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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BASEBALL! The season is officially under way and that means that I will have absolutely no life outside of watching and analyzing this wonderful game through October. Over the past couple of days, roster decisions were made, position battles sorted out and rotation slots won. Some of those rotation spot winners were quite the shock. Let’s discuss a few of them, shall we?

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On my last day down at Spring Training I was lucky enough to catch two high profile pitching prospects face each other in a minor league game at Astros camp in Kissimmee. Houston power arm Jarred Cosart opposed the also highly regarded A.J. Cole of the Washington Nationals. I thought today I’d provide a little breakdown of those two pitchers and how they can potentially help your fantasy team.

Jarred Cosart

The Breakdown: Cosart

A 38th round pick by the Phillies out of high school in Texas, Cosart is a big, athletic pitcher who can throw mid 90’s all day long. He has a quick arm and the ball comes out of his hand well. Cosart looks like he throws even harder than the 94-96 mph at which I clocked him. I kept looking down expecting to see a 98 or 99 but never got it. There’s some effort in his mechanics, but nothing that would trouble me in terms of workload or injury. The issue with Cosart is more a question of how his mechanics affect his command. He has trouble repeating his delivery and varies his timing. Some of this is a result of a long arm action in back. He also has a prominent head jerk as he releases the pitch and a cross-fire finish to his arm action. These qualities lead to an inconsistent release point and problems finishing up. This is not conducive to the fastball command necessary to be am effective big league starter. Cosart’s power curveball (78-80 mph) shows some tight spin and deep break but it’s mostly useful as a chase pitch only. He also telegraphs the curve with a pronounced difference in his arm action. There’s no real feel for an off speed offering here. Cosart mixes in a straight change but they were all hard, straight and up in my viewing. The ultimate profile here looks to me to be a relief arm but at age 23 he’s still capable of making adjustments that would fix some of the holes in his game.

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