Sunday, April 17, 2011

Fantasy Baseball Spot Starter Pickups For Sunday 4/17/11

Saturday's Recommended Starter One's Stats - Gavin Floyd - 6.0 Innings Pitched - 3 Strikeouts - Loss - 9.00 ERA - 1.67 WHIP
Saturday's Recommended Starter Two's Stats - Kyle McClellan - 7.0 Innings Pitched - 2 Strikeouts - Win - 1.29 ERA - 0.86 WHIP
Week 2 Starter Stats - 43.2 Innings Pitched - 31 Strikeouts - 3 Wins in 7 Starts - 4.74 ERA - 1.33 WHIP - 6.39 K/9
Cumulative Starter Stats - 118 Innings Pitched - 96 Strikeouts - 10 Wins in 19 Starts - 3.58 ERA - 1.20 WHIP - 7.32 K/9
Starter Spreadsheet Online Here

Offered you one good pitcher and one bad pitcher here, with neither giving you too many strikeouts.  Sorry about another unsuccessful day.  Hopefully, Gavin Floyd was already owned in your league like he was in mine and you ended up pitching McClellan on Saturday.  Been a slow week, but my cumulative stats are still really strong in spite of the slow week.  Stick with me here Sunday, I promise some good starters coming up...


Starter One - Jeff Francis - Kansas City Royals vs Seattle Mariners - 2:10 PM EST - Owned in 6.9% of ESPN Standard Leagues 

Francis made a solid play on Tuesday against Minnesota, and is just as solid of a play here against the Mariners. He's been strong in each of his three starts so far this year and gets a Mariners team that was just shut out by Sean O'Sullivan.  It's important to note that I highly doubt Francis will keep this up all year, he's proven himself to be not this good of a pitcher and he's got a pair of rough starts coming up at Texas and Cleveland and is going to be worth hanging on to.  However, with the Royals offense as hot as it is and Seattle's as bad as it is, Francis should cruise with good ERA and WHIP on the way to a win, throwing in four or five strikeouts on the way.

Starter Two - Mitch Talbot - Cleveland Indians vs Baltimore Orioles - 1:05 PM EST - Owned in 0.9% of ESPN Standard Leagues

Talbot has been outperforming his career numbers so far, but after the Orioles couldn't make Josh Tomlin regress to his career numbers, I doubt they'll make Talbot fall back to earth.  He should be able to get out there and give you five or six strikeouts over seven innings and the Cleveland offense has been just plain raking so far early in the year.  He'll pick up a win here over Baltimore.

UPDATE: Wow... I'm a giant asshole. ESPN and MLB.com has Talbot listed as starting Sunday so i never looked into it, but apparently Manny Acta announced on Friday Talbot wouldn't be pitching.  Sorry about that everyone.

As always, the rest of the starters are listed in the order that I would start them.  Ownership percentages are in parenthesis.

Clayton Richard (7.0%) - San Diego at Houston - Richard has had a pair of good starts this year against strong offenses in St. Louis and Cincinnati.  The Houston offense has had some scoring spurts, but has cooled off some lately.  Richard has been getting the job done and has been doing it without his usual rate of strikeouts per nine.  I expect him to get the strikeouts up a little and him o keep the ERA and WHIP down, but San Diego pitchers are always question marks to get the win.  In a extremely weak day though, Richard makes it over the line.

-----------------------------------------------------
This is the 10-team mixed-league line.  Yeah, it's that bad today.  Guys below this line are only recommended in deeper leagues and AL/NL-Only leagues.

Michael Pineda (41.1%) - Seattle at Kansas City - Pineda is going to be a stud this year.  He's going to strike a bunch of people out, and keep the ERA and WHIP down and enjoy the home field advantage at Safeco Field.  However, he isn't recommended in standard mixed leagues today.  Kansas City is fourth in the majors in runs scored and doesn't look to be cooling off.  I'd play Pineda in deeper leagues, but against the Royals I'd sit him in ten team leagues.

Alexi Ogando (41.3%) - Texas at New York Yankees - Ogando has looked great in his first two starts, but he's a total stay away here against the Yankees.  First off, the Yankee lineup is always one you want to avoid, but the bigger topic is the ability of the Yankees to trot out such strong left handing hitting, which is what Ogando has a problem with.  Alexi must be started if you own him in a deep or an AL-Only league, but I'd sit him in a 10-teamer here.

Brad Penny (0.8%) - Detroit at Oakland - Penny hasn't looked good in his early outings so far this year, however he's got the best match-up left on the day for a decent pitcher.  At the Coliseum is always a good start for a pitcher, especially against the weak As' lineup. He's worth a spot here in AL-only leagues because of the match-up.

Brian Duensing (6.3%) - Minnesota at Tampa Bay - Duensing is only high on the list because I am down on the Tampa Bay Rays in spite of their recent success.  They don't have the batters in the lineup to scare me this year.   Duensing is a play only if you really need a guy in deeper or AL only leagues.

Marco Estrada (0.0%) - Milwaukee at Washington - Estrada has a good match-up here against Washington and has had a pretty strong K/9 during his time in the majors.  The worry is with his other numbers, but you hope the match-up here against the Nationals lets him come out of it with some decent numbers.

The Washington Starters
Livan Hernandez (1.4%) and Jason Marquis (0.5%) - Washington vs Milwaukee - Neither of these guys are going to get too many strikeouts and neither can really be counted on for your ERA and WHIP, but if you are chasing in your head to head matchup in an NL-Only league, they might grab you a win.  Livan has the better opposing starting pitching matchup.

Barry Enright (0.1%) - Arizona vs San Francisco - He's being listed here because he's available in so many leagues and his matchup isn't horrible... but I wouldn't play him unless I was chasing.

Bad Matchup Pitchers
Jesse Litsch (1.8%) - Toronto at Boston
Chris Volstad (0.2%) - Florida at Philadelphia
Jeff Karstens (0.0%) - Pittsburgh at Cincinnati
Brad Bergesen (0.1%) - Baltimore at Cleveland
None of these guys are particularly better than the guys right above them here, and all of them have very poor matchups here.  They aren't going to help you on Sunday unless you have already totally lost ERA and WHIP and are just hoping to catch a win or some strikeouts on the last matchup day and none of the above players are available.

Minors Players Making Spot Starts
Dillon Gee (0.0%) - New York Mets at Atlanta
Alan Johnson (0.0%) - Colorado at Chicago Cubs
Both of these guys are below average players who are only on their teams major league rosters due to the team's needs.  They have no fantasy relevance.

The +10.00 ERA Club
Joe Blanton (3.1%) - Philadelphia vs Florida - The 10 ERA club is getting smaller as the year has gone on, so we might have to bump down the limit for the club in coming days.  However, Blanton makes the cut here, and as such deserves to be totally ignored by you on Sunday.

2 comments:

  1. This is a tough job, man. The mistakes'll happen. As long as you're honest about 'em (which you have been) and you explain your thought process (which you're very good at), then your analyses will always be of value. Thanks for putting in the effort.

    ReplyDelete