This early in the season, I essentially ignore ERA. Of course, this sentiment is not much different than how I treat the statistic for most of the year, but with just a few starts under most pitchers’ belts, ERA is pretty meaningless. As usual, I focus on the underlying skills, which of course do not escape the sample size issues, but they are certainly less flukey than earned runs at this point. I sorted AL starters by xFIP so far and below are my thoughts on some of the leaders that are rising in value. For those who missed my band-studded tiers of AL starters, the original rankings could be found here.

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Surprise, surprise, Josh Hamilton is hurt again. Yesterday, Eno Sarris outlined what the Rangers are likely to do in terms of divvying up playing time in Hamilton’s absence. David Murphy is a potential replacement for your fantasy team, but he is likely to already be owned in deep leagues. As a result, I have decided to ignore him and provide some other outfield options for those owners struggling to replace Hamilton’s production.

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It may be a bit early to analyze velocity changes as pitchers continue to build up arm strength and we are still working with tiny sample sizes, but as you could tell by now, I am a sucker for comparisons and ranking lists. We all know that velocity has a significant impact on a pitcher’s effectiveness and all else equal, the higher the velocity, the better the results. When a pitcher suddenly experiences an increase or decrease in his average fastball velocity, it could portend a change in performance, for better or for worse. Since fantasy owners sometimes jump on pitchers quickly after just one strong outing, it is important to identify the velocity changers early on before it becomes obvious in their results.

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The SwStk% metric is one of my favorites on FanGraphs. We would expect the statistic to be a good proxy for a pitcher’s raw stuff, as a swinging strike is the ultimate pitch result. Therefore, it should correlate highly with strikeout rate. And intuitively, it does. From 2001-2010 using a sample size of 59 pitchers, SwStk% had a 0.87 correlation with K/9. It is not higher because luck still plays a role, and K/9 includes called strikes which obviously SwStk% does not. So now that we know SwStk% matches up with K/9 quite well, I like to rank pitchers by each to determine who might have some hidden strikeout rate upside or downside.

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With only a week of baseball in the books, it is time for small sample size analysis! Here are some thoughts on various AL starting pitchers.

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So the 2011 season is underway and after pitching a whopping 1.1 innings, a closer has already lost his job. It must suck to be Fernando Rodney right about now. I could continue this rant about how sometimes managers seem to show such little understanding of the concept of sample size, but I have digressed enough. On to this week’s deep league waiver wire options for fantasy teams already fishing for some free agent bait.

Juan Miranda, ARI, 1B | 5% Owned

Despite only accumulating eight at-bats over the team’s first four games, manager Kirk Gibson reported today that Miranda will probably get most of the starts at first base early on this season. Of course, the emphasis should be on early. If Miranda is not hitting, the job will likely go to Russell Branyan, unless of course Brandon Allen is tearing it up at Triple-A, at which point he may get the call. Bottom line is if Miranda hits, he should see the majority of the playing time. Will he hit is the question though. In his minor league career, the 28-year old has shown solid power and an above average walk rate, while making acceptable contact. He has also shown a good propensity to hit fly balls, generally hitting them over 40% of the time. Unfortunately, according to his splits, he has typically had trouble with lefties, with the exception of his 2009 season when he posted an uncharacteristic .291/.371/.507 slash line. In addition, this same splits page shows some unimpressive MLEs, which gives us less reason for optimism. However, playing half his games in a ballpark that favors left-handed power (114 LHB HR park factor), and on a team likely going nowhere, the D-Backs should exercise plenty of patience with him. He won’t be making fantasy owners rush to the waiver wire to add him anytime soon, but Miranda could provide some cheap power.

Jayson Nix, TOR, 2B/3B | 2% Owned

Filling in temporarily while Jose Bautista takes a short leave of absence, Nix is expected to fill a utility role for his new team. With the ability to fill in at second and third base, and enough power to at least be considered to start at designated hitter if necessary, he should find enough at-bats to contribute in the counting stats. Nix’s biggest attributes are power (.172 and .184 ISO rates the last two seasons) and tons of fly balls (nearly 48% FB% last two seasons). Sounds like a perfect fit for the Jays, huh? Unfortunately, all those fly balls find gloves more often than the average hitter, keeping his career BABIP at an ugly .247. Nix has played in hitter’s parks most of his career, and he finds himself moving to one that inflates right-handed home runs by 16%, so he should continue to enjoy hitting at home. Though he only stole one base in three attempts last year, the 28-year old has shown better speed in the past, with 10 steals in 2009 and double digit totals during his minor league days. The extreme fly ball ways and low LD% means his batting average is going to be of no help, but the power should be enough to generate some value in AL-Only leagues.

On Saturday, I discussed a strategy that is rarely talked about, as on the surface, it sounds foolish. I suggested considering actually trying to buy high and sell low. I argued that buying low and selling high has become much more difficult to accomplish in recent years in this age of so much great statistical analysis that is freely available. As a result, the buy high, sell low, trade is much easier to pull off, and if executed carefully, could still pay off. However, the traditional buy low, sell high trade could still be made. Here are several scenarios in which I think this type of trade has the best chance of being pulled off.

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No, the title was not a typo. Now that the season is officially underway, we will soon be greeted to message board posts from panicked fantasy owners nervous about their slow starting stars. Numerous buy low articles will be published suggesting that the listed players will be quite easy to acquire, but in practice, these players are increasingly difficult to actually pry away. When every fantasy site is recommending the same guys to go out and trade for cheaply, don’t you think the owners of these players are reading these same articles and are smart enough not to give them up so quickly? So I propose a different strategy: the buy high and sell low.

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Coming off a season in which he posted a gruesome 5.18 ERA, James Shields is a favorite sleeper and undervalued asset of the statistically-inclined fantasy owner. The majority of these owners will cite Shields’ career high strikeout rate of 8.3 in 2010 as a primary reason to be bullish. In fact, I even mentioned it when I boldly predicted that Shields would post a sub-3.80 ERA in 2011. However, we are being slightly fooled by relying on that sneaky K/9 ratio.

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Welcome to another edition of deep sea diving into the free agent pool. SCUBA gear is recommended to navigate such mysterious territory. The baseball season starts tomorrow, and I am all ready for my stress level to skyrocket and hours of sleep to be lost! As a reminder, I will only be discussing players owned in 10% or less of leagues on CBS Sports.

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