Last year’s amazing first half and full season performance supported by luck metrics that were unsustainable caused Ubaldo Jimenez to be overvalued in 2011 drafts. Of course, although many expected some regression, likely no one could have predicted an ERA of nearly 4.50 and a mid-season trade into the American League. For some context, let’s compare his 2011 skills with another skill set:
With the regular season ending on a Wednesday, many leagues are having a 10-day week to end the year. Check your league’s rules to see how you are accounting for the last week! This list will assume the 10-day week.
Trevor Cahill – In 2010, Cahill lived a charmed life with a .236 BABIP. Fortune smiled upon Cahill once again as he began this year 6-0 with a .257 BABIP. But since May 15th, Cahill is 5-13 with a 5.33 ERA and a .318 BABIP. For the season, Cahill now has a 4.32 ERA and a .299 BABIP. And the only reason his ERA is that low is because of his home park, where Cahill’s ERA is over two and a half runs lower than his road mark. Cahill has one home and one road start, but his home game is against TEX. After handling the Rangers twice during his 6-0 start, Cahill has allowed 10 ER in 20 IP in his last three starts against them. Give Cahill a spot on the bench this week.
Edwin Jackson – By both FIP and xFIP, Jackson has pitched worse since his trade to the Cardinals but his results have been better, as he sports a 5-2 record with a 3.24 ERA in the National League. Jackson has enjoyed Busch Stadium, where he is 3-0 with a 2.41 ERA in six starts. Overall, he has eight Quality Starts in 10 games for St. Louis, with only a poor outing in Milwaukee where he allowed 4 HR dragging down his numbers. This week he gets home starts against the Mets and Cubs. Get Jackson into your lineup this week.
Mat Latos – While he has not pitched as well as last year, a 3.62 xFIP is still a good number and should have resulted in more than 7 Wins in 29 starts. In his last nine games, Latos has a 3.00 ERA with 15 BB and 55 Ks in 60 IP yet is only 2-4 in that span. Some might be scared off from starting Latos due to the road start in Colorado, but he has been decent in two starts this year in Coors (11 IP, 5 ER, .729 OPS against). Ride the hot hand and hope Latos breaks into the win column in one of his two starts this week.
Michael Pineda – After struggling through a rough patch right around the All-Star break in which he had a 7.64 ERA with 8 HR in 33 IP, Pineda has rebounded with four straight Quality Starts, with just 2 HR in 26 IP. The matchups are favorable for Pineda, as he has a road start in MIN and a home start versus OAK. The Twins and Athletics are the two bottom teams in the AL in HR. If you jumped off the bandwagon after his poor stretch, it’s time to get Pineda back in the lineup.
Javier Vazquez – When Vazquez followed up last year’s 5.32 ERA with a 3-6, 7.09 ERA start to 2011, it looked like he was done as a useful fantasy player, and perhaps as an MLB pitcher, too. But from mid-June forward, he has been a strong pitcher. In that span, covering 16 games and 101.2 IP, Vazquez has 18 BB, 93 Ks and 9 HR. In his rough stretch to start the year, Vazquez had 31 BB and 11 HR in 66 IP. On his May 15th start, Vazquez averaged 88.4 with his fastball and had just 3 swinging strikes in 90 pitches thrown. In his last outing, he averaged 91.3 with his fastball and had 10 swinging strikes in 113 pitches.
He’s a different pitcher now than he was earlier in the season. Vazquez has two home starts this week and he has a 3.61 xFIP with a 9.25 K/9 at Sun Life Stadium. And the pitching matchups are favorable, too. It all adds up to having Vazquez in the starting lineup.
Other scheduled two-start pitchers in Week 25 are listed below. Please remember that these are projected pitchers and changes can and will happen between now and next week.
Lee, Sabathia, Halladay, Haren, Kershaw, Shields, Weaver, Lincecum, Wilson, Kennedy, Greinke, Lester, D. Hudson, T. Hudson, Marcum, Carpenter, Bumgarner, Jimenez, E. Santana, Worley, Scherzer, Romero, G. Gonzalez, Garza, Fister, Beckett, Hellickson, Oswalt, W. Rodriguez, A. Sanchez, Vogelsong, Lewis, Kuroda, J. Garcia, Holland, Lohse, Nova, Chacin, Buehrle, Lilly, Niemann, Nolasco, Floyd, Ogando, Collmenter, Stauffer, Dickey, Colon, Porcello, Morrow, McCarthy, Luebke, Norris, Lowe, Humber, Harden, Capuano, Burnett, Lackey, Minor, Hughes, Myers, Bailey, Davis, Carmona, Morton, Wells, Karstens, Arroyo, Britton, Westbrook, Vargas, Pavano, Cecil, Lannan, Guthrie, Alvarez, Surkamp, Narveson, Pelfrey, Pineiro, Volquez, Miley, Eveland, Williams, White, Penny, Paulino, Beavan, Huff, Hunter, Millwood, Sosa, Happ, Delgado, Volstad, Wang, LeBlanc, Simon, Lopez, Gomez, Furbush, Slowey, Ohlendorf, Milone, Cook, Swarzak, McGowan, Hendriks, Diamond, Coleman, Schwinden, Axelrod.
