The first full week of the second half is just about in the books. Let’s see which NL teams have lineups with different looks.

Arizona

The continued absence of David Peralta (shoulder) has meant there has been room for both Jake Lamb and Christian Walker in the lineup, even though the Diamondbacks have faced 11 consecutive right-handed starters. Peralta started swinging a bat this week, but he is not on the verge of returning. When Peralta comes back, assuming he is not traded shortly thereafter, Torey Lovullo will have a dilemma on his hands. Lamb has posted a .958 OPS in July, while Walker has an 1.133 OPS with four home runs in 35 plate appearances this month.
Read the rest of this entry »

The Giants-Rockies game at Coors Field on Tuesday night had all of the ingredients for a slugfest. The game-time temperature was 93 degrees, which just added to the hitter-friendly conditions at Coors Field. Somehow, starters Peter Lambert and Drew Pomeranz combined to allow three runs over 11 innings. With Will Smith bringing a 2.11 ERA into the bottom of the ninth inning with a 4-1 lead, it looked as if this would wind up as a low-scoring affair.

Trevor Story turned the tide with a leadoff home run, and three batters later, Ian Desmond tied the game with a two-run drive into the center field stands. That resulted in Smith’s second blown save in 26 opportunities. Raimel Tapia singled on Smith’s next pitch, but he would get stranded on first base after the lefty struck out Ryan McMahon and Tony Wolters.
Read the rest of this entry »

Emilio Pagan woke up on Monday morning to find himself near the top of the most-added lists for relievers on ESPN, CBS and Yahoo. (I’m actually guessing he probably didn’t check.) Owners were certainly responding to Pagan’s one-out save against the Orioles on Sunday, as well as his growing prominence in high-leverage ninth-inning situations for the Rays.

If there is a reliever in the Rays’ bullpen to own right now, it’s clearly Pagan, who has two saves in the team’s last five games. However, it is premature to assume that Kevin Cash is going to rely solely on him for saves. Diego Castillo is still only four days removed from being activated, and it is not yet clear what his post-IL usage patterns will look like. Especially with Jose Alvarado (oblique) on the IL, it would hardly be surprising to see Cash turn to Colin Poche for save situations that involve left-handed hitters.
Read the rest of this entry »

Thursday night’s schedule wasn’t so much of a slate as a pebble. The Rangers’ 5-0 win over the Astros was the only game on the first night of the second half, and it was a closer-free affair featuring five low-leverage relief appearances.

The only reliever worthy of mention was the Astros’ Cy Sneed, who did the bulk of the mopping up after Framber Valdez, who retired only two of the nine batters he faced. Sneed gave up just one run in five innings while striking out seven batters.
Read the rest of this entry »

Now that the All-Star break is behind us, it’s time to check in once again on lineup trends in the National League. The Dodgers have made a bevy of lineup moves over the break, and the Cubs may have a position battle on their hands. The details on these and other situations are just below.

Arizona

It appears that Christian Walker will lose the most playing time as a result of Jake Lamb’s activation, being relegated to the lesser side of a first base platoon. Jarrod Dyson sat when Walker made starts against a pair of lefties (Drew Pomeranz and Madison Bumgarner) on June 29 and 30, but that’s been fairly close to the status quo. Even prior to Lamb’s activation, Dyson would frequently sit against left-handed starters in order to accommodate Ildemaro Vargas (with Ketel Marte playing center field) or Tim Locastro.
Read the rest of this entry »

Just about every league has a Mike Soroka owner. Then again, the Braves’ All-Star rookie landed at the break as a top 20 starting pitcher in Roto value. He has the fifth-lowest ERA (2.42) and 13th-lowest WHIP (1.05) among all pitchers with at least 80 innings, and 6.0 runs of support per nine innings has left him with a dazzling 9-1 record.

