Fantasy Baseball Spot Starter Pickups for Thursday 5/5/11

Tuesday's Recommended Starter's Stats - R.A. Dickey - 6.0 Innings Pitched - 1 Strikeout - Loss - 9.00 ERA - 1.33 WHIP
Wednesday's Recommended Starter's Stats -Vance Worley - 6.0 Innings Pitched - 7 Strikeouts - Win - 1.50 ERA - 0.67 WHIP
Week Five Starters' Stats - 19 Innings Pitched - 15 Strikeouts - 7.11 K/9 - 1 Win in 3 Starts - 4.74 ERA - 1.00 WHIP
Cumulative Starters' Stats - 252 Innings Pitched - 203 Strikeouts - 7.25 K/9 - 16 Wins in 41 Starts - 3.64 ERA - 1.15 WHIP
Starter Spreadsheet Viewable Online Here

Once again, sorry about the shortened column yesterday.  It's going to happen on occasion unfortunately, because life gets in the way, but hopefully it will continue to be a rare occurrence.  Tuesday's spot starter was R.A. Dickey, who got blasted.  I still like him going forwards at home, but I want to wait a few weeks until I know he has the knuckleball going right again.  It wasn't breaking well Tuesday, and it showed in his stat line. Luckily I bounced back with the Vance Worley pick on Wednesday.  Strikeouts were there...The win was there...The ERA and WHIP were there...It was a great fantasy start.  Week five's numbers are solid save the ERA, which we'll get down over the next few days.  As a side note, Colby Lewis is owned in 50% of league still so is ineligible for my list, and Brandon Beachy is owned in 49.7% of leagues, and any active leagues so it would be cheap for me to recommend him here today.  Beachy is the best guy available under 50% and is my recommendation if he's available, but otherwise my official Thursday recommendation is coming up...

Fantasy Baseball Spot Starter Pickups For Friday 4/22/11

Thursday's Recommended Starter's Stats - Brandon McCarthy - 8.0 Innings Pitched - 6 Strikeouts - Loss - 1.13 ERA - 0.63 WHIP
Week 3 Starters' Stats - 28.0 Innings Pitched - 29 Strikeouts - 9.32 K/9- 1 Win in 4 Starts - 1.29 ERA - 0.86 WHIP
Cumulative Starters' Stats - 152.1 Innings Pitched - 126 Strikeouts - 7.44 K/9 - 11 Wins in 24 Starts - 3.19 ERA - 1.13 WHIP
Starter Spreadsheet Online Here

Can't complain about the game McCarthy had on Thursday night.  He was great except for the one home run.  Complete eight inning game, six strikeouts and just the solo home run that lead to him getting a loss.  Sometimes you run up against Felix Hernandez and don't get a win in a one run game.  Regardless, he gave you eight solid innings of great ERA and WHIP and the strikeouts with it. Still have a great week going so far, in spite of my lack of wins.  You can ride my hot streak with my Friday recommendation coming up...

Fantasy Baseball Spot Starter Pickups for Monday 4/11/11

Sunday Pitcher Stats-
Aaron Harang - 6.0 Innings Pitched - 2 Strikeouts - Win - 1.50 ERA - .83 WHIP
Gavin Floyd - 8.0 Innings Pitched - 8 Strikeouts - Win - 0.00 ERA - .63 WHIP

Cumulative Stater Stats - 74.1 Innings Pitched - 65 Strikeouts - 7.87 K/9 - 7 Wins in 12 Starts - 2.91 ERA - 1.13 WHIP
Starter Stat Spreadsheet Here

A nice way to wrap up the first fully head to head week.  Two pitchers with that ERA and WHIP are great for your overall totals and Floyd made up for Harang's minor absence of strikeouts.  Curiously enough, both pitchers I selected on Sunday had a run cross the plate that wasn't charged to their ERA because of an error even though in both cases, the pitchers themselves were charged with the error.  I feel like, because the error is on the pitcher the run should probably be charged to the pitcher, but who am I to argue with it as it helps my pitcher's ERA, right?  Anyways, ranking Monday starters available in more than 50% of mixed leagues coming up right after the jump....

Fantasy Baseball Spot Starter Pickup For 4/1/11

Any good fantasy baseball player knows that acquiring free agent pitchers is huge for any kind of fantasy team.  If you drafted a lot of relievers, streaming starters can be a great way to accumulate innings and strikeouts and even if you have great starters, picking up the right free agent pitcher can be great help on days when your starters have bad match ups.  Everyday I post my recommendation for starting pitchers to pick up for the next days games.  If you read this space yesterday for today's (3/31) games you would have picked up Derek Lowe and got great value out of him.  Lowe pitched 5.2 innings of no run ball with just three hits and two walks...picking up six strikeouts and a win with a slick 0.88 WHIP.  Lowe had a great day but won't have another good matchup for a while, so you can drop him for tommorow's (4/1) pickup if you need to.  So who do I recommend for Friday?  Find out after the jump....