The Cold episode of the Beat the Shift Podcast – a baseball podcast for fantasy baseball players.

Guest: Sara Sanchez

Catching Up

• Las Vegas
• Eclipse
• Red Sox Opening Day
• Softball
• High School Baseball

Strategy Section

• Starting Pitcher injuries
  • Velocity related?
  • Does MLB have a problem on its hands?
  • How should we alter our fantasy strategy?
  • Sholuld we be spedning more or less draft capital on pitching?
• Cold Starts to the season
  • When to bench?
  • When to drop?
  • How to tell injury from a cold start?
  • What stats to look at to determine bounceback?
  • Hitters vs. Pitchers

Underperforming Pitchers – How to handle?

• Griffin Canning
• Josiah Gray
• Louie Varland
• Bailey Ober
• Miles Mikolas
• Kyle Gibson
• Max Fried
• DL Hall
• Jesus Luzardo
• Luis Castillo
• Blake Snell
• Jameson Taillon
• Jordan Montgomery
• Carlos Rodon

Underperforming Hitters – How to handle?

• Nick Castellanos
• Riley Greene
• Jorge Polanco
• Jose Abreu
• Andrew Vaughn
• Francisco Lindor
• Mitch Garver
• Henry Davis
• Andrew Benintendi
• Whit Merrifield
• Victor Scott II

Waiver Wire

Pitcher Preview

Injury Update

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Let’s replace the celebrity softball game with an all-mascot game please.

https://www. twitter.com/Orioles/status/1780317798599684132

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Daily SP Chart archive

Decided to skip commentary on some of the obvious ones where I didn’t have anything terribly insightful to say.

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American League

Blue Jays

• Yariel Rodriguez is working with a pitch limit and won’t go long into games. He could end up in a tandem with Bowden Francis.

With a pitch limit of 70 or so, Rodríguez worked until two outs into the fourth inning, when he ended his outing with a called strikeout on Rockies second baseman Brendan Rodgers. In all, Rodríguez allowed four hits — including a solo homer by centre fielder Brenton Doyle — along with two walks and six strikeouts.
…
Coming out of the bullpen for the first time this season, Bowden Francis took over in the fourth inning. Combined with Rodríguez, they allowed just three runs over six innings — what a club is generally looking for from a traditional starter.

The Blue Jays hinted at using Rodríguez and Francis as a piggybacking tandem, and given the results this time around, it’s a strategy the club can turn to again, though Francis can also be used in spots out of the bullpen in the games between, too.
…
“We’re gonna build him up a little bit, but it’s not going to be, again, outrageous to where we’re really pushing him, six, seven, eight innings, things like that,” Schneider said. “Things could change, for sure, based on how he’s feeling and how he’s doing, but I think we’re going to play the long game a little bit.”

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4/18/24

The latest episode of “The Sleeper and the Bust” is live. Support the show by subscribing to our Patreon!!

Follow us on Twitter

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

PATREON

• Join our Patreon for live video feeds of each show
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INJURIES/TRANSACTION NEWS

• Check out our new Player Rater!

EARLY BREAKTHROUGH ARMS

• Ranger Suárez
• Tanner Houck
• Reid Detmers

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Below you’ll find a roundup of notable moves and roster notes from the past few days, as well as future expected moves and a Minor League Report, which includes a list of recent major league debuts and top prospect promotions. For this column, any lineup regulars, starting pitchers, or late-inning relievers are considered “notable,” meaning that middle relievers, long relievers, and bench players are excluded. You can always find a full list of updated transactions here.

RosterResource News:
•View all 30 projected lineups (vs RHP and vs LHP) on one page, updated daily with 2024 Stats (PA, 2B, HR, BB, K, OPS, wRC+) and 2021-2024 Stats (PA, OPS, wRC+).
•Our 2024 Minor League Power Rankings leaderboard is active. Click HERE to see how the rankings are determined.
•“Knocking Down The Door” will make its debut in this column sometime next week (April 16-21). This feature will highlight minor leaguers who are making a case for a major league promotion
•Jon Becker is writing a weekly “Reliever Roundup” column each Saturday during the regular season.

Lineup Regulars

Atlanta Braves
•4/16: 2B Ozzie Albies (fractured toe) placed on 10-Day IL; INF David Fletcher has contract selected from minors.

The 27-year-old Albies is expected to miss approximately one month after he was hit by a pitch in Monday’s game.

Ozzie Albies has been placed on the 10-day injured list with a right great toe fracture after taking this pitch off his front foot in 2nd inning last night. pic.twitter.com/47iQiNfBKr

— Bally Sports: Braves (@BravesOnBally) April 16, 2024

Luis Guillorme and Fletcher will share second base duties while Albies is out of action. The left-handed hitting Guillorme, who hadn’t had an at-bat this season until he started at shortstop in Monday’s game, had a two-run double in Tuesday’s win. Fletcher figures to get his first start on Friday with lefty Andrew Heaney likely to start for the Rangers.

Roster/Depth Chart  |  Playing Time Projections

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Daily SP Chart archive

With so few games tomorrow, it is easier to just do quick notes on the pitchers going instead of going through the whole charting process.

Logan Webb SFG v. ARI – A fantasy ace; must-start. Reco: All

Ryan Pepiot TBR v. LAA – I’m still fully in on my guy. The 5.40 ERA isn’t great, but the 23% K-BB and 1.02 WHIP leave me undaunted by the extra runs he’s allowing. He’s still locked into my lineup and he gets DET next week, too! Reco: All

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While the NFBC Main Event garners most of the attention, there are a handful of leagues with even a larger entry fee ($2.5K to $15K). They were originally named “High Stakes Leagues” and this year there are ten of them. With so much money on the line, these fantasy managers try to gain any advantage. Most of the time, these managers will be a week or two ahead of everyone else on their adds. Here are the players and some information on the ones added in five or more leagues. Read the rest of this entry »

Let’s replace the celebrity softball game with an all-mascot game please.

https://www. twitter.com/Orioles/status/1780317798599684132

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Daily SP Chart archive

Pretty straightforward board on Wednesday. I think you have to stick with Fried and Gausman despite their slow starts. There’s a nice handful of streamer types to take shots with across all formats or in DFS. I really wish Feltner wasn’t a Rockie so I could just roster him all year, I think he’s really good. Next week I’ll start adding this year’s stats for pitchers. I just don’t want to people to get overly influenced by weird ass ERAs. It’s not like next week is some perfect cut-off, either, but I’m trying to wait for most guys to have 4-5 starts at least and I’ll do my best to point out when there’s 1 start causing a misleadingly bad ERA and things like that. I’ve got my chat on Wednesday at 1 pm ET so feel free to bring your questions there or just leave ’em in the comments of this post!

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