Episode 2
It’s the second episode of The Sleeper and the Bust starring yours truly and featuring RotoGraphs contributor Brandon Warne. On today’s episode, we discuss starting pitcher strategy, the Minnesota Twins and preseason bold predictions.

Don’t hesitate to direct pod-related correspondence to @mikepodhorzer or @enosarris on Twitter.

You can subscribe to the podcast via the feed. iTunes coming soon.

Approximately 31 min of joyous analysis.

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Episode 1
It’s the inaugural episode of The Sleeper and the Bust starring yours truly and the man with the hair, Eno Sarris! It took awhile, but RotoGraphs finally has its own fantasy baseball podcast. Join me every Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday for shenanigans and perhaps some useful advice. On tonight’s episode, we discuss debuts, early struggles and hot starts.

Don’t hesitate to direct pod-related correspondence to @mikepodhorzer or @enosarris on Twitter.

You can subscribe to the podcast via the feed. iTunes coming soon.

Approximately 33 min of joyous analysis.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

You probably know my deal by now. I am extremely patient. It takes a lot for me to change my valuation of a player. After three or so starts, not much is going to alter my views of a pitcher. Unless I see a significant change in velocity, pitch mix or rumblings of some sort of injury, I stick to my pre-season guns for the most part. So with that in mind, let’s take a look at a couple of American League starting pitchers making waves early on.

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It’s true, it’s true. Wednesdays aren’t usually filled with excitement. But wait! It’s deep league waiver wire day and I am positive you have been waiting for this week’s edition since the second you finished reading last week’s. Today I look at two National Leaguers who may be able to help you in a deep mixed or NL-Only league, though they are both likely already owned in your standard NL-Only.

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After the Twins traded incumbent center fielder Denard Span to the Nationals in the offseason, it was assumed before spring training began that Darin Mastroianni would take over the job. Instead, the team couldn’t ignore the spring training performance of Aaron Hicks, as the 23-year-old hit .370/.407/.644 with three steals. Haven’t we established that spring training stats are 99% noise? How come teams still make decisions based on them? That was enough to push Hicks ahead of Mastroianni on the depth chart and open the season as the starting center fielder.

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After word that an MRI revealed a torn ligament in Jason Motte’s elbow, fantasy owners should be assuming the worst. If Motte will indeed succumb to Tommy John> surgery, then someone is going to have to close the rest of the season for the Cardinals. But who will that be? The team opened the season with Mitchell Boggs in that ninth inning role, while Trevor Rosenthal waited patiently in the wings as the setup man. But after recent performances, the pecking order may have shifted.

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It might be odd to tout the virtues of a man who just allowed 7 earned runs in 3.2 innings during his 2013 debut against the Yankees on Tuesday. It is even stranger to gush about this very man given that he was just optioned to Triple-A. But if you hear me out, you will be convinced that this is a guy worth speculating on and stashing, especially in deep/AL-Only leagues and keepers.

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It’s another week of recommending mediocre players who might just be less crappy than the rest of the fish in your free agent pool. Or, you could just stream any hitter facing Roy Halladay.

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I asked. You answered. Who knew the most commented on post with my byline would be a poll about OBP leagues? Over 1,000 of you play in leagues that count OBP in some way or another. So that means I will be publishing articles specifically focusing on players in this scoring format. Today I will identify a couple of hitters who may be available in your league and gain value when OBP, rather than AVG, is a category.

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Every April, we worry about starting pitchers who have been showing diminished velocity. Most of the time it turns out to be nothing, as the pitcher either enjoys a rebound over the remainder of the year or he is able to succeed just as well without as good a fastball. But we sometimes ignore those starters showing increased velocity. Since fastball speed generally rises throughout the season, a starter already showing better velocity than his average for all of last season is quite intriguing. We know that velocity correlates highly with strikeout rate, so some of these names could be your early strikeout rate surgers, and perhaps breakout candidates (well, this was typed before actually checking the names, and now after identifying them, breakout might not be the most appropriate term!). Through Saturday’s games, these are some of the surgers according to the PITCHf/x data.

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