Yesterday I gave you seven NL pitchers who have fared much better at home and as such should be considered in only their home venues. Today I’ve got six five more from the American League. This strategy is best deployed in mixed leagues, but I broke the list up by leagues just because it would’ve been too huge for one piece.

UPPER TIER

Garrett Richards, LAA (2.28 ERA split) – Richards had one of the worst starts of the year when he went to New York and dropped a 0.7 IP/6 ER turd on fantasy rosters everywhere. That start influences his road work a good bit, but even removing it only gives him a 4.00 ERA on the road. He’s had some good starts on the road, but he has consistently been sharp at home. His 2.53 ERA comes with a 0.99 WHIP and 22% K rate compared to 1.48 and 16% on the road. He’s allowed more than 3 ER just once at home and he still fanned 11 in that game (4 ER v. CLE). The Angels have just 19 home games left this season, one of the lower totals in the league, accounting for 45% of their remaining schedule.

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A common misnomer in fantasy baseball is that the rate stats are tough to move late in the season. The idea is that the denominator of innings gets too big to push the needle substantially with just a month and a half left. While it is true that wholesale changes to your ERA or WHIP this late in the season are unlikely barring some kind of Kris Medlen 2012 or Carlos Carrasco 2014 type players in your rotation, the reason you can still make a significant move is because the categories are often tightly bunched so you don’t necessarily need wholesale changes.

For those curious or who don’t remember the particular, Medlen had a 0.92 ERA in 78.7 IP from August 5th through the end of the 2012 season while Carrasco rejoined the Cleveland rotation on August 10th of last year and put together a killer 10-start run with a 1.30 ERA in 69 IP. Those two won people some titles for sure. I’m sure someone will have a similar kind of electric finish to the season, but trying to guess exactly who is a fool’s errand, but there is an avenue to explore for some potential ERA value. Some pitchers are markedly better at home and spot-starting them exclusively in their friendly confines could yield big returns.

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Rookie hitters are performing better this year than they ever have in the free agency era. Right now, rookie non-pitchers have a 93 weighted runs created plus, one better than in the second-best year for rookie hitters (2006). That’s also impressive because there are only four years in which rookies have managed a wRC+ over 90.

We spend so much time drooling over rookies that this might be a sobering result. The best rookie class of all time is still 7% worse than league average with the stick. You *could* use this to argue that rookies are a bad scene in redraft leagues.

Of course, that number is an overall number. If you focus on the rookies that have done well, they were almost all well-regarded, right?

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This is an updated version of an article posted in 2013.

As we get closer to our league trade deadlines and the effect any individual player will have on our place in the standings gradually diminishes, this time of year represents a final chance to improve our teams. It probably doesn’t need to be stated, but it’s important to reiterate for those still clinging to preseason values. At this point, you need to essentially throw player values out the window and trade for needs based on your position in the various statistical categories. Don’t worry about overpaying if you still expect the trade to net you positive points. Obviously, you want to make a trade that brings back the greatest value in return and gain you the most standings points. But if the best return available to you is a so-called $15 player for your $25 player, it’s still easily worth accepting if you expect that it gains you points.

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One of the most fun parts of trade season is the trickle-down effect of the departed players and because relievers are the most easily moved assets, that generally leads to closers having the most turnover once the trade dust settles. We’re still a day away from the deadline, but this week’s flurry of action has already changed four situations in the ninth inning. Let’s assess the candidates to assume those newly opened closer’s roles in Philadelphia, Atlanta, Oakland, and Detroit.

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Back on June 18th, we hit the waiver wire in search of some arms and came up with six names to consider. We’re headed back to the wire again, but first let’s check in on the six pack of guys recommended last month.

A mixed bag of results with DeSclafani and Young really plummeting, Latos and Hahn (injured, unfortunately) pitching really well, Hendricks holding a great WHIP with a passable ERA and Gallardo giving a strong ERA to counter his god-awful WHIP. Of course, if there wasn’t a good bit of risk tied to these guys, they wouldn’t have been on the wire in the first place.

Let’s see if we can find some more gold or at least a bunch of cool silver. The threshold these guys have to pass through to be included is to be on rosters in fewer than 50% of ESPN and Yahoo! leagues. I don’t have a firm baseline for CBS leagues mainly because I don’t think they have a place where you can scroll through players with all the ownership rates right there, so I get my pool of potential pitchers by scouring ESPN/Yahoo! roster rates and then check the rates on CBS. If someone is north of 75% at CBS, I usually pass (although Gallardo was 77% there in June’s waiver piece), but ideally they are at 65% or lower there.

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As we fire up the second half – albeit an inequitable one with teams averaging just 73 games left (three teams as high as 76) – we certainly feel like we know some new things. It certainly feels like the emergence of Manny Machado and Nolan Arenado is real. They’ve had the talent and pedigree while showing glimpses of this greatness at the big league level and this year they appear to have busted out. That said, it is still just some 80-odd games out of 377 for Machado and 329 for Arenado so they are hardly guaranteed to stay at this level.

We’re always looking for value and surplus in this game. During draft season, Arenado was being picked as a top 50 pick because many thought he could produce as a top 20 pick (he has). Machado was drafted as a top 120 pick with the idea that he could become a top 50 pick (how’s 7th overall?). We don’t have another draft season to shuffle the deck at the All-Star break which is why I’m more concerned with the other end today, the guys who are struggling relative to their established track record.

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As part of some midseason RotoGraphs shenanigans organized by Brad Johnson, the Birchwood Brothers (aka Michael and Dan Smirlock) invited me into the Birchwood Derby, a midseason re-draft league. A post-draft recap seems appropriate, mostly because this was my first midseason re-draft ever.

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Mike Montgomery is on fire. He has risen from the ashes of old Baseball America Prospect Handbooks to all of a sudden become a key piece of the Mariners’ rotation. Podhorzer tried to get you on board a month ago. Did you listen? You didn’t, I knew it. Well, you missed 38 innings of a 1.64 ERA and 0.89 WHIP including back-to-back shutouts. So the best is almost certainly behind him, but it’s not like he has to maintain a 1.64 ERA or he can’t be picked up. He could reasonably add two runs to his ERA and still be a plus asset delivering quality innings.

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Continuing with my Hail Mary Pitchers from last week, here are the final two categories:

Young Unknowns

The Young Unknowns are the shiny new toys who are having some success this year, but carry risk due to a lack of track record. That volatility could definitely burn you, but when you’re in Hail Mary mode, that upside is desirable enough to take on the risk. These guys won’t necessarily come cheaply because they aren’t failing, but they will usually still be cheaper than what a peak version of him with a track record would cost.

Danny Salazar, CLE – Salazar has so many appealing aspects to his profile that it seems ludicrous to find him on any kind of list like this, but his ERA is now at 4.06 after his start on June 23rd against Detroit (4.3 IP/6 ER). He has absolutely devastating stuff: 30% K rate, 6% BB rate, 46% GB rate, and 13% SwStr rate.

These are all in line with his work in 162 IP from 2013-14, but his primary issue from those seasons – a 1.1 HR/9 – has been even worse this year at 1.4 HR/9. His 16% HR/FB rate is a career-high and could be ready to move closer to the 11% league mark. He also cut his flyball rate from 42% to 36% so the volume of homers should definitely drop if he gets that HR/FB rate in check.

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