Roto Riteup: April 26, 2013

The NFL draft took place last night, at least according to twitter. While that is all well and good, we are on to more important things than 22 year old football player. Things like 22 year old baseball players.

On today’s agenda:
1. Oswaldo Arcia to get more playing time
2. The return of John Lackey
3. Domonic Brown, heating up?

Oswaldo Arcia to get more playing time
Now with the backing of Minnesota Twins manager Ron Gardenhire, 22-year-old rookie Oswaldo Arcia should be plenty of playing time with the big league club. At the time of his call up, Arcia was tearing up Triple-A with a .394/.474/.727 line in 38 plate appearances. Though he was pinch-hit for yesterday, Arcia has already made starts at LF, RF, and DH and figures to continue to do so. He’s struggled thus far — albeit in 21 PA’s — adjusting to major league pitching, but with Aaron Hicks scuffling, Arcia’s leash may be longer than what we could normally expect. For redraft leagues, Arcia isn’t ownable just yet, but for those of you in dynasty or keeper formats, keep an eye on him or even scoop him up if you have a deep bench. Arcia is widely available in CBS, Yahoo!, and ESPN formats.

The return of John Lackey
After a successful 50-pitch bullpen session yesterday, John Lackey is on course to start on Sunday against the Houston Astros. As far as a favorable match up to come back to, one can’t ask for better than the Astros. Though they’ve scored their share of runs, the Astros have the highest strikeout% in MLB and lead the league with 207 team strikeouts. Second place is the Cincinnati Reds at 187 team strikeouts, and the Reds have recorded over 100 more PA’s than the Astros. For those of you in weekly leagues, the present author is torn on Lackey. While Lackey’s Sunday start is certainly appealing, his second start of the week — assuming he makes it — would be at the Texas Rangers. Being the degenerate gambler that he is, the author would roll the dice and start Lackey this week. Lackey is available in over 85% of ESPN, Yahoo! and CBS leagues.

Domonic Brown, heating up?
Prior to yesterday’s 2-for-4 game, Domonic Brown’s .250 BABIP and .214 batting average looked gruesome. Although one game’s performance won’t change much, Brown now has back-to-back two hit games under his belt. To call this a hot streak would be a very liberal interpretation of the phrase, however his SwStr%, Swing%, and Contact% are all league average or better. Brown is seeing the ball well, at least according to his 10% BB% and 17.5% strikeout rate, both of which are better than league average. Bear in mind that we are still within the realm of small sample size, however the signal-to-noise ratio is steadily climbing.

Brown has lost a lot of luster since his prospect days, but with secure playing time — he still doesn’t have 600 career PA’s, including this year — and a solid approach at the plate, Brown is someone to keep an eye on, if not pick up outright. Brown is owned in just 24% of Yahoo! leagues and 21% of ESPN leagues. In CBS formats, Brown is already owned in 72% of all leagues, but you could perhaps try to buy low on his season to date.