Tier update week is upon us again and it’s time to check in on the American League starting pitchers. Check out the July rankings to refresh your memory and rememember that these rankings only reflect how I expect the pitchers to perform over the rest of the season.
The trade deadline is behind us and we’re officially in the dog days of summer. Here are a pair of starting pitchers who could boost the back of your fantasy rotation.
Joe Blanton | SP | Dodgers | Owned: 22% Yahoo! and 18.7% ESPN
By now you should know all about Blanton’s MLB-best K/BB ratio, and if you don’t, then I suggest reading Ben Duronio’s recent piece on the hefty right-hander. The 31-year-old was traded via waivers from the Phillies to the Dodgers late last week, and he went on to hold the Cubs to two runs in six innings in his first start for the Los Angeles over the weekend.
Leading up to Tuesday’s trade deadline each of Major League Baseball’s teams had to decide if they were buyers or sellers. At some point fantasy owners will need to make the same determination and while it’s lovely to be in the money, it’s important to move your assets quickly if you’re not. If you’re selling or have a minor league roster spot open, target Cincinnati’s Robert Stephenson before the rest of your league catches on.
Stephenson joins Californian starters Aaron Sanchez, Taijuan Walker and Joe Ross as one of several high upside pitchers from the area who slipped in the draft in recent years. Now, teams who past over these highly regarded arms are kicking themselves now; their stocks have boomed and each ranks highly on the Bullpen Banter Mid-Season Top 100 and similar lists. Due to his promotion I was able to catch the rising star’s debut with the Dayton Dragons on Minor League Baseball TV and I couldn’t have been more impressed with his development. Read the rest of this entry »
Missing out on Randall Delgado in all of the Ryan Dempster-related mess was surely something of a disappointment for the Cubs, but credit the Cubs’ brass for getting a piece of value in Arodys Vizcaino. The 21-year-old Vizcaino was Baseball America’s 40th best prospect heading into the season and while Tommy John surgery will keep him from building on that promise this season, it matters little to a franchise whose aspirations are for the future rather than the present, and all it cost them was the National League’s fifth best pitcher in the month of July.
Paul Maholm started the season poorly, giving up six runs in both of his first two starts and striking out just four to help soften the blow to owners’ ERA, but then seemed to find a groove. Over his next four starts, Maholm looked like a totally different pitcher, giving up no more than a run per start and actually racking up a few strikeouts. He regressed as expected, though his results were more middling than actually bad, until he was absolutely rocked by the Diamondbacks on June 23.
It was on the back of that outing in which he gave up six earned runs in just over three innings of work without recording a single strikeout that the new Maholm emerged. Over his next 45 innings, Maholm allowed just five runs, walked just nine hitters and has struck out 32, good for a 6.4 K/9 over that span. Sure, 6.4 isn’t actually a good K/9 mark, but almost a full strikeout higher than his career rate.
It’s Maholm’s inability to miss bats that makes me especially wary about his move to Atlanta. The Braves aren’t particularly adept at turning groundballs — Maholm’s specialty — into outs. They’re allowing a higher team BABIP than the Cubs are by a full 10 points, and much of that comes from their outfield defense, which is certainly above average. The move to Turner Field from Wrigley will help Maholm in the sense that he has given up far more home runs to righties than he has to lefties — nine to three so far this year — and his new park is particularly tough for right-handed hitters to homer in, but I wonder if his platoon splits will become more exaggerated in his new home.
While Maholm gives up more home runs to righties, he actually performs much better against them overall, allowing them a .240/.306/.388 line compared to the .304/.377/.476 line he allows to lefties. While Wrigley suppresses left-handed home runs especially early in the season to the tune of a 95 left-handed home run park factor, Turner is far more favorable with a left handed home run park factor of 104. Don’t be surprised if Maholm gets even tougher on righties now that he doesn’t have to worry as much about giving up as many cheap home runs, but equally don’t be surprised if the .853 OPS he allows to lefties climbs even closer to .900 with the shorter home porch.
It is to Maholm’s credit that there isn’t one specific thing he’s changed with respect to his pitch usage that has precipitated this run of excellent form, but it does make me feel like we’ve seen this from Maholm before. Even in the seasons where he’s a solidly above average pitcher on the whole, he tends to fluctuate between runs of being average and then being well above average rather than pitching at or near the same level all year. The takeaway here isn’t that Maholm is going to be a bad pitcher in Atlanta or that owners should be dropping Maholm and picking up Casey Coleman or anything like that, but if there’s someone in your leagues that’s hurting for pitching, Maholm might bring back an oversized return with a month’s worth of good starts bolstering his resume. Theo Epstein and company did an admirable job transmuting Maholm into a solid return, now might be a good time for fantasy owners to do the same before the other shoe drops.
I love coming up with bold predictions. Not those off the wall ones that have like a 1% chance of happening, but those that have been built upon a shred of reality and have a reasonable chance (say 20%) of coming true. It is especially fun when everyone is either optimistic or pessimistic about a player and you’re prediction argues the opposite of the crowd. I am guessing that this particular prediction doesn’t quite sit at that level though, but I would say it is still pretty bold nonetheless. As a result of being traded to the Rangers, Ryan Dempster will be worthless in standard 12-team mixed leagues the rest of the season.
Going with two starting pitchers to kick off the week in waiver wire, one from the AL Central and one from the AL West…
Scott Diamond | SP | Twins | Owned: 41% Yahoo! and 34.8% ESPN
I’m going to resist the easy “diamond in the rough” crack here, but the Twins do have something in the former Rule 5 Draft pick. Minnesota plucked the 26-year-old left-hander from the Braves during the 2010-2011 offseason then swung a trade to retain his rights. Diamond made seven generally unimpressive starts a year ago (5.08 ERA and 4.36 FIP), but he’s run off 15 strong starts this summer (2.88 ERA and 3.69 FIP).
As you are no doubt aware, Francisco Liriano was shipped off to Chicago to don White Sox on Saturday. Yesterday, we looked at the trade from a real baseball perspective and today I analyze the fantasy version. Calling Liriano’s season a roller coaster ride might even understate how up and down he has been. On Saturday, I analyzed Zack Greinke’s move to Los Angeles and took various factors into account to try projecting his RoS ERA. Unfortunately, I’m not even going to bother with that for Liriano because I certainly don’t have a clue what kind of peripheral skills he will post. However, I will try to determine how the team switch will affect his value.
So Zack Greinke has returned to the American League and that is typically a bad move from a fantasy perspective. Obviously, if you’re in an AL-Only league, you’ll be bidding on him no matter what, but still must decide exactly how much of your FAAB to use. Mixed league owners are now no doubt wondering how this affects his value. Let us examine the various factors at play here, between the league switch, team switch and park switch.
I’m on a trending binge right now and today’s American League starting pitcher spot means it’s a good time to check out the strikeout rate surgers. There are many factors that could contribute to a surge in strikeout rate and often times, these are sustainable changes that lead to an increase in true talent level. So it can be wise to check out the surgers to spot these trenders early. As usual, I checked out the last 30 day leaderboard to come up with the names.
Yesterday, Anibal Sanchez was traded to the Detroit Tigers. It was a bold move by the Tigers to help them make the playoffs. Today, I am going to look at a few changes that can be expected from him because of his new surroundings and any chance for regression (good or bad).
