Daily Joust: The Weekend Ahead

It’s Friday, and that means a couple of things. First, the weekend is nearly upon us (thank goodness). Second, it’s time to get your drink on. Third, it’s time to get ready for your weekend of fantasy baseball  with DailyJoust.com. DJ allows you the chance to play daily fantasy baseball, choose a team today an another one tomorrow if you want, all the while giving you the chance to make some real money. Today, I’ll give some advice on how you might choose to fill out your lineup for Friday or Saturday.

HITTERS – FRIDAY

Michael Cuddyer vs. Kevin Millwood: We all know that Millwood is nothing more than a place holder anyway. Put him in Coors Field and things could get ugly. Cuddyer has long enjoyed the matchup with the righty as he’s hit .429 with two homers in 28 at-bats. Jason Giambi (.421-3-5) and Todd Helton (.324-2-6) have also enjoyed considerable success in the matchup.

Albert Pujols vs. Jeff Suppan: The latest Padres scrap heap add, Suppan is 2-12 with a 1.69 ERA through three starts. He won’t keep that up much longer. He’s also in grave danger of being tattooed by Mr. Pujols who has suddenly has a 6-game hit streak including two homers and five RBI the last two games. Pujols is also 16-for-42, a .381 average, with a homer and six RBI against Suppan.

PITCHERS – FRIDAY

Edwin Jackson vs. Orioles: Jackson has pitched very well for the Nats this year with a 3.71 ERA, 1.01 WHIP and 4.22 K/BB ratio in his first seven starts for the club. Friday he faces an Orioles club that he has long had success against. In nine career outings against the team from Baltimore he is 5-1 with a 3.61 ERA, 1.18 WHIP and 40 Ks in 47.1 innings, numbers that don’t look at all out of place compared to his work this season.

Ted Lilly vs. Cardinals: In 2008-09 Lilly went 4-1 against the Cardinals and in his career against the Cardinals he’s also 7-3 with a 2.85 ERA and 0.99 WHIP over 14 starts. He’s also 5-0 this have allowed a single run in four of his six starts (the other two times out he’s allowed six runs leading to a 2.11 ERA for the year).

Carlos Zambrano vs. Indians: In seven starts this season only two times has Big Z allowed more than one earned run (he allowed four runs in six innings in his first start and three runs in six innings on April 27th). The result is a 1.88 ERA and 1.04 WHIP across his 48 innings. It’s hard to sit him against anyone right now.

HITTERS – SATURDAY

Adam Dunn vs. Ryan Dempster: The Cubs ace is pitching very well to start the year (1.74 ERA, .097 WHIP) but Dunn is performing equally as well for the White Sox (12 HR, 30 RBI, .947 OPS in 39 games) . In 27 career plate appearances against Dempster Dunn has hit .294 while he’s walked 10 times leading to an otherworldly .556 OBP (he has two homers and four RBI as well).

Adrian Gonzalez vs. Joe Blanton: AGone hasn’t lived up to expectations this year but he’s set up for a matchup Saturday that should certainly be advantageous to him. In 16 at-bats against Blanton he has seven hits, two of which are big flies, and he’s knocked in four runs leading to a .438 average and 1.283 OPS.

Ty Wigginton vs. Jon Lester: These two have only squared off 20 times but Wigginton has produced eight hits (.400) including a homer. Add in the four walks Ty has also been able to accrue and the Phillies’ batter has a video game like .538 OBP in the matchup.

PITCHERS – SATURDAY

Christian Friedrich vs. Mariners: How is this for a way to start your big league career. Take on the Padres in San Diego. Then fly north up the California coast to take on the Giants in San Francisco. How about you them hop on a plan to fly home to take on the Mariners. Has a pitcher ever had a better set of three opponents to take on to start his big league career? Through 13 innings the lefty with the dominating curve ball has 17 Ks, two walks allowed an a 1.38 ERA.

Derek Holland vs. Astros: He’s made two starts against the Astros, and though his ERA is 4.15 his WHIP is impressive at 1.08, as is his BAA of .234. Plus, the Astros are far from being an offensive juggernaut, right? There’s also the fact that over his last 14.1 innings that Holland has allowed one earned run.

