Author Archive: Paul Sporer

5/10/18

The latest episode of “The Sleeper and the Bust” is brought to you by Out of the Park Baseball 19, the best baseball strategy game ever made – available NOW on PC, Mac, and Linux platforms! Go to ootpdevelopments.com to order now and save 10% with the code SLEEPER19!

Follow us on Twitter

• @sporer – Host
• @justinmasonfwfb – Producer/Co-Host
• @jasoncollette – Co-Host
• @enosarris – Special Guest from The Athletic

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Notable Transactions/Rumors/Articles

• Carlos Martinez w/lat inj. (3:05)
• Johnny Cueto to 60-day (9:30)
• Matt Harvey to CIN (11:11)
• Eno’s Command piece at The Athletic(16:51)
  • Aaron Nola, Tyler Mahle, Joey Lucchesi

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5/9/18

The latest episode of “The Sleeper and the Bust” is brought to you by Out of the Park Baseball 19, the best baseball strategy game ever made – available NOW on PC, Mac, and Linux platforms! Go to ootpdevelopments.com to order now and save 10% with the code SLEEPER19!

Follow us on Twitter

• @sporer – Host
• @justinmasonfwfb – Producer/Co-Host
• @jasoncollette – Co-Host

GET THE SLEEPER & THE BUST T-SHIRT FROM ROTOWEAR!

The All-Struggle Bus Team

• Gary Sanchez
• Anthony Rizzo
• Jose Altuve (doesn’t really fit the team name, but you’ll hear why I included him)
• Scott Kingery
• Matt Carpenter

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If you scooped Fernando Romero off your waiver wire on Sunday night, you were paid immediate dividends as the 23-year old righty threw six scoreless innings in St. Louis on Monday night, allowing just three hits and three walks while striking out nine. He now has 11.7 scoreless innings to open his MLB career and has many wondering if he can be a game-changing rookie for both the Twins and your fantasy team. He has consistently been a Top 10 entrant in Twins prospect lists for the last couple years including 7th by Eric last year and will place top five for this year’s list, which is coming soon. Let’s take a closer look at the electric righty.

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5/6/18

The latest episode of “The Sleeper and the Bust” is brought to you by Out of the Park Baseball 19, the best baseball strategy game ever made – available NOW on PC, Mac, and Linux platforms! Go to ootpdevelopments.com to order now and save 10% with the code SLEEPER19!

Follow us on Twitter

• @sporer – Host
• @justinmasonfwfb – Producer/Co-Host
• @jasoncollette – Co-Host

GET THE SLEEPER & THE BUST T-SHIRT FROM ROTOWEAR!

• Paul and Nick deep dive on Yu Darvish and his 6.05 ERA on the season.

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Wow, I can’t believe we’re already a month into the season! A quick refresher on how I put these together. This is a narrower focus than just “rest of season” as I’ll be updating these every month. Pitching is just too volatile to have confidence in a single ranking set for more than 4-6 weeks at a time. The tiers are more important than the numerical ranking as they’ll guide the start/sit decisions more accurately.

I want to be clear that the Must-Starts aren’t automatically the best pitchers, but rather the guys that you can’t sit with any confidence. Do I really think that (spoiler alert!) Sean Manaea is the 27th-best starter for the rest of the season? I have hard time saying that, but there is no circumstance where I’d bench him right now.

• March rankings

Please leave your questions and comments below!

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Check out today’s chat!

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The first month of the season is in the books! It was an exciting month with some incredible breakouts like Didi Gregorius being baseball’s best player while Mike Trout and Aaron Judge picked up right where their 2017 seasons left off. However, you might’ve missed some of the good-but-unheralded performances that are still worthy of attention including a veteran catcher raking, an offseason bargain smacking the ball, and a former prospect on the rise.

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I mentioned on a recent podcast that my updated starting pitcher rankings would be out today, but I’m not quite done so you’ll have to wait a little longer! In the meantime, I wanted to look at some struggling arms and see if there’s any hope. Remember, this time last year saw Jimmy Nelson toting a 5.34 ERA and probably on a ton of waiver wires. From May 1st on, he had a 3.13 ERA and 176 strikeouts in 146.7 innings.

Kenta Maeda (6.58 ERA), Jose Quintana (5.22), Carlos Martinez (4.71), and Justin Verlander (4.60) were a few other arms who emerged from crummy Aprils. Not every quality arm found their footing so it’s far from a guarantee, but a handful of April duds will be gems the rest of the way. Let’s see if we can find some of them and start with a repeat struggler from last year.

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4/29/18

The latest episode of “The Sleeper and the Bust” is brought to you by Out of the Park Baseball 19, the best baseball strategy game ever made – available NOW on PC, Mac, and Linux platforms! Go to ootpdevelopments.com to order now and save 10% with the code SLEEPER19!

Follow us on Twitter

• @sporer – Host
• @justinmasonfwfb – Producer/Co-Host
• @jasoncollette – Co-Host
• @pitcherlist – Nick Pollack, Special Guest

GET THE SLEEPER & THE BUST T-SHIRT FROM ROTOWEAR!

• Paul and Nick deep dive on Luis Castillo in light of his poor April and disastrous start on Friday.

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4/29/18

The latest episode of “The Sleeper and the Bust” is brought to you by Out of the Park Baseball 19, the best baseball strategy game ever made – available NOW on PC, Mac, and Linux platforms! Go to ootpdevelopments.com to order now and save 10% with the code SLEEPER19!

Follow us on Twitter

• @sporer – Host
• @justinmasonfwfb – Producer/Co-Host
• @jasoncollette – Co-Host

GET THE SLEEPER & THE BUST T-SHIRT FROM ROTOWEAR!

Notable Transactions/Rumors/Articles

• Xander Bogaerts
• Mookie Betts injured
• Yasiel Puig and Matt Kemp hurt
  • Alex Verdugo

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