In the article, I cover the players using CBS’s (about 40% or less initial roster rate) and Yahoo’s ADD/DROP rates. Both hosting sites have the option for daily and weekly waiver wire adds. CBS uses a weekly change while Yahoo looks at the last 24 hours. Yahoo is a great snapshot of right now while CBS ensures hot targets from early in the week aren’t missed. The players are ordered for redraft leagues by my rest-of-season preference grouped by starters, relievers, and hitters. Read the rest of this entry »
On May 5, Brown reached a last resort. He had not thrown or thought about a sinker since starring at Wayne State University in 2019. Spring training is the time to test out anything, but even then, Brown never brought out his forgotten pitch.
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In four appearances since introducing his sinker, Brown has lowered his ERA from 9.78 to 7.06. He has allowed nine earned runs across those 20 1/3 innings, stabilizing a season that threatened to spiral. His six innings of two-run ball Wednesday against the Los Angeles Angels were the most encouraging example of what Brown can be.
“That’s the Hunter that we all know. He can be that type of pitcher. He’s got the stuff,” manager Joe Espada said. “That sinker was a game-changer — throwing that stuff in on their hands and setting up the four-seamer up, the breaking ball.”
It’s a pretty straightforward board on Thursday. Be careful with the landmines out there, even the 1-x recos but also guys like Waldron, Black, and Smith-Shawver who have moderately intriguing matchups. I just don’t trust them in any of those road setups. If you want to discuss anyone further, drop a comment and I’ll get to ’em throughout Thursday!
I wanted to see what kind of pitching has been available on the wire this year so I took a quick look. I used the NFBC’s Rotowire Online Championship which is a 12-team setup with 9 pitcher slots in the starting lineup and just 7 reserves, no IL or minor leaguers. I took the pitchers who were picked up in at least 25% of the 228 leagues in the contest, so 57 or more leagues. From there, I just calculated their results from the time they were picked up through May 21st. I realize that’s not perfect because some guys have definitely been cut so many teams might’ve missed some of the ugliness.
Just a note that the date listed in the chart is the Sunday they were picked up so the data starts the day after which is definitely worth noting because several of these guys threw gems on that Sunday which no doubt raised their bid price that night. Also there are some guys listed twice and that’s not an error, they had more than one period where they met the 57-league threshold. Obviously in comparison to last year’s non-stop rush of pitching prospects who came up and succeeded, this feels light, but even compared to a standard year it feels like we aren’t getting much. Streaming is no doubt a grind in 15-teamers right now and it feels like that is trickling down to 12-teamers, too.
Individual SP comments back tomorrow… but as always, I’ll answer as many comments as I can throughout the day tomorrow so if you have a question about someone, just let me know!
The chart includes their 2024 stats (this changed over from last year’s stats on April 22nd), their opponent’s wOBA versus the pitcher’s handedness from this year so far (this is changed as of April 11th), my general start/sit recommendation for 10-team, 12-team, and 15-team (or more) leagues, and then a note about them. Obviously, there are league sizes beyond those three so it’s essentially a shallow, medium, deep. If a pitcher only has an “x” in 15-team, it doesn’t mean there’s no potential use in 10s and 12s, but that just means it is a riskier stream as the league gets shallower.
These are general recommendations, and your league situation will carry more weight whether you are protecting ratios or chasing counting numbers. This is for standard 5×5 roto leagues. The thresholds for H2H starts are generally lower, especially in points leagues so I thought there would be more value focusing on roto and then you can generally expand these recommendations a bit for points leagues.
