Other than perhaps Baltimore’s Dylan Bundy, there’s maybe no pitching prospect in the minors more highly touted than Arizona’s Trevor Bauer, the third pick in last year’s draft. After being pulled from his Triple-A start following only 50 pitches on Sunday, Bauer is reportedly on his way to the bigs to start for Arizona against the Braves on Thursday, kicking off what is sure to be years of me confusing him with Diamondback rotation mate Trevor Cahill.

Bauer comes up to replace the recently disabled Joe Saunders in an Arizona rotation which is suddenly in need of help. Cahill’s been fine, and Wade Miley has been a shocking success story, but Daniel Hudson has been injured & ineffective while Ian Kennedy has been unable to recreate his magical 2011. That’s after Josh Collmenter flamed out early in the season, and with Saunders on the shelf, there’s great opportunity here for Bauer to take advantage of.

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Here is a look at some data for Jurrjens and Oswalt, who both returned to the majors last Friday night.

(Ownership rates are ESPN and then Yahoo!)

Jair Jurrjens (11%, 21%) – Jurrjens started the season in the Braves rotation, but was sent down to the minors after 4 starts and a 9.37 ERA. While in AAA, he made 10 starts and struggled with 5.18 ERA, 4.7 K/9 and a 1.43 WHIP. Due to injuries with other Braves starting pitchers, he was forced back into their rotation. On Friday night, he had a good outing with 4 K, 1 BB, 1 HBP, 3 H and only 1 Run.

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On Saturday, I identified a couple of players who fantasy owners might consider buying high on. I purposely ignored players who were expected to be top guys to begin with, but were having even better season than projected (David Wright, Adam Jones), as I preferred to look at more of the cheaper players with surprising performances. Similarly, the sell low guys will be players that were expected to generate high dollar values. I think it’s tougher to recommend selling low on a player than buying high, because we always preach patience and believe that a player will bounce back to his established level of performance, rather than weight the first 3 months of the season so heavily. At the risk of being very wrong…

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We are all familiar with the practice of buying low. Over the first couple of months of the season, nearly all of my trade offers involve attempting to acquire a player who has started off slowly. But have you ever bought high? Did the thought even cross your mind to target Jose Bautista in 2010 after he finished the month of May with 16 home runs? Probably not. But sometimes it could be a good idea because the other owner may be thinking he is selling high and you still get the player for cheaper then he is ultimately worth. But of course, this is a much riskier type of trade and so most shy away from it. If you have the cajones, here are some players who may be worth buying high.

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Every year, at about this time, I like to go back and check in on certain strategies employed on draft day and see how they have served me thus far.  Is it a strategy worth employing again?  What tweaks to it are needed for the next time, if indeed there is a next time?  One strategy in particular, the one that seems to always spur the most discussion, that deserves to be re-visited is the one where I, because of the incredible depth at pitching, draft a beast-like offense first and wait until closer to the middle rounds to pick up my starters.  Nothing but bats to start things off and somewhere around the 10th or 11th round, I grab my first pitcher. Read the rest of this entry »

Through the first two-plus months of the year, Toronto had been fortunate enough to have one of the healthiest rotations in the big leagues. With the exception of one Joel Carreno start in the third game of the season, the quintet of Ricky Romero / Brandon Morrow / Henderson Alvarez / Kyle Drabek / Drew Hutchison had started every Blue Jays game through June 16. Consistency isn’t quite the same as effectiveness, of course, since Alvarez & Drabek were each cruising along with ugly FIP scores over 5.50, but nonetheless, few teams had made it that far into the season with such a low turnover in the rotation.

That situation fell apart completely in the span of four days last week, as Morrow (oblique), Drabek (elbow), and Hutchison (elbow) each hurt themselves and landed on the disabled list. Drabek will have Tommy John surgery and will be out until well into 2013; Hutchison’s fate is yet to be decided but a zipper of his own hasn’t been ruled out. Neither had much fantasy relevance, but the loss of Morrow for a month or more is acute, as he’d evolved into one of the better starters in the game, most recently ranked as the #20 overall starter on the latest Yahoo! leaderboards.

With the trio gone, Toronto suddenly has to fill 60% of their rotation. Let’s look at who’s left standing and who is now in line for opportunity; you might want to take the very young and very old out of the room before continuing, because it’s not pretty…

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Injuries and or ineffectiveness always leads to lots of turnover in starting rotations. Since new pitchers are always getting an opportunity to perform, there seems to be an endless stream of guys to consider picking up, especially in deep leagues. Here are a couple of the pitchers who have either just returned to the Majors or are getting their first taste.

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Conclusions first: Those who drafted Zack Greinke didn’t do so to have him sitting on their bench for half of his starts. Those who have invested either the draft pick or the talent it would take in order to get him via trade, should be getting the full value out of him and starting him every time the Brewers give him the ball, because even when he’s not pitching well, he’s still seldom that far below average. His two worst starts of the season happen to have come on the road: His 3.2 IP, 8 ER effort in Chicago and his 2.1 IP, 7 ER shelling at the hands of the Diamondbacks were both aberrations even for his road struggles. While he hasn’t set the world alight in his other sojourns away from Milwaukee, he’s hardly pitched the Brewers out of those games.

Still…it’s unusual that Greinke has been so much worse on the road than he has been at Miller Park, right? Read the rest of this entry »

Two youngsters this week, one a corner bat off to a dreadful start and another a starting pitcher yet to throw a big league inning…

Ike Davis | 1B | Mets | Owned: 38% Yahoo! and 27.0% ESPN

Things seem to be slowly coming around for Davis, who at -0.8 WAR, is no longer the worst player in baseball (Brennan Boesch at -1.1 WAR). He has a neat little eight-game hitting streak going that includes a monster three games against the Rays — 6-for-11 with a double, a homer, three walks, and two strikeouts — and has raised his OPS nearly 100 points. More importantly, his batted ball profile is starting to look like a power hitter’s…

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Last week, I decided to compare the SIERA marks of starting pitchers over the last 30 days with what they posted in April. The idea here was to identify potential RoS breakout candidates whose ERAs still might be hiding major improvement over the last month. Today I will look at the opposite side of the coin, those starters whose skills have declined over the last month. These pitchers might still have good ERAs and may still command a nice return in trade.

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