Starting Pitchers: July 26th

by
July 26, 2010

The latest on various rotation spots from around the league…

J.A. Happ | Phillies | 35% owned

Jamie Moyer hit the disabled list with an elbow injury that may or may not be the end his long career, and taking his place in the rotation is last year’s NL RoY runner up. Of course, Happ benefited from a tremendous amount of luck last season (.270 BABIP, 85.2% LOB%, 4.33 FIP, 2.93 ERA) and is unlikely to repeat that performance going forward. (R) ZiPS predicts an ERA close to five (4.80, to be exact) and a surprisingly high 7.00 K/9, but I’d probably push on the ERA and take the under on the strikeouts the rest of the way. Happ starts at the Nationals on Friday, then at the Marlins next week.

Joe Saunders | Diamondbacks | 11%

We don’t need to talk much about the Dan Haren side of yesterday’s blockbuster, he’s an always start guy, but the Diamondbacks got a new starting pitcher in the deal as well. Saunders has pretty much established himself as ~4.8 K/9, mid-4.00’s ERA guy over the last three years, save for his 2008 season that featured a .267 BABIP and 75.7% LOB% (3.41 ERA). Switching to the lesser league will certainly help his overall numbers, but remember that he’s going to the D-Backs. The bullpen will probably blow a bunch of his leads, let a bunch of his inherited runners score, and generally just ruin some of Saunders’ perfectly good work. Mediocre starters on bad teams simply don’t have much fantasy value, though Saunders seems to have retained some name value. He’ll make his Arizona debut in Philadelphia on Thursday.

Ross Detwiler | Nationals | 0%

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.

The sixth overall pick in the 2007 draft returned to the big leagues over the weekend after having surgery to repair his labrum in hip, though he got rocked to the tune of five runs (zero earned!) in 3.2 IP against the Brewers yesterday. I’m a fan because he’s consistently shown a strikeout rate above 8.0 K/9 with a groundball rate around 50% throughout his minor league career. Of course this isn’t the minor leaguers, and Detwiler is still subject to the unpredictable ups and downs associated with 24-year-old pitchers. He makes for a fine matchup sixth or seventh starter in NL only or deep mixed leagues, but not much more than that. He’ll start at home against the Phillies this weekend, then at the D-Backs next week.

Quick Notes: Josh Tomlin is making his big league for the Indians against the Yankees tomorrow, taking the place of the injured Aaron Laffey. Tomlin’s a control artist (1.9 BB/9 in his minor league career) and the Yanks tend to struggle against pitchers they’ve never seen before, but I wouldn’t risk it … Dustin Moseley has replaced Sergio Mitre as Andy Pettitte’s fill in, and will start at the Indians on Thursday.

Ownership rates are based on Yahoo! leagues.





 

Mike writes about the Yankees at River Ave. Blues and baseball in general at CBS Sports.

Comments are closed.