Roto Riteup: August 24, 2012

I’m making it rain this morning, at least when it comes to fantasy baseball opinions!

• In his longest outing with the Toronto Blue Jays, J.A. Happ pitched 7.1 innings of one run ball. He struck out seven, unfortunately he also walked three. This makes excellent back-to-back outings for Happ now, as his August 17 start was six innings of single run action with eight strikeouts. I wouldn’t go touting Happ for the Cy Young just yet, but this is at least encouraging. To see him have these consecutive starts against the Texas and Detroit offenses is cause for even more celebration. He could be a sneaky add late in the year. Happ is available in about 95% of ESPN and Yahoo! formats.

• Eno Sarris just noted how good Jon Jay is at stealing, but have you noticed how good he is at hitting? Well, at least recent hitting. Over the past 14 days Jay has hit a torrid .362 with a homer, eight runs and six RBI’s. He also chipped in three steals in that time frame. With last night’s two hit performance, he has four straight multi-hit games. He is center field eligible and playing regularly. There isn’t really a reason to not own him right now. His ESPN ownership is a hair above 50%, but his Yahoo! rating is still a much-too-low 25%.

• After an excellent three-for-six game last night, Chris Iannetta is showing signs of life. In his past five games he has eight hits and four RBI’s. Even with this recent boost to his batting average, home run power is mostly eluding him. His .189 ISO is only superficially different from his career .195 career ISO, but his fantasy owners still must be disappointed. Iannetta was coming off of a four year period (2008-11) where he averaged 14+ homers per year. It’s okay that he doesn’t hit too many homers if you happen to play in an OBP league and need a catcher for the stretch run. Iannetta is owned in just 5% of Yahoo! leagues and not even 1% of ESPN leagues.

• Stephen Drew finally got his first hit(s) as a member of the Oakland A’s yesterday afternoon. He had himself a 2-3 day with a walk and a strikeout. He did pop a double for one of his hits, so hopefully we (and by we I mean A’s fans and Drew owners) can see some more of that power. Many words have been spoken about Drew over the past few days so I won’t go too in-depth here. I’ll just highlight the fact that he is available in over 80% of both ESPN and Yahoo! leagues.

For those of you who play daily fantasy games like FanGraphs: The Game, or just like to stream players, here are a couple matchups you may be able to exploit.

A Pitcher for Today: Ben Sheets at SF
Ben Sheets is pitching like it’s 2007 and he’s in a favorable ball park.

A Pitcher for Tomorrow: Brandon McCarthy at TB
McCarthy likes FanGraphs. And he’s one hellova pitcher when healthy.

A Hitter for Today: David Murphy vs MIN (Samuel Deduno)
Murphy has been excellent this season and Deduno has allowed more walks than strikeouts.