Check back Sunday night for an update of two-start pitchers.
Now I want to provide some accountability and check in and see how previous recommendations turned out. There needs to be a two-week lag, since last week’s pitchers have not completed their second start yet. So here are Week 23 pitchers and how they fared.
Collmenter – Advised to sit. 6 Ks, 6.10 ERA, 1.452 WHIP, 10.1 IP, 7 ER
Garcia – Advised to start. 4 Ks, 14.09 ERA, 2.478 WHIP, 7.2 IP, 12 ER
Harden – Advised to sit. 10 Ks, 7.20 ERA, 1.800 WHIP, 5 IP, 4 ER
Vazquez – Advised to start. 2 W, 14 Ks, 0.69 ERA, 0.846 WHIP, 14 IP, 3 ER
Willis – Advised to start. 8 Ks, 5.14 ERA, 1.571 WHIP, 7 IP, 4 ER
The Kansas City Royals, as you well know by now, are chock-full of talented youngsters. It wasn’t more than a couple seasons ago that one of those talented youngsters was Luke Hochevar, their first round pick in 2006. And while many predicted big things for the lanky kid out of the University of Tennessee, he has quickly become the captain for the quad-A starting pitching corps as his talent in the minors simply never translated to the major leagues.
2011 was looking much the same for Hochevar, but something peculiar started happening just before the All-Star Break.
Today I will take a look at another pitcher who given his current statistics, will likely be undervalued in 2012. Of course, there’s always the chance our pitcher in the spotlight finishes off the season with shutouts, but we’ll assume his stats change little through season’s end.
Not a lot has gone to plan for the Cubs this season. By the All-Star break, they were out of contact with the division leaders and nearly 20 games below .500 having failed to finish any of the season’s first three months at or better than even keeled.
Their mess started early when Andrew Cashner and Randy Wells hit the disabled list on back-to-back days in early April, but Wells’ return 53 days later didn’t help matters much at all. In his 11 starts from his return on May 28 to the end of July, Wells gave the Cubs just two quality starts and the team went just 3-8 when he was on the mound. Opponents hit .311/.370/.481 for an OPS of .851, or roughly the same OPS as Adrian Beltre or Todd Helton.
Since Aug. 1, Wells has looked for all the world like a completely different pitcher. The Cubs have gone 7-1 in his starts, and opponents are hitting just .213/.257/.366 for an OPS of .623, or somewhere between the OPS of Jason Bartlett and Alex Gonzalez. It’s clear that the Cubs prefer this version of Wells, and owners do as well, but is Dr. Jekyll here to stay or is Mr. Hyde waiting in the wings?
Hyde, you’re on in 5.
Wells’ WHIP in August was 0.91 because one of the lowest BABIPs I’ve seen in a while: .181, which is so obviously unsustainable, it hardly bears mentioning. He induced a large amount of infield flies — a season-best 13.2 percent — a 13.2 percent increase from his July rate. Wells is a groundball pitcher at heart and that’s not going to change in the season’s last month. As he gets back to inducing grounders and his BABIP returns to non-ridiculous levels, his results should normalize as well. He isn’t as bad as he looked in July or as good as he looked in August, but somewhere pleasantly between.
The Braves like Mike Minor, with good reason, and they absolutely had designs on a playoff run this season, but it seems fair to guess that they didn’t think Minor would be contributing to that goal quite to this level. Injuries are the great equalizer and the Braves are quite fortunate that they had Minor and Brandon Beachy waiting in the wings to pick up the slack for Tommy Hanson and Jair Jurrjens.
In a purely baseball sense, Minor may not be the Braves’ first choice for the playoff roster, but he’s a totally usable piece. He can either start a non-elimination game in the latter part of a series or he can be plugged in, in long relief if a starter clearly doesn’t have it early in a game. He’s succeeded in giving the Braves winnable games nearly ever time he takes the mound; they’re 5-1 in his starts since he rejoined the rotation on Aug. 3. For a supplementary starter, that’s as good as anyone can reasonably expect.
From a fantasy perspective, Minor’s biggest weakness right now isn’t category specific. He’s not giving up a ton of runs, he’s not allowing a ton of base-runners, and he is notching a reasonable number of strikeouts, but he’s just not going deep into games. Minor hasn’t seen the seventh inning since his recall, which means the 3-4 runs he’s giving up in nearly every outing are hitting his ERA harder than they ought to be.
