Wright? Wrong. Shaw? Positive.

We’re the guys who spurned a late-April trade offer for Drew Smyly, he of the 7-plus ERA over his last ten starts. So of course you want to listen to us when we suggest selling high on a starting pitcher, especially one who’s leading the AL in ERA and Quality Starts. Nonetheless, that’s how we see things with Steven Wright.

You probably know Wright’s story. He was on the road to being a career minor leaguer when, 1n 2011, he had a Pauline conversion to the cult of the knuckleball, made it to the majors at 28 in 2013, found his way into the Red Sox starting rotation last season, and pitched pretty well until suffering a concussion after being hit in the head by a fly ball during the other team’s batting practice—a first, as far as we know. This season, he’s been channeling the 2012-model R.A. Dickey: 2.12 ERA, 8 wins, and 12 Quality Starts in 15 overall. Plus, because he’s a knuckleballer, he’s not doing those horrible things to his arm and shoulder that regular pitchers do, and can last deeper into games (almost 7 innings per start) than other guys.

There’s a case to be made that Wright, at the advanced baseball age of 31, has figured out the knuckleball (Dickey was 36 when it happened to him), and will be able to sustain his wonderfulness. Jeff Sullivan made precisely this case a month ago in Fangraphs. The case is powerful and well-reasoned, and seems to have gathered adherents. Among Sullivan’s points: it doesn’t matter that Wright’s BABIP is among the lowest in MLB, because in this case the low BABIP is due not to luck but to Wright’s ability, as a primo knuckleballer, to keep batters from making good contact in the first place. Weak contact means that the balls in play aren’t hits.

We’re still not persuaded, for a couple of reasons. First of all, Wright’s home-run-to-fly-ball ratio is an unreal 5.2%, which is better than all but 2 other ERA-qualified starters in the AL have managed during this decade. The average ratio is about 12%, which is roughly what Dickey’s was in his Cy Young season, and roughly what we figure Wright will regress to in the second half.

But, you say, maybe he gives up so few fly balls that it doesn’t matter. Nope, he’s about average. OK, then, you riposte, just because they’re fly balls doesn’t mean they’re home run candidates. Maybe they’re shallow pop-ups. But it doesn’t look that way to us from Wright’s spray chart, and his hard-hit ball percentage of 27.8%, while better than average, isn’t Cy-Young-contender better. So we envision more home runs in Wright’s future.

And here’s another reason to be skeptical. Wright leads MLB pitchers, by far, in unearned runs allowed, with 14—this despite a better-than-average defense behind him. Ah, but he’s a knuckleballer, remember, which means he induces passed balls in great profusion, and some of those passed balls are responsible for some of the unearned runs. But here’s the thing about passed balls—except when they’re of the third-strike variety, they don’t leave you any further away from the end of the inning than you’d otherwise be. You usually can’t say, “But for Hanigan’s failure to handle the knuckleball, the Red Sox would be at bat.” And what you can sometimes say is, “Wright’s lucky that Hanigan’s passed ball let in an unearned run before he gave up another hit and had the run charged against him.” We count three unearned runs of Wright’s that fit that description. So Wright’s ERA figures to go up, even if he continues pitching well.

We’re not predicting a collapse from Wright. All we’re saying is that he’s a so-so to pretty good pitcher whose excellent fortune has enabled him to look, for half a season, like a very good pitcher. His peripheral and subatomic stats suggest that he’s not the 2012-vintage R.A. Dickey, but rather, at best, the 2013-2015 Dickey models: a fourish ERA, a useful WHIP, a durable .500 pitcher on a good team. Nothing wrong with that, as our fellow Drew Smyly owners know. But if Sullivan or one of his acolytes happens to be in your league, you might offer him Wright for, oh, Michael Wacha or someone like that—an established starter who’s been disappointing so far but whose peripheral stats suggest that he hasn’t been as bad as he’s looked.

So much for selling high. We also have a buy-low relief-pitcher candidate: Cleveland setup guy Bryan Shaw. Shaw’s WHIP is a weak 1.37 and his ERA is a weaker 4.97 Nor does his FIP, which is 5.10, tell a different story. Even worse, two weeks ago, Shaw had a horrendous three-game streak, which evidently prompted a selloff, so that he is now owned in only about 1% of ESPN and Yahoo leagues. (By way of contrast, Tony Watson, a pitcher of comparable status and achievement with a comparable place in the pecking order on a comparably successful team, is owned in 10% of ESPN and 14% of Yahoo leagues.) But his manager stuck with him as the eighth-inning go-to guy, and now Shaw’s had four good outings in a row.

Two things make Shaw more interesting than your average capable-but-not-dazzling non-closer relief pitcher. First, he’s actually having a good season, despite the bad Fantasy-relevant stats. He’s been above average in nearly all the subatomic categories that matter to us: K% and K/9, BB% and BB/9, Soft Contact, Hard Contact, and Easy Outs. His Groundball Percentage is about average. He’s lost none of his 93 MPH velocity, and in fact has been getting more strikeouts and missing more bats than ever before.

Then what’s been Shaw’s problem? Home runs. Shaw’s season in this regard has been the opposite of Wright’s. His HR/FB rate is 26.9%, highest in the AL of anyone who’s thrown more than 20 innings, and twice as high as anything that’s happened to him before. The seven home runs he’s given up have produced 12 earned runs. If, say, three of those home runs had been fly outs (we acknowledge that they might instead have been doubles) and six of those earned runs accordingly hadn’t scored, Shaw’s ERA and WHIP would be completely in line with his past three seasons, in each of which, as we calculate it, he’s earned about $5 for his owners. Since we think that—as with Wright, but in the opposite direction—Shaw’s HR/FB rate will regress to the mean, that’s what we predict you’ll get from him in the second half.

The other reason to like Shaw is that he evidently remains the Indians’ Plan B. The Indians’ closer is Cody Allen, who can be unhittable but has also been unnervingly erratic. Cleveland’s got a pretty good bullpen, and it’s possible that Dan Otero (who’s having a superb season, but doesn’t fit the typical-closer model) or Zach McAllister (who’s arguably got better stuff than Shaw, but hasn’t really outperformed him) gets the job if anything upleasant befalls Allen. But Shaw’s been next in line for the past couple of years, and still seems to be there. So you’ve got an effective setup guy on a good team who has a non-trivial chance at saves, figures in any event to produce useful stats, and is available for the asking. Why not grab him?