Yovani Gallardo vs. Twins: The Twins are in the bottom five in many offensive categories this year including runs scored which should certainly help Gallardo who has allowed just four runs while striking out 14 batters over his last 12 innings. Gallardo has also impressed in four starts against the Twins in his career with a 2.48 ERA, 1.10 WHIP and 27 Ks in 29 innings.

CONTESTS

There is still time to take me on in a one day fantasy baseball game, today, Friday.

Click on the link to Take on Ray Flowers to learn how you can sign up for free to win $, and to get bragging rights by beating a baseball expert.

Get on it!

By Ray Flowers

Player Profile: Mike Stanton

Ask anyone and they will tell you that Mike Stanton is a future star in this game. The owner of prodigious power, no park in the land can contain the ferocity with which Stanton sends balls into orbit. Because of his almost unparallelled ability to drive the ball into the cheap seats, Stanton’s value in the fantasy game continues to grow. Take a look over at MockDraftCentral and you’ll find that Stanton’s Average Draft Position is inside the top-25 (24.4 actually). Two questions come to my mind when I see that. (1) Can Stanton live up to those expectations? (2) How can Stanton possibly live up to those expectations? I know those are in effect the same question, I’m just trying to make a point — I think it’s going to be pretty darn difficult for Stanton to be as productive in 2012 as people expect him to be based on where he is being drafted. Before I get to that line of thought, he’s a quick run down of Stanton’s skill set.

Stanton has only 875 big league at-bats in his young career so that makes prognostication somewhat more difficult than normal. The guy has one season of 375 at-bats, so the old sample size question can be rightly brought up here as an uncertainty.

Stanton has hit .259 and .262 in his two big league seasons. In those two years he has hit .261, just every so slightly above the big league average of .256. Can he produce a better batting average than that moving forward? On a positive note he did boost his walk rate by three percent while cutting his strikeout rate by 3.5 percent in his second season. However, his BB/K mark was slightly below the league average at 0.42, and he still struck out in more than a quarter of his at-bats (27.6 percent to be precise). That doesn’t sound like a guy who is primed for a batting average increase. Stanton also owns a mere 16.4 percent line drive rate in his career (16.5 and 16.3 percent the last two years). While he should be able to maintain his average given the homers he will hit that don’t count in this measure but lead to hits, it is somewhat concerning that Stanton is pretty far removed from the 19-20 percent big league average.

Stanton is all about the power which he has flashed since day one. However, and yes there actually is a ‘however’ when talking about his power, I have one small concern with Stanton. Much like Ryan Howard, another prodigious power bat, Stanton doesn’t hit as many fly balls as you think. In fact, Stanton’s career fly ball rate of 39.3 percent is only about two percent above the league average. He really doesn’t hit that many balls into the air. As a result, the only way he is going to blast 40+ homers is going to be if he converts a large percentage of those fly balls into home runs. Stanton has done that the last two years with an impressive 24.0 percent HR/F rate, and last year his 24.8 percent HR/F rate was the highest mark in baseball (to compare, the average big league posts a mark of about 10 percent, and even a huge power bat like Albert Pujols had only an 18.3 percent mark last season). Maybe Stanton can lead the league in this category year after year, it’s certainly possible. All I’m saying is that he’s going to have to be near the top of the leader board in HR/F ratio if he wants to hit 40 homers if he doesn’t hit more balls into the air.

Finally, an athletic 6’5”, Stanton has stolen five bases in each of his big league seasons but he’s just not going to run very much – it’s not his game.

So what do we have in Stanton?

(1) We had an hitter who strikes out far too much.

(2) We have a hitter who profiles as a league average contributor in batting average.

(3) We have a hitter with elite power, though one who struggles to hit a lot of fly balls.

(4) We have a player who is unlikely to steal many bases.

Does that sound like a top-25 fantasy player to you?

Let me ask you this – would you be happy if Stanton hit .264 with 40 homers, 106 RBI and 101 runs scored in 2012? You had better say yes because all four of those numbers would be career bests for Stanton. You know who put up those exact numbers in 2007? Try Adam Dunn. Did anyone, EVER, look at Dunn and think he was a top-25 fantasy performer? Anyone? Of course you didn’t. What if Stanton hit .248 with 39 homers, 111 RBI and 90 runs scored in 2012? That would also be considered a career best effort for Stanton so you would have to be please wouldn’t you? Mark Teixeira did that last season and he’s being drafted after Stanton (Tex has a 27.8 ADP). Would you really rather have Stanton over a guy like Teixeira who has hit 30 homers with 100 RBI each of the past eight years given that Tex is also in a great offensive ball yard in a potent offense with the Yankees?

