5/10/19
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Fireside Chat
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Each week I look at the collection of starting pitchers owned in under 20% of leagues (consensus Yahoo/ESPN ownership from Fantasy Pros) with a few extra sub 10% discount options at the end, pointing out the options to consider if you need an extra arm or two at the end of your staff.
Note: This week and moving forward, I’m going to focus more on the sub 20% and sub 10% owned arms as I expect many of the sub 30% arms are snatched up in your leagues.
Let’s highlight my ten favorite starting pitcher options that may be available on your waiver wires, ordered by ownage %:
Wade Miley (Houston Astros) – This list is barren compared to previous weeks, due to our favorite choices impressing and a larger emphasis on pitching needs due to a multitude of injuries. That makes someone like Miley a considerable option as he offers a strong chance at a Win whenever he takes the hill. The Houston offense will support him and his ability to induce weak outs often can push him into the sixth frame. Don’t invest for strikeouts, but if a 1.25 WHIP, 3.70 ERA, and a handful of Wins fits, Miley is your guy.
Today at the Prospect Stock Watch we’re going to take a look at a struggling prospect who entered 2019 with some hype: shortstop Kevin Smith of the Toronto Blue Jays.
Smith landed on a number of pre-season Top 100 lists, although I was not one of the people on the bandwagon. With that said, I listed him as “The Riser” in the Jays system prior to 2019 based on the hype he was generating but offered these words of caution when discussing his mid-season promotion from Low-A to High-A ball in 2018:
“He then received a promotion to High-A ball around mid-season and continued to produce over-the-fence power but his approach at the plate de-evolved to more of his pre-2018 style. The walks dried up and the strikeouts rose… Smith’s prospect value is up but I’m hoping to see more of the early-2018 Smith rather than the later-2018 Smith.”
Unfortunately, we’re once again seeing more of the later-2018 Smith’s production at the Double-A level. I was surprised to see him start 2019 in Double-A but the Jays were stuck after Logan Warmoth (another shortstop who was drafted in the first round of the same draft as Smith) was terrible for all of 2018 at High-A ball and was forced to repeat the level. That pushed Smith up by default.
Corey Seager was a polarizing fantasy player heading into the 2019 season. Baseball’s fifth most valuable player in 2016-17 (12.9 WAR) spent most of 2018 on the disabled list recovering from Tommy John surgery. While Seager’s overall contributions to the Dodgers are obvious, his fantasy value has been up for debate given the increasingly high replacement level at the shortstop position and Seager’s somewhat limited power output.
Entering the 2019 season, Seager had slugged .494 with 54 home runs in 355 career games played. No one would confuse him with Billy Hamilton, but he also wasn’t hitting for the elite power that many other top tier shortstops were.
So far in 2019, Seager has struggled, hitting .235/.329/.356 with just two home runs. But his batted ball profile suggests that he might be trying to do something that his fantasy critics were riding him about heading into the season. Read the rest of this entry »
5/9/19
The latest episode of “The Sleeper and the Bust” is brought to you by Out of the Park Baseball 20, 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 SLEEPER20!
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NOTABLE TRANSACTIONS/INJURIES/RUMORS (8:42)
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I’ve been writing some variant of this pitcher transformation article from the beginning of spring training containing information from spring training velocities to pitch mix changes. With a new pitch or extra velocity, a pitcher can quickly change from one talent level to another. With the season now in full gear, the major preseason changes are known but now it’s time to start finding those pitchers who are slowly transforming themselves mid-season. Every week I hope to focus on these pitchers.
The 33-year-old Price continues to be a fastball/changeup pitcher. He keeps hitters off guard by throwing three different fastballs (cutter, sinker, four-seam). As his velocity has dropped, he’s started relying on his changeup increasing its usage from 14% in 2017 to 22% last year and finally 29% this year. The pitch has been dynamite with a 21% SwStr% and helped propel his strikeout rate from a 9.1 K/9 last year to career-high 10.5 K/9 this season. He’s pulling the old-man trick of throwing his non-fastballs more to stay relevant.
Rant: I’m not sure why pitchers wait until they start declining to make the change. Why not make the change immediately and become an ace.
Lucas Giolito is just 24 years old. It might seem like he’s older due an effect called “prospect fatigue” as he’s been in the baseball consciousness since being drafted back in 2012. He went 16th overall to the Washington Nationals thanks to concerns about his elbow that eventually led to Tommy John surgery. He cruised through the low minors and soared up prospect lists, eventually landing top 5 before his MLB debut in 2016. He sputtered through 21 innings as a 21-year old and was subsequently dealt that winter with Reynaldo Lopez and Dane Dunning for Adam Eaton. His prospect stock fell a bit on the heels of the ugly debut, but he was still a solid top 25 prospect as he joined the Chicago White Sox.
It these last three years with the White Sox where the fatigue has set in. A modest full season effort in Triple-A gave way to a positive seven-start run to cap off 2017, though the skills didn’t marry well with the 2.38 ERA/0.95 WHIP combo. A brutal 2018 (6.13 ERA/1.48 WHIP) left him as an afterthought on the fantasy landscape coming into 2019, but now he’s worth a closer look. He opened his season with a gem against the Royals, followed quickly by a pair of four-walk efforts that fueled nine runs allowed in 9.3 innings. He was dealing again versus the Royals in his fourth start before a hamstring injury cut him down and led to a two-week IL stint.
That brings us to the intriguing portion of this young season.
Baseball is the best
Jason Kipnis gave this couple an awesome gender reveal! ⚾️💯 pic.twitter.com/8aENe3RnXe
— Baseball Lifestyle™ (@BsbLifestyle__) May 6, 2019
For the second straight season, Matt Carpenter is off to a rough start and has fantasy managers questioning whether they should hang on or cut bait. At this time last year, he had an impossibly bad .165/.320/.320 line and when paired with a preseason shoulder injury, he seemed ripe for a cut. At least, my dumbass thought so. Despite some positive underlying metrics, I was concerned that his shoulder would prevent him from really breaking through and thus suggested benching or cutting him in 10- and 12-team formats.
Whoops.