Stream, Stream, Stream: 2x SP 6.23-6.29

First a look at the running totals through half of week 11:

18-13 record
4.04 ERA
7.5 K/9
2.8 K/BB
1.26 WHIP

Here’s a look at this week’s recs, with team wOBA in parentheses:

Nathan Eovaldi – 40.7% ESPN/39% Y!/81% own, 49% start CBS – @PHI (.302), v. OAK (.332)

I’ve made it no secret my affinity for Eovaldi, a fireballing right-hander (95-96 average on both heaters) with good strikeout (7.1 per nine) and grounder (46.9 percent) rates who plays in a very difficult park for left-handed hitters and all power hitters alike.

And I know that’s a lot of data to process in one sentence. Eovaldi has been pretty bad the last two times out — 0-1, 10.2 IP, 9.28 ERA, 1054 OPS allowed — but I think the Phillies give him a good shot to rebound, and Oakland at home is slightly better than if he saw them on the road. And while I don’t have the data to back it up, it hopefully *should* help that Eovaldi doesn’t see Oakland routinely enough for them to have a strong feel for him. Make no mistake, this is equal parts good pitcher and gut feel here. I’ve got to find a way to get my ERA under 4.00, and my strikeouts back up. Hopefully this’ll help.

Jose Quintana – 5.2% ESPN/32% Y!/72% own, 36% start CBS – @BAL (.319), @TOR (.335)

The Fangraphs side of me desperately wants to call Quintana “criminally under-owned” but the Rotographs guy in me gets it. Even for as good as Quintana was last year he only won nine games, and doesn’t appear to be lighting a quicker wick this season either. So to that end, he doesn’t do anything quite well enough to set himself apart from guys who either play for better teams, or get more strikeouts. I suppose in that way he’s the AL version of Jon Niese, who is a serious #2xSP man-crush for me.

But enough about me. The groundball bump for Quintana has been nice, and he’s been able to mostly stem the tide in the wake of a rough BABIP and subpar strand rates. The home run rate will normalize, and it might not be pretty at the Cell, but he still should be a sub-4.00 ERA guy who is more safe than he is sexy. I don’t mind. Do you?

Wei-Yin Chen – 20.0% ESPN/20% Y!/62% own, 42% start CBS – v. CWS (.319), v. TBR (.305)

Chen’s statline is pretty nondescript; he’s well below league average in strikeouts, though in some ways he’s made up for it by being stingy with the free pass — and never more before than now. At times Chen will be home run prone, though limiting his free passes has surely helped, as nine of his 11 home runs have come with the bases empty so far this season. The result is sort of a bizarre .281/.308/.448 opponents’ line, like you might expect out of a slumping Jose Abreu or something.

Chen had a brief blip on the radar where he allowed five earned runs in back to back games — two no-decisions, 10 ER in 11.2 IP (7.71 ERA) — but prior to that he had a 3.69 ERA, and since then (spanning the month of June) he has a 2.13 ERA. In short, he’s been pretty good all season long. He’s more of a safe pick.