If Stanton improves across the board and has a rather impressive third season, something like either the Dunn or Teixeira campaign’s I mentioned above, he’s still not likely to live up to his top-25 billing. He offers little on the bases to augment his value, and that league average batting mark isn’t going to do him any favors either. I’m not saying to avoid Stanton or that he will fail. I’m merely pointing out that the hope of a huge power season might be causing people to draft Stanton at a point where he can’t possibly live up to expectations.

Don’t forget to pick up a copy of the 2012 Fantasy Baseball Draft Guide.

By Ray Flowers

Category Targets

If you haven’t heard, I’ve written a 2012 Fantasy Draft Guide that is now available at BaseballGuys.com. If you’re wondering what type of analysis awaits you in the over 50-page Guide, here is an inkling of the type of material you can expect to find there (in addition to the Player Rankings, more than 600 of them actually, that are the heart of The Guide, there are a ton of articles breaking down various aspects of the fantasy game).

People ask me all the time about projections. As I’ve written previously, the best one can hope for with projections is 70 or so percent accuracy. The point being, most projection systems aren’t very good, and in truth, a rolling three year average of numbers is likely to be about as accurate in the long run as any projection system that you use. That’s why I hesitate to give number projections each year (I also hesitate to employ a top-300 list, and you can read more about that at the link). However, there’s no way around it, people love to see “Albert Pujols .315-38-118-112-8” when they go about trying to put together a championship caliber roster, even if the projector has no real way of knowing if his projection will be accurate (think Adam Dunn last year who everyone thought would hit 40 homers with 100 RBI. More on Dunn can be found in his Player Profile).

Nowadays, with the advent of this thing called a computer, and the myriad of software one can use to track a fantasy draft, people often try to reach “category targets” on draft day. What do I mean by that? I mean what numbers, in each of the fantasy categories that your league employs, do you need to attain to win a category? What number do you need to reach a top-3 finish in category? That’s what targeting tries to help you to do – understand the numbers that you need to reach in each category to have a shot at your league championship. Here are the issues with this line of thought.

1- You have to be able to access historical data for your setup. If it’s a standard situation like a 5×5, 12 team league, an I’ll give some numbers for that setup in a minute, you’re in good shape. However, if you’re in a 7×7 league, or a points league, or anything non-traditional, the numbers you will need to target are different, so having access to the league standings for the past few years can help you to gauge where you need to be. The numbers also obviously change if you are in a 10-team league versus a 15-team league.

2- Just because you have the “target numbers” prior to your draft does not mean you’re home free. Again, you have to depend on your projections being accurate, and that’s a whole other level of uncertainty. If you have Pujols projected at 30 homers you might be 10 short of your target when your team is assembled. If you have Pujols at 40 homers in your projections maybe you hit your target number exactly. Will Pujols hit 30 and leave you wanting? Will he hit 40 and give you exactly what you expected? Will he hit 45 homers and exceed your expectations? Remember, your ability to reach your “targets” is completely dependent on the accuracy of your projections.

3- Given my statement at the start of this piece, that projections are only 70 or so percent accurate, you have to be very careful with using targets as your only guide. If you think you need 280 homers to reach your target, and your projections have you at 295 with your assembled team, you clearly don’t need to go looking for homers anymore, right? What if your projections for your hitters though end up being only 75 percent right? That would leave you with around 220 homers, well below your needed target number. And that is my main point here, and why I don’t slavishly use”target” numbers on draft day (in fact, I’m one of a rare breed anymore – I do not use a computer to track numbers on draft day. Maybe I’m missing out, but at the same time my track record is plenty good enough to show that what I’m doing works for me). If you only look at target numbers you may make decisions at the draft table, or on early season waivers, that ultimately hurt your team (maybe you should have been adding power instead of going for speed to hit your targets). As I’ve said before, drafting is much more an art than it is a science.

With that, here are some simple target numbers for 5×5, 12 team leagues.

