If you didn’t see my chat today, I just wanted y’all to know that there was no chart yesterday because we lost internet for about 9 hours with a statewide outage for Spectrum service. Thankfully we avoided any bad weather here in Austin so in the grand scheme an afternoon and evening without the internet isn’t the end of the world.
For Thursday, we have some tough spots where you have to decide if chasing the win potential is worth the risk.
Keider Montero showed some flashes in a couple of extended outings (1 start in game 2 of a doubleheader and the other an extended relief appearance from the 2nd-6th innings) at the end of May and June with an 18% K-BB. He still had 9 ER in 9.7 IP thanks in large part to 3 HRs. He jumped into Casey Mize’s spot on July 3rd and did his best work yet against MIN: 6.3 IP/2 ER/4 Ks/1 BB. Still not exactly overpowering, but something to build upon going into this week’s 2-step.
I didn’t express a ton of confidence in him, putting him in the YOLO category on the 2-start board, but I came away impressed by his 6.3 IP of scoreless work on Monday night. He got ahead with a 76% first pitch strike rate (63% lg. avg) and posted a 36% Called Strike + Whiff rate (27% lg. avg), both figures were season bests for Montero. It certainly wasn’t enough to give him a full green light against LAD, but he’s on the radar now as a streamer option.
Hope y’all had a nice 4th of July! I enjoyed a relaxing day with the fam and watching some baseball, but I couldn’t leave y’all hanging without a Friday board, just had to wait until morning of instead of night before.
Sorry for no chat today. I wish I could say it was for the holiday or something, but it was a much dumber reason… which I guess was at least tangentially related to the 4th of July. I moved my regular Thursday OOTP show to today because of the 4th but then I got fully in the Thursday groove and didn’t think about botching the chat until late afternoon when it was too late to fire something up. I’ll be back next week with a chat and we can discuss my new SP rankings in more detail.
As we approach the All-Star break, we’re due for another big update on the SP rankings. Sorry for not getting one out in June, but you can see my Daily SP Charts for regular commentary on pitchers so at least it’s not completely dark in between these updates. The $ is the earned auction value so far this year. Those with – in their Change column means they weren’t ranked last month due to injury or simply not being in the MLB rotation.
I’ll be in the comments answering any questions, so let me know! Plus, I’ll have my chat on Wednesday where we can discuss in more detail.
Don’t forget that these are primarily focused on the next 3-4 weeks. They can give you some guidance on “rest of season” trades, but I’m not taking IP risk into heavy consideration with these rankings because most of those guys facing a limit won’t be altered much in July. Moves due to volume concerns will start more in the post-Trade Deadline update.
(Note: there won’t be a Tuesday SP Chart, but these rankings should definitely help your decisions for the day!)
Alright, enough yapping… here they are:
Update(s):
July 1st, 10:00 pm CT — I memory-holed the big injuries from last wk apparently, so I had to remove several guys who got hurt (Lodolo, Woo, Turnbull, Assad, Mize; plus Megill getting sent to AAA) and from there I ended up doing a decently large sweep so there was a good bit of movement from the original post. No one shifted multiple tiers or anything, but some real moves for sure.
