Michael Fiers is the fire that the Brewers rotation needed when Shaun Marcum went down. What remains to be seen is if he’s the slow-burning campfire that will keep giving all year or the short-lived snap crackle pop of your average Independence Day firecracker in San Diego.

He wasn’t supposed to be this good. He didn’t even crack Baseball America’s top ten going into the season — his only appearances on the page were a mention for Best Control in the system and a thought by Tom Haudricourt that he might help the team, in some capacity, because he’d proven himself at Triple-A. Our own Marc Hulet put Fiers 15th on the Brewers list, mentioned he was 26 and didn’t have much of a ceiling, and then gave him the “likely swing-man” mark of doom.

Read the rest of this entry »

C.J. Wilson was paid $77.5M this off season to come in and be a front line starter for the Angels. With Jered Weaver and Dan Haren already on the team, he wasn’t going to be the only ace of the staff, but he has pitched like one. It is now time to sell high on Wilson’s great 1st half of the season. He has 9 Wins, a 2.33 ERA (6th among qualified starters) and a 1.17 WHIP. These stats put him within the top 20 SP in production for the 2012 season (16th SP with ESPN’s Player Rater). His stats don’t match his perifial numbers so he has a good chance of regressing quite a bit in the second half of the season.

Read the rest of this entry »

Even with all that we know about ERA and how questionable it can be in evaluating the value of a pitcher, a 4.98 mark is still pretty ugly, especially in the lowered offensive environment we’re seeing this year. In fact, it’s so ugly that it ranks among the bottom 10% or so of all qualified major league pitchers, mostly above struggling youngsters like Jake Arrieta, Luke Hochevar, Hector Noesi, & Mike Minor, along with whatever it is that’s ruining Tim Lincecum’s career. It’s not a great group to be in, but for Detroit starter Max Scherzer, that 4.98 stands out as a phenomenal reason to target him as the trade deadline nears.

If you look at that list of poor ERA starters, two things immediately stand out about Scherzer. First, his FIP is a much more reasonable 3.76, one of the highest ERA-FIP differentials in the game; second, his K/9 rate is an outstanding 11.36. Other than Stephen Strasburg’s 11.81, no other starting pitcher in baseball has a higher mark, and I’m guessing you could win a lot of bar bets by knowing that the highest K rate in the American League belongs to Scherzer, not Felix Hernandez or Yu Darvish or Justin Verlander.

Of course, you don’t get to such a high ERA by accident, and in Scherzer’s case, there’s some pretty obvious reasons behind that. You can point to his 1.39/9 homer rate, high even for a pitcher who doesn’t have the built-in advantage of Comerica Park, and his .359 BABIP, far above his career mark of .318. The BABIP gap may be a little tough to fully overcome, given the atrocious defense the Tigers roll out behind him on a nightly basis, but everything else is trending in the right direction. Read the rest of this entry »

Adam Wainwright’s last start was a match up with an historically bad offense and it was such a no brainer that he was my starting pitcher pick in “The Game” here on Fangraphs. Seven runs and 11 hits over five innings pitched versus the Pittsburgh Pirates later, I felt rather duped. And yet, I’m still bullish on Adam Wainwright.

Here’s what I know. Between 2007 and 2008, Adam Wainwright was a very good starting pitcher. Between 2009 and 2010, he was great. You wanted Adam Wainwright on your fantasy team, and you wanted him badly. I just know it.

And then we know about elbow surgery.

But despite it being a particularly damning diagnosis in the short term, Tommy John surgery isn’t quite as terrifying as it used to be since we’ve seen so many pitchers return to have successful post-surgery careers. Often times, we see pitchers simply scraping off the rust after spending the better part of a year recovering and rehabbing and not throwing baseballs. But their skills often return.

Read the rest of this entry »

Lance Lynn – Lance started out the season hot, but recently he has been on the decline. Here are his main fantasy stats by month:

Read the rest of this entry »

Sure, it’s a buy-low piece. But what I’m really saying is, trade me Matt Moore. Because I’m buying.

We can start with his strengths, even if they are obvious. His 11.9% swinging strike rate is fourth among qualified starters. Only Cole Hamels, R.A. Dickey and Stephen Strasburg garner more whiffs. That leads to a strikeout per inning, which is extremely valuable from a starter. All from a wicked 95+ mph fastball and a great changeup and curveball combination.

