How real is Paul Maholm’s start? The soft-tossing left-hander has not allowed a run to score in 20.1 innings while striking out over 25% of the batters he has faced so far. With a fastball velocity of 86.9 miles per hour, it is easy to expect the strikeout rate to drop and the ERA to subsequently rise. Even with those certainties, Maholm is still a better than thought of starting pitcher. He is essentially what Mark Buehrle was when he was Maholm’s age, a starter who will rely on command and deception to get hitters out, but Maholm has seen his strikeout rate steadily climbing over the past four years, from 12.1% to 14.1% to 17.8% and this year’s 25.3% rate.

Read the rest of this entry »

Chris Capuano | Los Angeles Dodgers | Home to San Diego on Tuesday

One man’s folly is another man’s fortune, right? Well the bizarre and unfortunate injury to Zack Greinke after the altercation with Carlos Quentin and the Padres gives Capuano the fifth spot in the Dodgers rotation. Had I been making decisions in LA, he might have had that spot this season to begin with.

Capuano is coming off two straight seasons in which he topped 180 innings and had an xFIP under 4.00. He displayed some serious skill in 2011 with an above average strikeout rate (21%), an above average walk rate (6.6%), and a solid xFIP of 3.60. Unfortunately he was a little unlucky with balls in play (.311 BABIP), and he let a few too many fly out of the park (1.31 HR/9) which led to a 4.55 ERA. But the next year he was basically luck-neutral (.284 BABIP, 1.13 HR/9), and his ERA fell to 3.72. His strikeout skills weren’t the same but were still slightly above average (19.8%), and his walk rate was equally good.

Capuano can obviously pitch, and I am glad to see him get the chance to start again, even if I wish it had come via less unfortunate circumstances. He’s got a good matchup at home against the Padres on Tuesday. He’s currently owned in just 2% of ESPN leagues. Read the rest of this entry »

Jarrod Parker has failed to make it out of the fourth inning in two of his three starts this season. After Sunday’s drubbing from the Detroit Tigers, it’s time to start wondering what’s wrong with the 24-year-old. Keep in mind that he’s only tossed 11.2 innings this year, so small sample caveats apply. But he’s also had time to work on improving over his last three starts and that hasn’t helped. Looking over his game logs, there’s some evidence that his best pitch from last season, hasn’t been much of a weapon in 2013.

Read the rest of this entry »

Relief pitchers who have starting pitcher qualifications are a valuable resource in leagues who have both starting pitcher (SP) and relief pitcher (RP) slots and daily moves. If a team can’t use all their starting pitcher slots on a particular day, a good SP qualified reliever can be used to help with rate stats and maybe holds. These type of pitchers have become so useful, they were effectively outlawed in Ottoneu because of a rules change (only pitchers starting can get stats for SP slots and non-starters can only get stats on the RP slots). Today I am going to look at few useful candidates to use with this strategy.

Truthfully, the list of ideal candidates are slim this year. I far as I could tell, no SP qualified pitcher is currently a full time closer or set up man. A few fall into the category of middle relief, but most are long relievers. Here is a quick look at some of the better option in 2013.

Read the rest of this entry »

Between 2008-2011, Tim Lincecum was arguably the best pitcher in baseball. He won back-to-back Cy Young Awards in 2008 and 2009, while posting four-consecutive seasons with at least 200 innings pitched. And in three of those seasons, he featured an ERA under 2.75.

In short, he was dominant. He earned the nickname “The Freak” and became a media darling across the country. His face was seemingly plastered on the cover of ESPN the Magazine or Sports Illustrated every other week, and SportsCenter did numerous featurettes on him throughout the baseball season.

All of the praise and attention was certainly deserved. Only Cliff Lee compiled a better FIP (2.79) than Lincecum’s 2.81 FIP amongst qualified starters in those four seasons, and the right-hander also had the fourth-lowest ERA (2.81).

That’s why it seems so awkward to say the following: fantasy owners should flat-out avoid Tim Lincecum.  There, I said it.

Read the rest of this entry »

I guess I owe some of you an apology. Last week’s streamers went 1-for-4 in terms of successful starts. Doubront was mediocre, Tillman was lit up, and Fiers (who, you’ll remember, was more of a “buy” recommendation than a stream) was terrible. Luckily, my “deep” stream, the one most of you could have streamed due to ownership levels, was a treat. Dan Straily struck out 11 Astros, furthering the “Streaming ‘Stros” strategy until Brandon Maurer ended it on Tuesday.

Anyway, let’s hope for a better turn this weekend. Based on some feedback, I’ll ditch the spreadsheet since it’s available elsewhere in a cleaner format. I’m also working on some sort of “start potential” metric but it’s a bit early to employ without testing it out. And finally, I’ll try to make one recommendation at each of the 50, 25, 15 and 5 percent ownership levels to appeal to all league depths.
Read the rest of this entry »

It might be odd to tout the virtues of a man who just allowed 7 earned runs in 3.2 innings during his 2013 debut against the Yankees on Tuesday. It is even stranger to gush about this very man given that he was just optioned to Triple-A. But if you hear me out, you will be convinced that this is a guy worth speculating on and stashing, especially in deep/AL-Only leagues and keepers.

Read the rest of this entry »

There’s a lot of Jose Fernandez talk going around. And he looks to be a legit young starting pitcher — his gas sat above 95 mph, his slurve/slider thing got plenty of whiffs, and he lived in the zone. But curves and sliders have platoon splits — to different extents — and it’s always good for a pitcher to have at third pitch when he’s encountering the lineup for a third time.

This is Jose Fernandez‘ third pitch.

Read the rest of this entry »

R.A. Dickey came into the season with more concerns than the typical reigning Cy Young. He did not have the long track record of elite success in the majors, and was moving to a more difficult league. Though age is not as important with knuckle-ball pitchers, there is always some reason for caution investing in a 38-year-old. Through two games, those worries have looked justified. At the same time, it’s foolish to overreact after 10.2 innings. While Dickey has struggled, things are not as bad as they seem.

Read the rest of this entry »

Every April, we worry about starting pitchers who have been showing diminished velocity. Most of the time it turns out to be nothing, as the pitcher either enjoys a rebound over the remainder of the year or he is able to succeed just as well without as good a fastball. But we sometimes ignore those starters showing increased velocity. Since fastball speed generally rises throughout the season, a starter already showing better velocity than his average for all of last season is quite intriguing. We know that velocity correlates highly with strikeout rate, so some of these names could be your early strikeout rate surgers, and perhaps breakout candidates (well, this was typed before actually checking the names, and now after identifying them, breakout might not be the most appropriate term!). Through Saturday’s games, these are some of the surgers according to the PITCHf/x data.

Read the rest of this entry »