Archive for Yusmeiro Petit

Thursday night’s schedule wasn’t so much of a slate as a pebble. The Rangers’ 5-0 win over the Astros was the only game on the first night of the second half, and it was a closer-free affair featuring five low-leverage relief appearances.

The only reliever worthy of mention was the Astros’ Cy Sneed, who did the bulk of the mopping up after Framber Valdez, who retired only two of the nine batters he faced. Sneed gave up just one run in five innings while striking out seven batters.
Read the rest of this entry »

On a day that featured only eight games on the schedule, the only real closer intrigue took place in Cincinnati. In the first Reds game that provided a save opportunity since Raisel Iglesias (biceps) went on the 10-day disabled list on Wednesday, it looked as if Amir Garrett was primed to record his first career save. The lefty relieved David Hernandez with two outs in the top of the seventh inning and a 5-2 lead against the Pirates. He proceeded to get the next four outs, three of which came by way of strikeout.

Having used only 16 pitches to get those outs, Jim Riggleman brought Garrett out for the ninth inning to finish the game. Corey Dickerson put the first blemish on Garrett’s afternoon, singling on an 0-2 pitch, but then he appeared to get back on track, striking Jose Osuna out on three pitches. Then, with one swing, Garrett’s campaign to get the save took a blow when Austin Meadows turned on a 95 mph fastball that caught the inside of the plate and pulled it for a two-run homer. With the Reds’ lead carved down to one run, Jared Hughes took over and got the final two outs, as well as the save.
Read the rest of this entry »

Given how abysmally he had pitched over the last two-and-a-half weeks, it seemed clear that Bud Norris was going to lose his job as the Angels’ closer. Given how Mike Scioscia had been using his relievers, it seemed nearly as clear that Blake Parker was going to replace him. Parker had been pitching frequently in the eighth inning, usually in close games. Erstwhile closer Cam Bedrosian had recently been relegated to the middle innings, and when he pitched the eighth inning on Tuesday, setting up Keynan Middleton’s first career save, it was because Scioscia was trying to manage Parker’s workload (as mentioned in Wednesday’s Bullpen Report).

So naturally, when Scioscia replaced Tyler Skaggs in the seventh inning of Thursday’s game against the Mariners and needed to call on someone to preserve a 3-0 lead, he brought Parker out. And when he needed a closer in the bottom of the ninth, he used Bedrosian, who incidentally provided a perfect inning.
Read the rest of this entry »

It’s time for our Depth Chart Discussions to begin. In an effort to suss out every team, we’ve divided them into four parts (infield, outfield, bullpen, and rotation) and will begin breaking them down for you over the next few weeks. You can find them gathered here.

The Giants may have won the World Series last year, but before they got to the postseason, their rotation was not the strength of the team. In the regular season they ranked mid-pack at 16th in ERA and near the bottom in WAR at 28th. And it was primarily just Madison Bumgarner that was the strength of the team in the postseason as he threw almost a third of all innings for the Giants in the playoffs. Aside from mid-season acquisition Jake Peavy, the Giants have not added anyone to the staff. That should probably concern fans of the defending champs. Of course, three titles in five years helps ease some concerns. But for fantasy owners under-performance the year prior sometimes leads to value on draft day. Read the rest of this entry »

Our Mock Draft is complete.

Team Schwartz/rounds drafted:

C: Travis d’Arnaud/17 1B: Victor Martinez/4 2B: Arismendy Alcantara/18 3B: Josh Donaldson/3 SS: Hanley Ramirez/2 MI: Jean Segura/19 CI: Prince Fielder/6 OF: Mike Trout/1; Mookie Betts/7; Ryan Zimmerman/10; A.J. Pollock/14; Steven Souza/20; Carl Crawford/24 U: Pedro Alvarez/21

Read the rest of this entry »

Of starters who have thrown a fastball at least 200 times this year, Yusmeiro Petit’s average velocity (89.13 MPH according to Baseball Pro’s Pitchf/x leaderboard) comes in at #167 of 173. Yet, only Clayton Kershaw, Chris Sale and Yu Darvish have better K-rates than him. Only Kershaw, Francisco Liriano, Masahiro Tanaka, Sale, Tyson Ross and Carlos Carrasco have a better swinging-strike rate than him in general.

Read the rest of this entry »

This should go without saying, but fantasy owners have to be careful with starting pitchers who previously spent time in the bullpen. As we all know, good relievers aren’t all cut out for the starting rotation. The ability to go hard for short bursts allows relievers to cover up deficiencies that prevent them from being starters, with the lack of a third, or even second, pitch being a prime example. But sometimes it is easy to forget that a pitcher spent time in the bullpen when looking at his player page at the end of the season. Read the rest of this entry »

One very good streamer on the pitching side.

One potentially good streamer on the hitting side.

Good luck to fantasy baseball players who are trying to bring it home for Jerome … Williams. And to those who aren’t doing it for him. It’s fine. I guess.

Read the rest of this entry »

• White Sox at Yankees: David Robertson furnished save #34. D-Rob has only blown 2 saves all year this year and has done an awfully good job displacing Mariano Rivera. In fact, as a closer, Mariano Rivera never reached a 30% K-Rate and his career contact rate was 79.7%. D-Rob has a sub-70% contact rate this year and could be even better next year assuming the luck stats (BABIP based on his inflated line drive rate this year; HR/FB and LOB%) all take a step forward next year. It will be interesting to see where D-Rob lands next year considering he deserves a big payday and the Yankees still have another dominate K%(39.9%)/Contact%(70%) reliever in Dellin Betances. D-Rob got the 10th best K%-BB% in baseball right now: 28.5% tied with Koji Uehara.
• Rays at Blue Jays: Casey Janssen has offset an awful K-rate with the best BB-rate of his career, but he walked Wil Myers tonight to start the 9th and blew a save after a couple of singles. Brad Boxberger pulls an Armando Benitez and gives up a 2R-HR to Dioner Navarro and a double to Colby Rasmus. We were getting pretty spoiled with Boxberger: 8 scoreless innings since August 10th with a 13:1 K:BB ratio and only 3 hits. Between Koji Uehara yesterday as well as Boxberger and Ken Giles today, the R2M (Regression to the Means) Monster hit me hard this weekend.

Read the rest of this entry »