The daily grind: 8-12-13

by
August 12, 2013

The Daily Grind provides daily match-up advice for tinkerers and daily fantasy players. I welcome advice to help make this column more effective, including notice of impending weather events, new injuries, and changes to platoon situations. Ownership rates are from Yahoo!

The daily picks are a mixture of Daily League specific advice and information for the more typical fantasy owner.

Today’s weather watch

Games in Atlanta, Kansas City, and Colorado have a low chance for thunderstorms.

Today’s grind

There are a couple of good options in today’s reduced slate of games.

Tomorrow’s grind

Pitcher (to start): Chris Archer is 66 percent owned, making it likely that he is unavailable for his start against the Mariners. Archer’s peripherals are fairly ugly and include a 1.79 K/BB ratio and .223 BABIP against. He’s opposed by Erasmo Ramirez who has had the opposite problem. His surface level stats are terrible, but his peripherals suggest that he could be decent going forward.

Zach McAllister still remains the top choice for today against the Twins. He’s only seven percent owned.

Alexi Ogando has similar expected outcomes to McAllister with his match-up against the Brewers, but he’s 48 percent owned. Indians in general seem under-owned.

Stay away from Bruce Chen and his epic hot streak. Even with the juicy match-up against the Marlins, he’s a pumpkin carriage waiting to happen. You don’t want to be sitting inside the pumpkin carriage when it turns back into a pumpkin.

Pitcher (bum): Ryan Dempster versus Todd Redmond promises to yield many runs.

The Braves already got to Ethan Martin in his first start. Control issues will make it hard for him to succeed at the major league level.

Barring injury, Jordan Lyles has a future as a solid starter. If anybody remembers Homer Bailey’s career path, I expect something similar with less upside. In other words, he remains exploitable for now.

Hitter (power): The dynamic duo of Seth Smith and Brandon Moss will face Lyles.

I would try Justin Smoak against Archer. Smoak has been yielding strong results for awhile now, although his counting stats are limited by the Mariners lineup.

Hitter (speed): Adam Eaton is 21 percent owned, but that rate will climb as he continues to hit.

Try Will Venable against Jeff Manship.

Leonys Martin had a strong week in the steals department. Tomorrow he faces Sam Deduno.

A Hardball Times Update
by RJ McDaniel
Goodbye for now.

Pitchers to come

Wednesday: The top recommendation has changed from Brandon Beachy to Ivan Nova. He faces the Angels, so it’s a tougher match-up, but he gets the recommendation on the strength of excellent peripherals. He should be owned in most leagues, not just 43 percent.

Thursday: It’s currently between Tony Cingrani versus the Brewers and Zack Wheeler against the Padres. They are 59 and 39 percent owned respectively.

Friday: Friday remains TBA heavy, but Alex Wood is among those expected to start. I don’t think I can make it any more clear that I expect him to be in the top 25 percent of fantasy performers for the remainder of the season.

Noteworthy news

Justin Upton and Jayson Werth left their games yesterday with day-to-day injuries. No major adjustments should be needed and the backups (Roger Bernadina and Joey Terdoslavich) aren’t worth owning.


You can follow me on twitter @BaseballATeam
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ABskippers
10 years ago

How do you feel about Victor Martinez ROS?  He was terrible the first half but has rebounded since.  Is he a significant enough upgrade over Jason Castro in AVG and RBI to forgo a mid-level closer for?

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FeslenR
10 years ago

The issue with Erasmo really isn’t E.R. himself, but his bullpen. I’ve watched a couple of his games and he always exits with runners in scoring position and his pen never executes during his starts.  He has a high ERA because the runners he left on score almost all the time.

Too bad there isn’t a shared ERA stat with the bullpen guys who allow ER to come across.

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Tom
10 years ago

I’m trying to figure out what “I expect him to be in the top 25 percent of fantasy performers for the remainder of the season.” means in RE to Wood. Does it mean he should be owned in at least 75% of leagues OR does it mean he is in the top 25% of players who are owned?

Doesn’t Maholm push Wood to the bullpen when he comes back. From what I’ve read Wood might be better suited there anyway.

Bottom line – Wood is a top ___ pitcher ROS.

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Brad Johnson
10 years ago

Tom – if on Oct 1 we made a list of all starting pitcher stats between now and the end of the season, and I fully expect that Wood’s stats would place in the top 1/4 of that list. The top 25% of SP should be owned in nearly all leagues that aren’t ridiculously shallow.

ABS – I like VMart ROS compared with Castro. It’s up to you and your particular requirements whether that upgrade is worth a mid-tier closer. I seem to recall you have a H2H league, so I guess it depends on if SV or HR/RBI are the bigger problem stats.

Fes – thanks for the insight. I’ve watched him a couple times but haven’t observed any of the innings he’s been removed.

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Tom
10 years ago

Thanks for the clarification. So if I’m understanding you correctly that would make him a top 40 pitcher (25% of 150 MLB SPs). I’ll definitely be streaming him (as I did thanks to you last week) but that seems a little aggressive given that Maholm will be back and Medlen has 3 straight wins and Wood already has 107 IP after pitching only 57 last year of course that may not count innings he may have pitched last year in college.

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