Read the rest of this entry »

Let’s kick off this week’s waiver wire updates with two East division players, an AL pitcher and a NL outfielder…

Franklin Morales | SP, RP | Red Sox | Owned: 20% Yahoo! and 18.6% ESPN

When the Red Sox put Daniel Bard in the rotation, they were supposed to be able to fall back on using him as a reliever if it didn’t work out. Instead, he’s gone to Triple-A and continued to struggle. Morales, 26, has kinda done the opposite. Expectations were relatively low coming into the season, but he pitched very well in a relief role (3.04 ERA and 3.48 FIP in 23.2 IP) before moving into the rotation to take Bard’s spot (2.00 ERA and 0.88 FIP in 18 IP). Those 18 innings as a starter feature 24 strikeouts and just three walks.

Read the rest of this entry »

Carlos Martinez – During a trip to the disabled list for a sore shoulder, yes I said during, Martinez was promoted to Double-A Springfield. While many were perplexed by the decision, I jumped for joy. More Carlos Martinez to watch! After his first start I wondered whether the organization had changed his mechanics since last year. His arm action looked a lot shorter and his arms and legs weren’t gyrating like something out of cirque du soleil. Read the rest of this entry »

If Cincinnati’s Johnny Cueto had managed to pitch just six more innings in a 2011 that started late because of right shoulder inflammation and ended early because of a strained lat, he’d have finished second only to NL Cy Young Award winner Clayton Kershaw with a 2.31 ERA. (Assuming that in those six innings, he pitched to a consistent level of production as he had before, of course.)

Ending up behind only Kershaw and just ahead of Roy Halladay is pretty impressive company, yet I can’t say I was completely buying into Cueto simply based on that. His sparkling 2.31 ERA was hardly backed up by a 3.45 FIP and a 3.90 xFIP; along with declining velocity and strikeout rates, it seemed that Cueto’s nice season was more a mirage of a career-low .249 BABIP than anything else. I believe that prior to the season on another site, I named him my “most overrated” pitcher headed into 2012, figuring that the ERA would likely to return back to his previously established rates.

Three months into the season, Cueto is outdoing himself with a 2.21 ERA despite having his BABIP indeed return to almost exactly his career average, and clearly I couldn’t have been more wrong about him. How is he doing it? Read the rest of this entry »

After turning to veterans to fill in the back end of the rotation, the Padres are now turning youthful Andrew Cashner into a starting pitcher. Like most Padre pitchers, Cashner has been better at home — though he has thrown just 28.1 innings this year.

His home ERA/FIP/xFIP is 2.70/3.47/3.12 compared to 5.40/4.60/3.35 in games away from Petco. While the sample is small, the spread will likely continue, though it should at least somewhat narrow. As a reliever, Cashner boasted heavy strikeout numbers as well as a high walk total. That will likely continue on a lesser extent as a starter. He has been moved in an out of minor league rotations since the start of 2010, so anticipating how his rate stats will look as a starter is somewhat complicated.

What isn’t complicated is that Cashner’s ability to get left-handers out, which will be instrumental to any success he may have as a starter. His .315 wOBA against is not tremendous, but he boasts a higher strikeout-to-walk ratio (2.11) and xFIP (3.59) against lefties than he does against righties, where his marks are 1.59 and 4.05 respectively. Again, this is in just 93.1 career major league innings, but it is certainly a good sign for his sustainability as a starter.

Cashner likely won’t throw 98 out of the rotation as he did in the bullpen, but he will still be a very high velocity pitcher. With his change up becoming a higher quality pitch with more frequent usage, I could envision Cashner being a respectable starter for the rest of the season, with potentially more upside than that.

His three starts in double-A were a great success as he was getting stretched out for the rotation. He is expected to dominate those type of hitters, but a 23-3 strikeout-to-walk ratio including two hit batsmen is certainly a good sign. I picked Cashner up in my 12-team keeper league with close to standard scoring, though my pitching is pretty poor in this league. At this time, if you are looking for pitching on the waiver wire and are having a hard time finding anyone but meddling ~4.00 ERA starters with poor track records, take a flier on Cashner and see if he pans out. I think he can be at least solid, and at worst a solid home spot starter as most of the Padres rotation is.