It’s time for another Dallas Keuchel update. He’s been this season’s breakout star on the mound, aside from Masahiro Tanaka who kind of doesn’t count. He’s received his share of attention here at RotoGraphs, and FanGraphs (Uno, Dos). Amazingly, he’s still available in 24 percent of Yahoo leagues, which is just a travesty.
Starting pitchers need to be treated like stocks. Perceived value is more important than inherent value. When a stock becomes overvalued compared with your valuation estimate, you sell it, even if the company is a good one. The same goes for pitchers. I’m a fan of Scott Kazmir, think he will remain a good pitcher and solid fantasy option and I continue to be in awe at his career revival. But, it’s time to sell. And that’s precisely what I did yesterday in my local 12-team mixed league.
**Keep in mind that I am typing this before his start last night.
Since we’re past the point in the season where most pitchers have faced enough batters of each handedness for us to give some weight to their strikeout and walk rates, my plan was to take a look at pitchers who struggled against hitters of the opposite handedness last year to see if any had made any improvements so far this year. But in that pursuit I got completely sidetracked when I found a couple of guys who surprisingly had a reverse split in K-BB%. Read the rest of this entry »
Injuries and demotions are a deep league owner’s best friends, as long as they don’t occur to your players. But really, it’s one of the few ways to improve your roster since trading seems like an impossibility in such leagues. Both players in this week’s waiver wire are the beneficiaries of these two events.
Nobody said scouring waiver wire trash bins was going to be pretty, and this week provides a case in point, as we focus on two pitchers whose value is limited to mono league owners.
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A few years ago, I remember hearing Keith Law on some podcast talking about how scouting comes down to a yes or no answer, either acquire or do not acquire. Scouts can’t waffle. You either want the player or you don’t. I like the bottom-line certainty of that in this confusing world of the false notions of hope and change, globalization, automation, rapid technological change, and yet a seemingly permanently stagnant economy. Wait, what? I don’t know; the point is the world is a very confusing place in 2014.
And so but my fantasy strategy this season was to buy the bats early and get young pitching later. I was able to draft Jeff Samardzija (1.46 ERA), Sonny Gray (1.99 ERA), Yordano Ventura (2.80 ERA) and Michael Wacha (2.54 ERA). Samardzija isn’t exactly young (29 years old), but there’s probably less mileage on his arm given his college football background. Those three are a pretty solid rotation foundation.
The guy I was most confident in, however, is already toiling in Triple-A. Danny Salazar was still missing bats (25.5 percent strikeout rate) with Cleveland this year after a dominant ten-start showing in 2013. When I saw him throw late last year I immediately put him into my “acquire” pile for 2014. What’s not to like about a guy averaging 96 mph on the heater with a plus-plus change? Unfortunately, Salazar had control (9.2 percent walk rate) and command issues (1.77 HR/9) over eight starts to open this season, earning a demotion. His average fastball velocity was down three ticks from last year.
Salazar is out and former (and arguably current) top prospect Trevor Bauer is back in the Cleveland rotation. Bauer is a good cautionary tale for those ready to pull the plug on the talented Salazar. Like Salazar, Bauer had some early-career velocity dips. After averaging 92.8 mph on the fastball last year, Bauer’s velocity is up to 94.6 over his two big league starts this season. With the velocity bump has come an increase in strikeouts. In 2013, Bauer struck out 19.3 percent of Triple-A hitters and just 13.6 percent over four starts with Cleveland. So far in 2014, he’s fanned 24.2 percent at Triple-A and 26 percent in the big leagues.
The real question with Salazar in the long-term might be his health. He had Tommy John surgery in 2010 which, combined with the sudden velocity loss, could be construed as evidence that health is the problem here. That’s obviously just speculation; perhaps his problems are just mechanical. We don’t know what the problem is, but we do know that something isn’t right with Salazar in the here and now when everything looked pretty great just a handful of months ago.
If Salazar could dominate in the big leagues before, he can certainly do it again. He’s only 24 years old, he has swing-and-miss stuff, and he’s had recent professional success. It’s far too early to quit on a talent like this, just as it was too soon to give up on Bauer.
The 23-year-old Bauer was the third pick of the 2011 draft and a top-ten prospect in 2012. The 24-year-old Salazar looked like a future ace last year. Arms like this don’t grow on trees, and they also don’t always grow on a linear trajectory towards stardom. There are often bumps in the road, and stardom isn’t guaranteed. However, in the final analysis, Bauer and Salazar remain two young arms worth riding the waves of struggle with towards fantasy success and perhaps renewed hope in Cleveland.
You want to see three of the best new change-ups in baseball? Call up the highlights for Jacob DeGrom, Chase Whitley, and Chase Anderson. Of course, there’s not a heralded prospect in the trio, so something must be awry. Let’s use the pitch type peripherals to get a sense of their strengths and flaws.
The Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim couldn’t have asked for Hector Santiago’s first season with the club to begin much worse. He’d had a good spring, with a 3.63 ERA and a 24:9 K/BB, but he opened 0-6 with a 5.19 ERA, 7.8 K/9, 4.7 BB/9 and 1.56 HR/9 in seven starts (34 2/3 innings). The Halos moved him into the bullpen a couple of days after his May 7 start, against the Yankees. He’d made two relief appearances, eight days between them, before the club optioned him to Triple-A Salt Lake.
The moves may be for the best. Mike Scioscia acknowledged that his team has been putting the left-hander in a tough position. Although the skipper almost certainly didn’t mean to implicate Santiago’s teammates, it’s clear that the rest of this heavenly cast hasn’t helped him much, start by start. Jose Serrano looked into how so a couple of weeks ago at Halo Hangout. Basically, the Angels have played poor defense, and they did so particularly on nights when Santiago pitched. They gave him abominable run support.
Heading into the season, Chris Archer was a pretty popular starting pitcher target in fantasy leagues. He was one of those non-sleeper sleepers, if such a term exists. You know, the guy everyone is hyping as a sleeper, which jacks up his price to “he has to enjoy a full season breakout just to break even” territory. It was easy to see why he was so appealing to many. He averaged 95 mph with his fastball, struck out a high rate of hitters in the minors and posted an impressive 3.22 ERA over more than half a season’s worth of starts with the Rays. But over his first nine starts of this year, things haven’t gone exactly the way his fantasy owners had hoped and expected. Read the rest of this entry »
Ah, May, that time of the year in which the baseball season is no longer new, or young, but rather, established enough where players are beginning to lose their jobs and the injuries are starting to pile up, clearing the way for younger talent to make their mark on the fantasy radar. That’s where we find our two contestants this week, one of whom has benefited from playing time thanks to an early-season flameout, and the other suddenly pertinent in fantasy due to his newfound opportunity.
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