In NL-Only and even in deep mixed, I like Minor as a back-end starter, but I’m getting the sense that his ability to deliver quality outings and the Braves’ performance in those starts is artificially inflating his value. Right now, he is absolutely more valuable to the Braves than he is to your fantasy team.
With pitchers being shut down to prevent injuries, there are a few pitchers (< 50% ownership rate) looking to coming back this season. Last week, I looked at 2 of the pitchers, Scott Baker (20% owned) and Johan Santana (8% owned). They would have the same opportunity of contributing as the two pitchers listed today, but with a better chance of being available in a league
All owned numbers are from ESPN.
Clay Buchholz (back- 43% owned) – Clay is making progress for a return back to Boston. With the current disrepair of the Red Sox pitching staff, I could see them making a larger than normal push to get Clay back into the rotation.
He is just beginning to throw from the mound, so a return is still up in the air. I see him getting one or two starts to see if he is ready for the post season. He may be a source of a win or two with the help of Boston’s offense.
His talent level will be tough to predict for just a couple of games. He put up around 6.4 K/9 and 3.4 BB/9 during the time he has thrown this season. I would not be surprised to see his K’s down a bit because of being rushed back into pitching and his back, which don’t heal easily, was the spot of injury. Depending on the risk an owner is willing to take, he may be an option over the last week or so.
Francisco Liriano (shoulder – 41% owned) – Francisco is trying to come back to pitch a bit this season. No exact return time has been reported, so when or if he returns is still unknown. Like Buchholz, his ability to help much over the last few games is limited. His best usage may be for a team in the finals of a H2H league that has lost some starting pitching recently.
Before going on the DL, he average 7.4 K/9 and 5.0 BB/9. These numbers are off from 2010 when he had 9.4 K/9 and 2.7 BB/9. It seems his ERA/FIP/xFIP follow his fastball speed:
2005 (94.8 MPH): 5.70/3.32/1.99
2006 (94.7 MPH): 2.16/2.55/2.38
2008 (90.9 MPH): 3.91/3.87/4.25
2009 (91.7 MPH): 5.80/4.87/4.48
2010 (93.7 MPH): 3.62/2.66/2.95
2011 (91.8 MPH): 4.84/4.55/4.47
If he makes one start, an owner may look to see where his fastball stands. If it is averaging less than 92 MPH, you make look at other options. If there is any report from the minors of his speed, I would subtract 2 MPH from it. Usually only the top speed is reported, so the average will be less.
Liriano may or may not be heading back to the Twins. I would not consider him a top SP candidate, but he could be one of the few options left this late in the season.
Let’s take a look at a pair of two young AL East players that can provide a quick boost for your team down the stretch…
The 2011 season has not even ended yet, but I am already excited by the variety of players I may potentially roster next year at a discount. Many owners come into their drafts with a target list of players that they are hoping to acquire. To be honest, I do not understand this at all for single-season leaguers. All I am interested in is value and do not really care what name is attached to my projected stats and resulting valuation. Without getting further off topic, I did a quick sort by SIERA and was surprised to see Jonathon Niese’s name ranked 18th, right behind Tim Lincecum.
Here is the latest update to Week 24 two-start pitchers. Again this list is subject to change going forward.
Pitchers not listed on last update: Greinke, Lilly, Danks, Willis, Detwiler, Hand
Pitchers no longer scheduled for two starts: Cueto, Peavy, Eveland, Wang.
Let’s take a look at John Danks. On May 29th, Danks allowed 9 ER in 4 IP to send his ERA to 5.25 and his record to 0-8. Since then he’s 6-3 with a 3.09 ERA. Over those last 13 games, Danks has 76 Ks and 17 BB in 81.2 IP.
For the season, Danks has a 3.77 xFIP, which is the lowest mark he’s ever recorded. His ERA is now down to 4.09, higher than what it has been recently, but essentially equal to his lifetime 3.98 mark. It’s been a tremendous in-season turnaround.
Danks pitched okay the first month of the season, with four Quality Starts in six games with 36 Ks in 39 IP. It was May when Danks really hit the skids. In five starts that month, he had a 6.89 ERA with 14 BB, 10 Ks and 6 HR in 31.1 IP. In the first two months of the season, Danks allowed 11 HR in 70.1 IP. He gave up 84 fly balls in that span and had a 13.10 HR/FB rate.
In his last 13 games, Danks has surrendered 6 HR in 81.2 IP. He’s allowed 85 fly balls in that span for a 7.06 HR/FB rate. For the season Danks now has a 10.1 HR/FB rate, almost exactly equal to his career mark of 10.0.
We also see that Danks had trouble with his cutter early in the year. In 2009, Danks’ cutter was 19.1 runs above average while in 2010 it was 10.8 runs above average. In the month of May, Danks’ cutter had a -2.8 run value. Starting in June, Danks has had a positive run value with his cutter each month of the season.
