And we’re back to our new regularly scheduled programming of starting pitcher streamer recommendations for games one day in advance. Thankfully, tonight offers a solid slate of options.
Of starters who have thrown a fastball at least 200 times this year, Yusmeiro Petit’s average velocity (89.13 MPH according to Baseball Pro’s Pitchf/x leaderboard) comes in at #167 of 173. Yet, only Clayton Kershaw, Chris Sale and Yu Darvish have better K-rates than him. Only Kershaw, Francisco Liriano, Masahiro Tanaka, Sale, Tyson Ross and Carlos Carrasco have a better swinging-strike rate than him in general.
The tribe has spoken. Some of you play in leagues that allow you to pick up and start pitchers for that day’s slate of games, while others must add a pitcher a day in advance. Since I enjoy catering to the masses, that means that today you’ll find a super-sized set of streamer recommendations so I don’t skip a day. Remember, the names below are those owned in fewer than 50% of CBS leagues.
My 12 leagues are coming to an end, and I’m scrambling in the leagues where scrambling makes sense. And so, as a selfish and lazy person, I will just scan the probables for Tuesday and discuss the names of the starting pitchers that we know less about.
Hey, it might be selfish and lazy, but it should be useful for us both.
I spend an inordinate amount of time playing with splits. It’s hard to come up with two new topics to write about each week, so I export a lot of data to Excel and click and sort around until I find something interesting. During the relatively boring late slate of football games yesterday afternoon, I was looking at ball in play data.
It occurred to me that there should be a pretty strong correlation between ERA on balls in play and OPS allowed on balls in play (there is). It then occurred to me that guys who have a relative ERA that’s much lower than their relative OPS might be getting a little lucky. When I say relative, I just calculated each pitcher’s z-score for both statistics, which were adjusted for number of batters faced since they are rate stats. Here are those potentially lucky pitchers. Read the rest of this entry »
I will assume that those who can take advantage of streamer opportunities are those in daily transaction leagues and after reading this article, it will not be too late to pick up a starting pitcher to stream for tonight’s game. If I am wrong, please let me know so I know to recommend pitchers for the following day instead! Below I have listed some of your options, which include those owned in fewer than 50% of CBS leagues. Let’s decide if they are worth a stream.
Public disclaimer on this one as I’m an admitted Scott Kazmir fan. I own him on virtually every one of my fantasy teams, and the part of me that loves good baseball stories just can’t get enough of the path that Kazmir has taken over his career. That’s probably a fatal flaw of mine relative to fantasy baseball success — the tendency to own guys you actually like to root for in real life. And I still root for Scott Kazmir. But that doesn’t mean I’d still start him on my fantasy baseball teams.
Why I watched: Highly touted prospect up in the majors.
Game(s) Watched: 9/14/14 vs White Sox
Game Thoughts
• Hawk was announcing. I hope I did not lose too many brain cells.
• May’s fastball was from 90-95 mph, straight with little downward movement. Looking at the values, it is at +10.1 vertical movement. Using some of my recent work, his GB% should be near 35% (actual 37.6%). He should get a good number of infield fly balls, but his home runs may be a problem at times.
With just about a week left in the season, the ratios are pretty much solidified and there’s much less concern over one of those three inning, seven run debacles ruining your stats. It is likely, however, that an extra win and/or five strikeouts could gain you a point. So deep leaguers in need of some counting stats without as much regard for their ratios should consider these weekend probables.
An innings limit and suspension are the events that resulted in opportunities for the two men discussed below. Hopefully, you’re in a position where a good start and a potential extra homer or two actually contribute to your money spot finish.