100 Wins, 3.50 ERA, 1.25 WHIP, 1250 Ks, 100 saves

.270-260-1000-1050-160

In the end, like any other bit of analysis, “targets” are just part of the puzzle. They can certainly be helpful when you’re trying to get a handle on how your team should perform so there’s no reason not to use them, but don’t get so tied into those targets, and your projections, that you make bad decisions on draft day because you are only looking at some predetermined set of numbers.

By Ray Flowers

Player Profile: Adam Dunn

“Any list of the biggest failures in 2011 has to start with Adam Dunn (.159-11-42 in 496 at-bats. I still can’t believe he was that atrocious). However, a teammate of Dunn’s also has to be in the top-10 [Alex Rios]…” That was my opening to my Alex Rios Player Profile from back in November of 2011. Today I’ll complete that thought by discussing the most pathetic performer of 2011 – Mr. Adam Dunn.

Some history.

From 2004-2010 Dunn hit at least 38 homers each year. Only one man in history has a run of more than 7-straight years of hitting 38 or more homers each season. It’s not Babe Ruth who tied with Dunn at seven (1926-32), or Barry Bonds who never did it more than five years in a row (2000-04). The answer to this riddle is actually Rafael Palmeiro (1995-2003).

From 2004-10 Dunn had at least 92 RBI each year. That’s well short of the record of 13-straight such seasons held by Lou Gehrig, Jimmie Foxx and Alex Rodriguez. Still, only five men were able to hit that total each year from 2004-10: Albert Pujols, Arod, Mark Teixeira, Miguel Cabrera and Dunn.

From 2004-10 Dunn scored at least 79 runs each season. Only six others joined Dunn in that group: Bobby Abreu, Teixeira, Pujols, Cabrera, Derek Jeter and Johnny Damon.

All told, how many big leaguer posted a line of 38 homers, 92 RBI and 79 runs scored each year from 2004-10? The answer is one – Adam Dunn.

So what the hell happened in 2011 to the then 32 year old slugger? Some thoughts.

Maybe he wasn’t totally comfortable in his new home in Chicago?

Maybe the pressure of a big money deal got to him (4-years, $56 million)?

Maybe he lost confidence when he struggled?

Maybe health woes, like his appendicitis, ruined his timing?

Maybe he didn’t like being the DH? He hit mere .176 with a. 621 OPS in 81 such games (to be honest though, those numbers were better than his overall totals of .159 and .569).

Let’s get past the maybe’s and look at the raw data.

As I’ve laid out, there wasn’t a more consistent power hitter in the game than Dunn. At 32 years of age, in a ballpark that benefits hitters, there was zero reason to expect a collapse in 2011. In fact, you’d be hard pressed to roll the calendar back 12 months and find anyone who had a bad thing to say about Dunn as most expected the move to Chicago to lead to at least, at the very worst, a replication, of his 2010 effort (.260-38-103-85). What happened then?

Did he walk less than normal? Nope. His 15.1 percent walk rate was pretty much a match for his 16.2 percent career rate.

Did he strike out more than normal? Heck yes he did. A career 27.6 K rate is terrible, but last season that number grew to epic proportions as it ended up at 35.7 percent. That was only the second time in his career that the mark was over 29 percent.

Did his hit type change? Not if you judge him by his GB/FB rate which was 0.68, a near identical match to his career rate of 0.71 percent. As for his line drive rate it was 20.0 percent. Not only was that mark his third best since 2003, it was also above his 19.6 career rate. So he hit as many grounders, liners and fly balls as normal. Wait, what? I know, it makes no sense does it? Dunn was pretty much the same hitter as always in terms of these three categories. The real issue though was two-fold. (1) His BABIP shrunk to a career worst .240 (career .292). 2011 was only the second time since 2004 that his BABIP mark was under .276. Given a career norm in the line drive category, that dip in BABIP really isn’t explainable, at least not simply (a loss of bat speed, bad luck, etc.). (2) For each season from 2003-10, Dunn had produced a HR/F ratio of 20.8 percent. In 2011 that number dropped to 9.6 percent. To state is another way, Dunn went from being elite to league average overnight. That just doesn’t happen.

