Stream, Stream, Stream: The Return of #2xSP for 2015 (4.13-19)

Welcome back for what I believe to be year four of 2xSP. We didn’t roll out last week with mostly just aces and No. 2s to deal with in the opening week, though I suppose you could have streamed Kyle Kendrick, right? Anyway…as always, I’ll keep the spreadsheet updated and will share it periodically (or upon demand if you wish). Here’s the link to it for now. If you can think of specific ways to improve this, please let us know in the comments. Thanks.

First a look at the last year’s totals:

49-39 record
3.79 ERA
7.6 K/9
2.7 K/BB
1.30 WHIP

Here’s a look at this week’s recs, with team wOBA in parentheses. Yahoo ownership figures courtesy of twitter pal @PandaPete21 (follow him!):

LHP Daniel Norris – 5.8% ESPN/23% Y! – v. TBR (.310), v. ATL (.305)

Let’s just get this out of the way: this first week was hard. Not only are drafters seemingly getting smarter this year — thereby depriving you of my recommendations of Danny Duffy, James Paxton and Brandon McCarthy — but this is a quirky week where I really wanted to recommend Shane Greene (exempt as Tuesday starter with an off day) and Eno Sarris-darling Anthony Desclafani (same as Greene).

But anyway, this Norris week is pretty awesome. He gets a couple of really nice matchups, and will no doubt race up the ownership numbers as the season wears on, making this probably the only time we can recommend him in this sort of format. Norris’ Rays matchup could be beneficial because their rotation is still so in flux they haven’t even announced a Monday starter yet. Yikes. Norris looked pretty good in his season debut — his second big league start as well — “outdueling” C.C. Sabathia over 5.2 innings with five strikeouts to get his first major-league win. Projections are high on Norris this year as well, expecting roughly a strikeout an inning with so-so walk numbers and a high-3.00s/low-4.00s ERA. They Jays will push him pretty hard with Marcus Stroman out too, I’d imagine. Most projections have him making ~20 starts, but it’ll likely be north of that should he remain healthy.

RHP Mike Leake – 10.7% ESPN/45% Y! – @CHC (.178), @STL (.234)

If we can’t recommend Desclafani, we may as well hit up his Monday-starting pal Mr. Leake. Monday’s matchup will be a tough one, most specifically with Jon Lester as the mound opponent. Ideally, those wOBA numbers will roll through the next week, and Leake will catch a pair of offenses that are supposed to be good at the right time. Unfortunately, the exact opposite could be true and some of that regression could come through in that time frame. Nevertheless, we have a perfectly decent Leake, coming off what is likely his finest major league season. He’s still under the league average in terms of strikeout rate — 6.9 (nice) last year — but when paired with a 53.4 percent groundball rate (12th across MLB) that makes for a pretty decent combination. In short, we’re listing these guys in the order of excitement factor, and like usual, Leake falls right in the middle .

RHP Scott Feldman – 0.4% ESPN/2% Y! – v. OAK (.324), v. LAA (.259)

We’re digging pretty deep for this one, but Feldman sort of fits the bill of the Jake Westbrook-style safer pick that we’ve mitigated risk with over the past few seasons. The venerable righty gets Scott Kazmir on Monday night before a likely showdown with C.J. Wilson towards the end of the week, so it’ll by no means be a cakewalk. My affinity for groundball guys has grown in recent years — hello Dallas Keuchel! — and Feldman has a 3.80 ERA over 362 innings in the past couple seasons. I think he’s a defensible pick that is literally available in nearly every league. As most non-strikeout guys, he can be prone to blowups — four games over six earned runs last year — but he also had long stretches where he was solid. In fact, He allowed three or fewer earned runs in 23 of 29 starts. I’ll take a shot on that this week.