Homer Bailey is pitching like an ace. In his seventh professional season, everything has come together for the one-time fifth-best prospect in baseball. It’s been a long rise to the top for Bailey, who didn’t have a sub-4.00 ERA until his sixth professional season. While his 2012 performance was a major step forward, Bailey has managed to get even better in 2013. Through 90 innings this season, Bailey has nearly matched his season-high in WAR. His 2.68 FIP rates 11th among qualified starters. Bailey may have taken a while to reach meet his lofty expectations, but the wait is well worth it given his current performance.

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Welcome to the fastball velocity edition of the deep league waiver wire. While fastball velocity obviously isn’t everything, it does highly correlate with strikeout rate and a spike in velocity often leads to a surge in strikeout rate. These two pitchers embody this theme perfectly.

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Mike Leake has an ERA under three and his batting average on balls in play is over .300. Is he a pickup?

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Yesterday, I identified which starting pitchers may be due for an increase in walk percentage given their pedestrian F-Strike% marks. Although not as good a proxy as SwStk% is for K%, F-Strike% is probably the best singular metric for a quick look at how good a pitcher’s control is. Using the same data set as yesterday, these are the pitchers who have posted walk percentages well above what their F-Strike% suggest.

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Corey Kluber is the latest pitcher to go from journeyman to stud. The 27-year-old had just 12 starts in the majors prior to 2013. After a weak spring performance, he didn’t even break camp with the Cleveland Indians. It took an injury to Brett Myers to finally give Kluber a shot. Through 10 starts, things look pretty promising. After tossing eight shutout innings against the Washington Nationals Sunday, Kluber now has a 3.15 FIP and 2.95 xFIP on the season. That’s one heck of a performance from a pitcher who had started the last four seasons in Triple-A.

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Although we have done a pretty good job determining what underlying statistics can combine to formulate a strong expected strikeout percentage metric, unfortunately the same cannot be said for a pitcher’s walk percentage. Though one would assume the majority of a pitcher’s control skill would show up in his ability to throw strikes, whether by throwing first pitch strikes or throwing the ball inside the strike zone, that just isn’t the case. But of course that doesn’t mean that this data is useless.

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There aren’t many reasons to watch the Seattle Mariners. For several years now there was a singular reason to do so and it had something to do with a guy who goes by “King.” But in 2013, there’s an encore for every Felix Hernandez gem and his name is Hisashi Iwakuma.

Seattle is the kind of media market that ensures players fly under the radar (see Martinez, Edgar). So there are probably plenty of you that look up from your spreadsheets and see a 7-1 record with a 1.79 ERA and 0.82 WHIP and wonder how you could have completely forgotten about this guy.

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Right-hander Jarrod Parker was one of my biggest sleepers coming into the season. He quietly compiled a 3.47 ERA with a 3.43 FIP last year, and I predicted the strikeout rate would jump in 2013, resulting in even higher value for fantasy owners.

After a 7.36 ERA in the month of April, though, many owners quickly jumped off the bandwagon and dumped Parker on the waiver wire. His numbers were ugly across the board. The strikeouts were down, the walks were up and home runs were a legitimate problem. Opposing batters were hitting .350 off the 24-year-old starter, and he had allowed a staggering 43 hits in only 29.1 innings.

However, in recent starts, Parker has turned it around in a big way.

Since the calendar flipped to May, the right-hander has compiled a stellar 2.85 ERA in his last eight starts. His strikeout rate has enjoyed a modest bump, but the most significant improvement lies in his walk rate. He’s no longer doling out 4.91 walks per nine innings, as he did in April. Instead, his walk rate in May and June has dropped to 2.68 BB/9 — and his opponent batting average has plummeted to .199 over the same stretch.

It’s important to note Parker has greatly benefited from a .200 BABIP in his last eight starts, which is certainly a contributing factor to his turn-around. Fantasy owners shouldn’t expect a sub-3.00 ERA from him the remainder of the season. But if the walks stay down and the strikeout numbers (at least) hover around his career-average, he should continue to be very effective.

The real question remains, though. Will Jarrod Parker’s strikeout rate increase to match his swinging-strike rate?

His 9.9% swinging-strike rate currently ranks 25th in all of baseball, among qualified starters. That’s better than James Shields, Shelby Miller, Chris Sale and Clay Buchholz. Yet his strikeout rate continues to underperform. He compiled a 6.95 K/9 strikeout rate a year ago with a 9.9% swinging-strike rate, and with an identical swinging-strike rate this season, his K-rate is only 6.18 K/9.

It makes sense to think his strikeout rate would increase, based on those numbers. He gets guys to chase out of the strike zone and misses plenty of bats. He even had solid strikeout numbers in the minors. At this point, though, it’s becoming a trend for Parker. Perhaps he’s just going to be a guy whose strikeout rate never matches his peripheral numbers — much like right-hander Hiroki Kuroda. Kuroda has a career 9.9% SwStr%, yet owns a career 6.71 K/9 strikeout rate.

I’m not sure what to make of the large differential, but it is clear that Parker can be effective without the gaudy strikeout numbers. He showed that last year and has shown it in his last eight starts. If his home-run rate comes back down to earth — and it should, pitching in Oakland — he should be a solid fantasy starter throughout the remainder of the season.

And Jarrod Parker remains criminally underowned, despite his recent string of success on the mound. He’s only owned in 65.7% of leagues, meaning he could be a lovely waiver-wire pickup for many owners looking to bolster their pitching staff.

Last season, Erasmo Ramirez pretty much came out of nowhere to post a 3.36 ERA (3.61 SIERA) between the bullpen and rotation. He finished the season in the Mariners rotation and over eight starts, posted a 3.64 ERA with a strikeout rate of 7.9. That performance was enough to intrigue fantasy owners and he was considered a sleeper by many. In fact, RotoGrapher Brett Talley liked him enough to boldly predict Ramirez would finish the season as a top 60 fantasy starter. Unfortunately, he has yet to throw a pitch for the Mariners this season, but you would do well to remind yourself who the man they call Erasmo is all about.

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If you have not already done so, it is well past time to let go of Dan Haren. I have been one of the biggest Dan Haren fans for some time. He encompasses all I like to see from a pitcher, or at least he did when he was good and healthy. He is extremely athletic, he hardly ever walks batters, he gets a good deal of strikeouts without having dominant stuff, and he had a large amount of success in both leagues.
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