Danks has a home game against Detroit and a road game against Kansas City this week. He has an ERA two runs higher on the road this year, with 76 IP both at home and on the road. But Danks’ road xFIP is 3.40, compared to a 4.13 home xFIP.
The White Sox lefty was knocked around in his last two outings, including a road game in Detroit, which has prompted fantasy owners to own him in just 51.8 percent of ESPN leagues and to start him in just 47 percent of CBS Sports leagues.
This year Danks is 1-2 with a 6.48 ERA against the Tigers in three games and 16.2 IP. Against the Royals he’s 1-0 with a 1.38 ERA in two games and 13 IP. Combined, he has 34 Ks in 29.2 IP against these teams.
Everyone is happy when one of their pitchers is scheduled for two starts in a week. But that is not always a good thing. Here are five pitchers you may be on the fence about (or should be on the fence) putting into your lineup for Week 24.
Brandon Beachy – After getting lit up in his first start after the All-Star break, Beachy has gone nine starts with a .267 ERA and a 1.019 WHIP. He continues to strike batters out at an impressive clip, with a 10.17 K/9 in that span. This week he gets two home starts and Beachy has done a very nice job keeping the ball in the park at Turner Field. In road games, he’s allowed 11 HR in 64 IP while at home it’s 5 HR in 62 IP. The matchups are favorable, as he goes up against FLA and NYM, so make sure Beachy is active.
Bruce Chen – While the matchups are favorable for Chen this week, with home starts against MIN and CHW, he has been beat up in his last two starts, as he’s allowed 10 ER in his last 11.1 IP. The common narrative is that after bouncing around for a number of years, Chen has finally learned how to pitch, evidenced by his 22-14 record the past two years for a poor KC team. But in those years, Chen has a 4.79 and 4.70 xFIP, right in line with his lifetime 4.71 xFIP. Put him on your bench.
Dillon Gee – At the end of June, Gee was 8-1 with a 3.32 ERA. Since then he’s gone 4-4 with a 5.89 ERA. He’s surrendered 12 HR in 62.2 IP in that span and has just a 1.53 K/BB ratio. Gee’s allowed 4 or more ER in 6 of his last 11 starts. Regression has caught up to Gee, who now has a 4.42 ERA and a 4.46 xFIP. Gee helped keep the Mets in the fringe of the Wild Card race the first three months of the season, but he’s not worth starting at this point of the season.
Aaron Harang – In his last four games, Harang has recorded fourth straight Quality Starts, doing a nice job of righting his season after he hit a mini-rough patch just after the All-Star break. In those four games, Harang has 24 Ks in 26 IP. He’s pitching well and has favorable matchups this week, as he squares off against Eric Surkamp and Joe Saunders, so make sure Harang is in your starting lineup.
Rick Porcello – With a 4.87 ERA, the tendency is to dismiss Porcello’s 13 Wins. But his xFIP is nearly a run lower at 4.03 and Porcello has done a nice job of improving his walk rate in the second half of the season, as he’s allowed just 9 BB in 59.1 IP. However, he’s been a bit unlucky in both his BABIP (.325) and HR rate (14.29) since the All-Star break. The other thing to keep in mind with Porcello is how he dominates RHB (.633 OPS) and struggles versus LHB (.881 OPS). He faces CHW and OAK this week, with neither team being a lefty-hitting powerhouse. Get Porcello in the lineup this week.
Other scheduled two-start pitchers in Week 24 are listed below. Please remember that these are projected pitchers and changes can and will happen between now and next week.
Verlander, F. Hernandez, Cain, Hamels, Price, Cueto, Masterson, G. Gonzalez, Oswalt, Billingsley, Dempster, Niemann, Lohse, Harrison, Peavy, Dickey, Saunders, Moscoso, Myers, Britton, Surkamp, Pineiro, Eveland, Wakefield, Lincoln, Wang, Rogers, Volstad, Lopez.
Check back Sunday night for an update of two-start pitchers.
Now I want to provide some accountability and check in and see how previous recommendations turned out. There needs to be a two-week lag, since last week’s pitchers have not completed their second start yet. So here are Week 22 pitchers and how they fared.
Buehrle – Advised to start. W, 8 Ks, 5.73 ER, 1.636 WHIP, 11 IP, 7 ER
Cecil – Advised to sit. 7 Ks, 6.00 ERA, 1.333 WHIP, 12 IP, 8 ER
Davis – Advised to start. W, 8 Ks, 7.36 ERA, 1.909 WHIP, 11 IP, 9 ER
Fister – Advised to start. 6 Ks, 1.17 ERA, 0.522 WHIP, 7.2 IP, 1 ER
Kuroda – Advised to start. W, 3 Ks, 6.00 ERA, 1.500 WHIP, 6 IP, 4 ER
