one. We’ll see what happens, as the deadline isn’t until Aug. 1 and this week’s slate ends on the last day of July, so he’s still got a fairly good chance to make a pair of starts for the Phillies this week, and still be traded. His earned runs by start has been good lately — 1-1-1-4-1 — and he’s run off 13 strikeouts in his last 14 innings without a walk. He’s trending in the right direction — not only for the Phillies but for fantasy owners as well.

RHP Bartolo Colon – 37.2% ESPN – v. STL (110), v. COL (91)

We’re trying to get fat — pun not intended — on the road Rockies this week (81 wRC+ away from Coors), but the Cardinals might put up a fight there, as they have a 116 wRC+ outside their home digs as well, which is the No. 1 mark in all of baseball. So we’ll hope for some veteran guile through the Cardinals matchup before exploiting the Rockies a bit on the back end. Colon has been up and down of late, with two starts of six earned runs in his last three but a long, solid stretch before that. In fact, prior to these last three starts, Colon had gone nine straight starts while allowing three or fewer earned runs with these numbers overall: 2.31 ERA, .645 OPS against and just four home runs allowed in 50.2 innings. His K/BB ratio was a bit iffy (27-13), but for the most part he’s just been a steady back-end option for the Mets this year. He should be able to do the same for you this week.