Soroka also ranks seventh in sinker usage with a 47.4 percent rate. His primary offering is, in general, a notoriously bad pitch for swings-and-misses and not especially good for limiting extra-base hits. As one would expect from a pitcher who uses a sinker nearly half the time, Soroka has been below average at getting strikeouts. While the major league average K% is 22.8 percent, Soroka has registered a 20.1 percent rate in the first half. When you consider that many of the below-average strikeout pitchers are left unowned in many leagues, Soroka has been something of a liability for strikeouts for fantasy owners.
Read the rest of this entry »

Greg Holland picked a very bad time to lose control.

The Dodgers have been the most selective team in the National League, swinging on only 28.3 percent of the pitches they have seen outside of the strike zone. On Tuesday night, Holland was on the verge of collecting his 13th save for the Diamondbacks, pitching to Chris Taylor with a 4-3 lead, two outs and an 0-2 count. None of his next four pitches were close to the zone, and Taylor walked. Then Holland walked Russell Martin, Alex Verdugo and Matt Beaty, allowing the Dodgers to tie the game without getting a hit. He was lifted for T.J. McFarland, and when he left he had thrown 22 of his 30 pitches outside of the strike zone. Martin swung at one of them — a slider that missed the bottom of the zone by more than a foot — and none of Holland’s other out-of-zone pitches induced a swing.
Read the rest of this entry »

Pitchers who are adept at getting swinging strikes but not strikeouts are one of fantasy baseball’s mild annoyances. Many of us have used SwStr% as a shorthand for strikeout potential, but a few pitchers with high whiff rates fail to meet our expectations, usually because they get called strikes at a low rate. Prior to this season, Jake Odorizzi was one of those pitchers. Joe Musgrove (11.3 percent SwStr%, 19.3 percent K% in 2019) still is.

Eduardo Rodriguez does not fit this category exactly, but in the context of his past performances, he seems to be a strikeout underachiever this year. The Red Sox’s lefty entered this season with back-to-years of a SwStr% above 11 percent, outpacing the major league average for starters by more than a percentage point in both campaigns. His strikeout rates were far above average: 25.8 percent in 2017 and 26.4 percent in 2018. Yet Rodriguez achieved these rates with below-average called strike rates, with a 16.7 percent mark in 2017 and a 15.3 percent rate last season.
Read the rest of this entry »

Just as fantasy owners were likely questioning whether Raisel Iglesias would get another save for the Reds, he came through with his first one in three weeks on Sunday. However, the way Iglesias’ performance unfolded raises more questions than it answers.

David Bell brought Iglesias in for a two-inning save after Amir Garrett walked Jason Heyward to lead off the eighth inning, with the Reds out in front of the Cubs, 4-3. Iglesias preserved the lead, and with the Reds scoring four times in the bottom of the inning, he came back out for the ninth. Though he yielded a single and a walk, Iglesias appeared to be headed for an uneventful save, as he had Heyward in an 0-2 count with two outs. That’s when the Cubs’ outfielder pulled an inside fastball into the right field seats to cut the lead to two runs. Iglesias did retire Javier Baez for the final out, but that one swing increased his ERA to 4.41.
Read the rest of this entry »

Roughly 24 hours ago, we may have wondered how soon the Cubs would use Craig Kimbrel as their closer once he was called up. That question was answered quickly and definitively on Thursday night. Mere hours after getting promoted from Triple-A Iowa, Joe Maddon called on Kimbrel to protect a 9-7 lead against the Braves in the top of the ninth inning. He got off to an auspicious start to his tenure with his new team, throwing strikes on each of his first six pitches and retiring former battery mate Brian McCann and Johan Camargo. Kimbrel struck out McCann on three pitches, though the called third strike did appear to be just outside the strike zone.

After getting Ronald Acuna into a 1-2 count, Kimbrel’s night took a slight turn for the worse. Acuna worked his way into a seven-pitch at-bat, ultimately blemishing Kimbrel’s debut with a ground rule double. Then his control briefly abandoned him in a four-pitch walk to Dansby Swanson. It only took one pitch for Kimbrel to end the threat, as Anthony Rizzo snagged a Freddie Freeman grounder hit down the first base line and got to the base just in time to get the final out.
Read the rest of this entry »