Roto Riteup: June 3rd, 2012
According to the people who have too much time on their hands, June 3rd has been named national Repeat Day. Have no fear, I won’t repeat yesterday’s Roto Riteup.
• The experiment with Ichiro Suzuki batting third didn’t apparently didn’t impress Seattle Mariners manager Eric Wedge, so he moved Ichiro back to his customary lead off role for just the second time this year on Saturday. Ichiro immediately hit a home run in his first plate appearance. He also tacked on another solo shot in the third inning. I’ve touched on how Ichiro just isn’t the same elite player anymore, but he is still an above average player. Don’t expect this kind of power out of him regularly, but it is nice to see him contribute to the fantasy squad more than just steals for the first time in over a year.
• Another batting order outfield update is that David DeJesus hit third for the first time this season yesterday. Despite not having the customary power numbers one would expect from a 3-hole hitter, DeJesus is a career wOBA .339 hitter. With an above average walk rate and a below average strikeout percentage, DeJesus has a keen batting eye and excellent contact skills. His Contact% and Z-Contact% has always been significantly higher than average. I recommended to pick him up last week and I’m repeating those words today. Hey, it is Repeat Day after all. His Yahoo! ownership is still a paltry 7% and his ESPN rating isn’t much better at 11%. He popped a homer today and stole his first base of the year yesterday, so get in on the ground level with him.
• He may not have thrown a no-hitter, but R.A. Dickey did toss a complete game shutout last night. He scattered seven hits, didn’t allow a walk and struck out nine batters for the game. His 2.69 ERA and 3.31 FIP show that Dickey has quietly been one of the better pitchers in the National League. With each and every successful start he is getting picked up more and more, so if he still happens to be available I would pick him and stop streaming or spot starting him. He is rapidly becoming an automatic starter.
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: Tommy Hanson at WAS
The Nationals have the highest offensive SwStr% in baseball and Hanson gets swings at an above average rate. I think he’ll perform well today.
A Pitcher for Tomorrow: Jeff Samardzija at SF
Samardzija has been nothing sort of fantastic this year and by team wOBA, the Giants are a bottom 10 offense.
A Hitter for Today: Josh Willingham at CLE (Justin Masterson)
Compliant Pork draws a lot of walks. Masterson gives up a lot of walks. Advantage: Willingham.
You can catch David spouting off about baseball, soccer, esports and other things by following him on twitter, @davidwiers.
A Pitcher for Today: Somebody Already Owned.
A Pitcher for Tomorrow: Someone Who’s Been Owned for Weeks
A Hitter for Today: See Above.
C’mon, David.
The pitcher/hitter listing is more for FG: The Game than normal streamers.
Another pitcher for today is Sale against the Mariners. The M’s aren’t very good hitters, and Sale had 15 Ks in his last start.
In espn’s daily ranking for SP they have Sale #1 ahead of Verlander. Of course, Verlander is vs the yanks and sale is vs the Mariners I still found it surprising though.
http://sports.espn.go.com/fantasy/baseball/flb/dailynotes?page=mlbnotes120602
Who’s better rest of season Sale or RA Dickey?
Assuming (and this is a sizable assumption) that the White Sox don’t jerk him around anymore, I’d go with Sale.
should i start tom milone today?
I wouldn’t worry about Milone’s home/road splits, as his xFIP is 4.27/4.35. He’s just given up six homers on the road already. The Royals aren’t a terribly strong offense, so I’d probably start him.
But if you’re in a H2H league and you’re close on ERA/WHIP, then I might not start him.
Compliant Pork?
Willingham, Willing Ham, Compliant Pork.
It’s a nickname for him that originated on AthleticsNation.
David, thanks for sticking around to answer questions that people ask in the comments. It’s nice to know that after finishing off an article you are willing to answer questions as well.
Well thank you for the compliment, but I don’t think I do anything special that others on here don’t already do.
I think it is more that I happen to have the daily weekend duties that don’t interfere with my work at all. If you look at my Friday and Monday posts, I’m usually 7 hours late on answering those questions; but I still try to get as many as possible.
Either way, thanks again good sir.
I’ve been on the Dickey bandwagon from the beginning of the year. There are really only a couple of downsides to owning him in my mind:
1) His k/9 is not sustainable as a knuckleballer. generally they just dont get as many strikeouts as he has been getting so those numbers are probably going to come down. Most people look for high k/9 guys for starters so you have to watch out
2) Knuckleballers generally have 1 or 2 really bad outings a year because if his Knuckleball isnt right he is in deep deep trouble. It doent even matter which team it’s against. Even against the Padres, laying up 70 MPH taters for professional hitters means he is going to get knocked around a lot.
I wouldn’t start Dickey in Arizona or Coors, as I think (and I could be way off on this) that the knuckle ball doesn’t react as well in the higher elevations due to the thinner air.
I don’t foresee his K/9 being quite this high either, but his SwStr% does correlate nicely with his strikeouts. It’s possible he’ll settle in at a very useful 7.0 K/9.
Good call on Hanson as he seemed to have settled down after a rough start.
It wasn’t quite as pretty as I hoped, but it is hard to argue against 7 IP 2 ER and 6 K’s.
In the closing sentences of the RA Dickey blurb you say
“…I would pick him and stop streaming or sport starting him”. Did you mean to say
“…I would pick him and stop streaming or spot starting him.” ? I am familiar with spot or streaming starters but not the term sport starting.
Yes. Yes I did. Good catch, thanks. It’s been fixed.