Roto Riteup: June 1st, 2012

by
June 1, 2012

If you’re reading this at work then you only have but a few short hours before being released to the weekend. If you’re reading this in pajamas at noon, then I am jealous of you. Today’s Roto Riteup didn’t have a large quantity of games to pick from, but the quality of the games was high.

• According to the box score, Bud Norris was throwing a beach ball at the Colorado Rockies yesterday. The good news is that Norris had a 10.8 K/9. The bad news is that he only lasted an inning and two thirds. It was his second start in a row where he failed to go five innings, but the prior nine starts were all of average to excellent quality. As it stands right now, Norris currently has the highest strike out and the lowest walk rates of any season in the majors. He currently has a better K/BB, ERA and WHIP than Tim Lincecum and Yovani Gallardo to name a couple. I doubt he’s available in your league, but if for some reason he is, grab him.

• Another player in the Rockies/Astros game that is setting season highs is Carlos Gonzalez. CarGo isn’t a stranger to impressive offensive numbers, but as of right now his OBP is 25 points higher than his best single season and his SLG is 55 points higher than any previous best. His skill set is deep and varied, as his 14 homers are impressive and are his eight steals to zero caught stealing so far. His wOBA in Coors Field this year is an absurd .515 (as of this writing) compared against a very human, albeit very good, road wOBA of .357. If he continues to improve against left-handed pitching then the (already high) ceiling of his talents would be blown off.

• Last night Jarrod Saltalamacchia hit his 10th home run in just 136 plate appearances. For the season Salty is hitting an impressive .281/.316/.594. If you happen to play in an OBP league then he comes a little less valuable, but overall Salty is swinging the bat well. Of catchers with at least 130 PA’s, he has the most homers and ranks in the top 10 of runs, AVG and just outside the top 10 of RBI’s. He usually sits against left-handed pitching, but you can’t expect a catcher to play every day anyways. I can over look his platoon splits. He’s owned in just 47% of Yahoo! and 26% of ESPN formats. Although Salty doesn’t have a Mike Napoli 2011 season in him, he is still a undervalued fantasy team member.

• Dexter Fowler managed to get a hit, draw two walks and steal a base last night. How he is only owned in 55% of Yahoo! leagues and 36% of ESPN leagues I will never know. He’s sitting at .282/.382/.573 for the season. Do some math and meet me back here in a second. Yes. That is correct. Dexter Fowler currently has an ISO of almost .300. That won’t continue for the entire year, but he does have eight home runs on the year already compared to a previous single season high of nine in 2008 – down in Double-A ball. He now has five stolen bases and zero caught stealing too. I don’t really know what else to say to advocate Fowler as worthy of being owned. Look at those numbers!

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.

You Aren't a FanGraphs Member
It looks like you aren't yet a FanGraphs Member (or aren't logged in). We aren't mad, just disappointed.
We get it. You want to read this article. But before we let you get back to it, we'd like to point out a few of the good reasons why you should become a Member.
1. Ad Free viewing! We won't bug you with this ad, or any other.
2. Unlimited articles! Non-Members only get to read 10 free articles a month. Members never get cut off.
3. Dark mode and Classic mode!
4. Custom player page dashboards! Choose the player cards you want, in the order you want them.
5. One-click data exports! Export our projections and leaderboards for your personal projects.
6. Remove the photos on the home page! (Honestly, this doesn't sound so great to us, but some people wanted it, and we like to give our Members what they want.)
7. Even more Steamer projections! We have handedness, percentile, and context neutral projections available for Members only.
8. Get FanGraphs Walk-Off, a customized year end review! Find out exactly how you used FanGraphs this year, and how that compares to other Members. Don't be a victim of FOMO.
9. A weekly mailbag column, exclusively for Members.
10. Help support FanGraphs and our entire staff! Our Members provide us with critical resources to improve the site and deliver new features!
We hope you'll consider a Membership today, for yourself or as a gift! And we realize this has been an awfully long sales pitch, so we've also removed all the other ads in this article. We didn't want to overdo it.

A Pitcher for Today: Adam Wainwright at NYM
I love Waino’s curve ball. I could watch a looped video of him throwing that thing for hours at a time.

A Pitcher for Tomorrow: Daniel Hudson at SD
I think Hudson gets back on track after a long DL stint and pitching in Petco could be the perfect remedy.

A Hitter for Today: Mark Trumbo vs TEX (Colby Lewis)
Trumbo smash. Trumbo smash good.





 

You can catch David spouting off about baseball, soccer, esports and other things by following him on twitter, @davidwiers.

12 Comments
Oldest
Newest Most Voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
Theonewhoknocks
13 years ago

Yeah Wainwrights curve is pretty great, they asked a few of his teammates about it. Carlos Beltran said he loves to sit back and watch wainwright drop that curve

-1
Shawn
13 years ago
Reply to  Theonewhoknocks

Move on, Mets fan

1
David WiersMember since 2016
13 years ago
Reply to  Theonewhoknocks

Ha! Well played.

I probably shouldn’t laugh at that, as I’m sure it’s as painful as Mets fans as the Jeter “flip” for myself and other A’s fans.

Sigh.

0