Archive for Wei-Yin Chen

There are a number of TBDs still listed for starting pitchers on Wednesday’s slate. The Orioles still need a starter for Game 1 in their doubleheader at Boston, and the Astros, Padres and Giants have yet to announce their starters. The same goes for the Rays, but that’s true for three out of every five games for them. It would be Jalen Beeks‘ turn to be their primary pitcher, but he has not lasted more than three innings in any of his last five appearances dating back to Aug. 29. Even if Beeks is at his best against the Yankees, it is doubtful that he will pitch enough innings to make a difference for your fantasy squad.
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Each week I look at the collection of starting pitchers owned in under 30% of leagues (consensus Yahoo/ESPN ownership from Fantasy pros) with a few extra sub 5% discount options at the end, pointing out the options to consider if you need an extra arm or two at the end of your staff.

Let’s highlight my ten favorite starting pitcher options that may be available on your waiver wires, roughly ordered from top to bottom:

Under 30% Owned

Steven Matz (New York Mets) – After a rugged four-game stretch, Matz has rebounded in a big way in his last three outings, featuring a 1.89 ERA, 0.68 WHIP, 33% K rate, and 4.5% BB rate in 19 frames. It’s a small sample, though he might be worth the gamble as he has a cushy schedule of PHI, MIA, @PHI, @WSH, and MIA ahead. This could be a season-winning stretch.

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Each week I look at the collection of starting pitchers owned in under 30% of leagues (consensus Yahoo/ESPN ownership from Fantasy pros) with a few extra sub 10% discount options at the end, pointing out the options to consider if you need an extra arm or two at the end of your staff.

Let’s highlight my ten favorite starting pitcher options that may be available on your waiver wires, roughly ordered from top to bottom:

Under 30% Owned

Joe Musgrove (Pittsburgh Pirates) – Yes, Musgrove hasn’t been great recently, with two of his last starts accruing 7 ER total. That’s still not enough to turn away his 3.56 ERA production on the season, while his sub 5% walk rate has helped return a 1.20 WHIP. I don’t see a pitcher that should fall to a 4.00 ERA here and with seven QS in his last nine starts, he’s a must add for those in Quality Start leagues down the stretch.

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A two-start streak — good or bad — is typically not enough for drawing strong conclusions about a pitcher’s value, but hey, a meaningful upturn or downturn has to start somewhere.

For Wei-Yin Chen and Kyle Gibson, a change in fortune would not be totally unexpected. Chen’s three-year tenure with the Marlins has been marred by injury and a level of performance that has paled in comparison to that which he enjoyed with the Orioles. Perhaps we’re finally starting to see the version of the lefty the Marlins expected when they signed him to a five-year, $80 million deal. Gibson, on the other hand, is enjoying the best season of his career, but could he be on the precipice of regression?
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Sorry for being so late on this one friends. I had Twins coverage the last two days that pushed into my time. Also, this was one of my least favorite weeks in what’s now I think four years of doing this. A limited slate on Monday and a rather ugly one on Tuesday has left me with some options I don’t particularly love, but I do hope through a mix of matchups and other things we have a good one here.

Here’s how we’re doing so far this season (through half of Week 2):

2-1 record
2.40 ERA
8.7 K/9
2.1 K/BB
1.31 WHIP
5 quality starts

Here are this week’s recs (with team wRC+ for this season in parentheses):

LHP Wei-Yin Chen – 4.7% ESPN – @PHI (96), v. PIT (81) Read the rest of this entry »

I swore when I started at RotoGraphs that I’d never write any self-serving articles about my fantasy teams. But I also swore that I’d start bringing in lunch to work, that I’d never pay more than $10 for a bottle of beer, or force my child to root for the A’s while growing up in Seattle. Today, I’m having pho for lunch after paying an unpalatable amount yesterday for a merely palatable beer. And this is my one-year old son’s room.

But 2016 marked my first foray into the world of Ottoneu and, as such, this is my first Ottoneu off-season. Admittedly, a little intimated after a decade of playing only roto and head-to-head leagues on the standard sites, a few friends of mine took the plunge and created an Ottoneu 4×4 league. I can’t really tell you why we decided to go roto instead of the full FanGraphs points experience but it doesn’t really matter. I’m hooked. So, when the opportunity came to adopt a second team, this time in the FanGraphs Staff Two league, I jumped at it. And I’ve got some work to do.

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It had been a relatively quiet offseason for the Baltimore Orioles, but they’ve recently turned up the heat by signing Ubaldo Jimenez, Nelson Cruz and right-hander Suk-min Yoon over the past week. It’s been a flurry of moves that has personnel ramifications throughout the roster. However, perhaps the most significant addition comes in the starting rotation with former All-Star hurler Jimenez.

The rotation has proven to be an  a problem for the Orioles in recent years. No team has trotted out a worse collection of starting pitchers than the O’s over the last half-decade. Their 4.87 ERA and 4.82 FIP are the highest in Major League Baseball over that time frame. They’ve accumulated the highest home-run rate, the lowest ground-ball rate (which makes sense, considering the home-run rate) and the second-lowest strikeout rate. In short, it hasn’t been pretty and Orioles fans deserve a medal of some sort for coping with such dreadful pitching.

The organization is hoping to turn it around in 2014, though. The addition of Ubaldo Jimenez, the improvement of Chris Tillman, and the maturation of Kevin Gausman are all supposed to help right the ship. Miguel Gonzalez, Wei-Yin Chen and Bud Norris all simply need to not take on water, and the rotation has a decent chance at being league-average. Considering the potent lineup that now adds Nelson Cruz to the mix, the Orioles only need their starters to be average to compete for a postseason berth.

Of course, that’s not something on which I’m comfortable betting as draft day rolls around this spring.

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You’d think that after a shocking run to the playoffs despite having a dozen different pitchers make at least two starts — and only one make more than 20 — that the Baltimore Orioles would have done something to shore up their rotation this winter. They haven’t, so far, and while their decision is more than defensible, it doesn’t make projecting the 2013 collection any easier.

Here’s what we do know about this year’s Orioles rotation, however. We know that Joe Saunders (seven starts), Dana Eveland (two starts), and Randy Wolf (two starts) aren’t going to be part of it. We know that the top four is likely to be made up of Wei-Yin Chen, Jason Hammel, Miguel Gonzalez, & Chris Tillman, and we know with near absolute certainty that when the season ends, at least one of those four men (but likely more) will no longer be in the rotation. Read the rest of this entry »

Do you have a case of the Mondays? If you do, you need to wake yourself up and get to work, because you’re not being paid to read this. Cyberslacking hurts everyone.

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