Streaming for Power

Power turns outs into hits, hits into RBIs, and fly balls into home runs. You have to draft for power, or you’ll find yourself behind in way too many categories. So hopefully you have some power on your squad and don’t necessarily need to stream for it now.

But lets say you find yourself up against a team with lots of speed. If you wanted to punt stolen bases, you might be able to drop a speedster or a bench piece for power in the late going. Let’s look at the end of the week and see if we can identify a few flawed (available) sluggers in nice parks with the platoon advantage.

Adam Lind (31% owned)
The Blue Jays head to New York for the third-friendliest park for lefty home runs. Lind has the added benefit of not being a blight to your batting average. On the other hand, he might be a better pickup for Thursday (lefty-vulnerable Shane Greene) and Friday (Hiroki Kuroda) then the rest of the weekend. He’ll probably sit Saturday against lefty Chris Capuano, and Friday’s tilt against Michael Pineda is not a top-shelf matchup for the slugger. Deep leaguers can take a Thursday/Friday shot at Juan Francisco (8%) for many of the same reasons, but he won’t help your batting average and he’s not playing a ton these days. Righty Danny Valencia (1%) might be a good matchup against Capuano on Saturday.

Chase Headley (39%)
Most Yankees are well-owned or powerless, so it’s hard to stream a Yankee for that home series. But Headley is there, slightly-above-league-average power and all. He’s slightly better from the left side for his career, so Thursday’s R.A. Dickey might be an okay matchup. But he has a little more power from the right, so Mark Buehrle on Friday is okay too. Saturday’s Marcus Stroman is a great young pitcher, but he gets bouts of homeritis from time to time. Drew Hutchison on Sunday means that Headley might be the guy you pick up after you drop Adam Lind.

Alejandro De Aza (31%)
What, you don’t think he’s a slugger? Dude’s got a .267 ISO as an Oriole… in 50 plate appearances. Still, when you’re streaming for power, you don’t usually get to pick up a cleanup dude with no-doubt power. But maybe you can upgrade your speedster into one that at least has league power, will be home in a great park for power, and will face three young righties over the weekend (Allen Webster, Rubby De La Rosa, Joe Kelly). He’ll be in the lineup. Deep leaguers can ‘enjoy’ Ryan Flaherty (1%) if they need power help at third, but (amazingly?) he only owns a few points of slugging over De Aza and will hurt you everywhere else.

Will Middlebrooks (17%)
The Orioles boast a home park that is second-best for lefty power. Too bad Will Middlebrooks is right-handed and the best power option that’s owned in fewer than half of Yahoo’s leagues. At least he’s playing every day. Camden Yards is also fairly friendly to righty power (107 park factor), and the Sawx will face lefty Wei-Yin Chen on Sunday. Could be a one-day thing. Daniel Nava is a switch hitter for deeper leaguers (4%), but he’s not showing any power this year and doesn’t really have good career power numbers either.

Chris Owings (6%)
The power options on the Diamondbacks are few and far between. So, despite being in Colorado, it’s hard to recommend many on the team. Jacob Lamb (1%) is a lefty swinger and deserves attention here — he’ll see righties until Sunday, in Colorado, and has struck out a little bit less over the last week. He showed a lot of power and is a sneaky deep league pickup for the weekend. Chris Owings is a bit safer all around, due to the strikeout rate, but maybe as a righty, he’s a better Thursday and Sunday pickup, when the D-backs take on lefties Yohan Flande and Tyler Matzek, respectively. How many moves can you make?

Drew Stubbs (21%)
Colorado is fairly well picked over for this sort of thing. Everyone knows that a Rockie makes for a great bench bat, if just for the homestands. With righties Chase Anderson and Trevor Cahill stepping to the hill Friday and Saturday, you’re going to want a lefty swinger, and all of those are over 50% owned. Except Rafael Ynoa (0%), switch-hitting shortstop! Gah. Ynoa is 27 and isn’t projected for more power. Maybe instead look ahead to lefty Wade Miley on Sunday. That’s the day that Drew Stubbs leaps to the top of the heap as maybe the best streamer due to his whopping .945 OPS against lefties this year. At home, no less. But it’s only one day.

Mariners and Astros
Prepping for the Mariners / Astros series will be tough. Although Minute Maid helps both lefties (103 park factor for homers) and righties (105), there are no listed starters for Friday, and then Saturday and Sunday split lefties and righties for both teams — Hisashi Iwakuma and then Roenis Elias for the Mariners and Dallas Keuchel and Collin McHugh for the Astros. The good news is that there are great streamers if you can play it day by day. On the Astros, you’ve got righties Matt Dominguez (8% owned .159 ISO v LHP this year) and L.J. Hoes (0% owned, .197 ISO v LHP this year in a small sample) and lefty Jon Singleton (10% owned) and a switch-hitter in Robbie Grossman (1%) who has been better against righties so far in his career. On the Mariners, lefty Logan Morrison (2%) and righty Corey Hart (14%) provide some deeper league power upside. Hard to recommend Kendrys Morales (19%) unless it’s against a lefty, because he’s been mediocre against them (and horrid versus righties).

Good luck hunting!