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.

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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.

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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.
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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Streaming is a bit of a funny proposition this early in the year. Less than a week in, you’re probably not ready to cut bait on any players on your roster to take a flyer on a single match-up. After all, you drafted these guys for a reason.

But perhaps a player has hit the disabled list, or a prospect you were sure would make the team has been sent down. If you find yourself with a roster spot in hand and a desire to Stream, Aim, Fire, then by all means, read on.

The following streaming options are owned in less than 50 percent of Yahoo leagues, with an extra deep streamer tucked away at the bottom.

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A week and a half ago, I unveiled the preseason American League starting pitcher tiered rankings. Obviously, I couldn’t rank every single pitcher currently with a rotation spot. So today I’ll take a look at some of the unranked guys and what kind of potential they have in breaking in to the rankings.

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Mat Latos cannot pitch in April. Latos will take the mound Wednesday hoping he can overcome his early season struggles. In 70.2 April innings, he has a career 5.21 FIP. For whatever reason, it takes Latos a couple of starts before he settles into his rhythm each year. In order to prevent a slow start this year, Latos has worked on honing his change-up during the spring. Latos has been working with former Reds’ pitcher Mario Soto, who had one of the game’s best change-ups for a little over a decade. If Latos can make progress with the pitch, it could help him get back to his 2010 numbers.

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