Given the totality of his career, his age, and his home ballpark, I find it nearly impossible to predict another outage in 2012. The question is, how much will Dunn bounce back? Admittedly I’m a big fan of the Big Donkey, but I think the data leads to that point of view. If I had to put a floor on his production I’d think 2002 (.249-26-71-84). However, I’m not ruling out a return to 35-90-90 levels because I really cannot explain what the hell went wrong in 2011. Maybe he ticked off a practitioner of the dark arts who put a whammy on him. I’m not going to draft Dunn as my starter at first base, but if falls out of the top-20 at first base, like he’s currently ranked at Fleaflicker, then sign up Mr. Dunn for my squad.

By Ray Flowers

Player Profile: Alex Rios

Any list of the biggest failures in 2011 has to start with Adam Dunn (.159-11-42 in 496 at-bats. I still can’t believe he was that atrocious). However, a teammate of Dunn’s also has to be in the top-10, and he is the topic of my piece today.

Alex Rios was an elite performer in 2010 in his first full season with the White Sox. Rios hit a solid .284, socked 21 homers and knocked in 88 runs. He also managed to record 89 runs scored, and for good measure he tossed in 34 steals. Those numbers left him as the only man in baseball to go .280-20-85-85-30 in 2010. So how in the world did he go from being an elite option in 2010 to an embarrassment in 2011 as he produced a line of .227-13-44-64-11? The knee jerk reaction is that he played over his head in 2011 and that he simply sucks. However, that’s far too simplistic a look for me.

BATTING AVERAGE
Rios has hit .275 for his career. From 2006-08 he hit at least .291 each season, and four times in five years from 2006-10 he hit at least .284. So how in the world did he fall to .227 in ’11? Did he fail to square up the ball? In fact, he did a decent job in that category. Rios posted a 18.4 percent line drive mark that is just 0.8 below his career rate. It was also a 3-year high. Did he have problems with pitch recognition? Well, he did walk at his worst rate (4.7 percent), but since he also struck out less than ever before (2.5 percent better than ever before actually) his 0.40 BB/K mark was right on his career average of 0.39. Was his ground ball to fly ball ratio jacked up? No it wasn’t. Rios posted a 1.08 GB/FB mark, right in line with expectations given his 1.14 career mark. So why the hell did his average dip .050 points in 2011? Can you say bad luck? Rios produced a .237 BABIP despite pretty much everything else looking “normal.” That BABIP was a career worst, it had never been below .273, and was light years removed from his .306 career mark. What I’m saying is that, honestly, Rios didn’t deserve the batting average he produced in 2011.

HOME RUNS
I mentioned Rios’ GB/FB rate above and how it was stable when compared to his career rate. The same could be said about his fly ball rate. Rios owns a mark of 37.7 percent in his career an in 2011 he posted a 39.3 rate. So if he hit as many fly balls as normal, why the dip in his homer rate? Well, he undershot his HR/F rate of 8.7 percent with a mark of 7.0, a seven year low. That certainly had a large part to do with it.

RBI/RUNS SCORED
It’s pretty easy here. When you don’t get hits, it’s hard to knock in runs. When you don’t get hits or take walks to get on base, you just don’t score runs. Just think of it this way. Rios posted a .265 OBP in 2011. His career batting average is .275. Makes no sense right? For the record, his career OBP is still a poor .323, but it’s vastly superior to the embarrassing number he posted in ’11. For the record Part II: from 2006-10 Rios averaged 81 RBI and 85 runs scored a season.

STEALS
Rios swiped a career best 34 bags in 2010 and he also stole 32 bases in 2008. Moreover, from 2008-10 he averaged 30 steals a year so he’d clearly established himself as a fantasy force in that category. So what happened in 2011? You do remember that his OBP was .265 right? He just wasn’t ever on base to steal a bag, and even when he tried to run his success rate was awful at 64.7 percent (his success rate the three previous years were 80.0, 82.8 and 70.8 percent).

Alex Rios will be 31 years old in February, so he’s certainly not at an age when skills erosion seems the likely culprit for his 2011 failures. Rios though has always run hot and cold, it’s just how it is with him, and it’s something you have to be prepared to live with if you roster him. Unfortunately, his cold streak last year lasted almost the entire season. Still, there seems to be little reason to doubt that 2012 should produce better numbers because, if truth be told, he really wasn’t that far “off” in 2011 despite the horrible numbers he ended the year with. Buy him on the cheap, cause he will be cheap, and you’ll likely reap the benefits of a player who will enjoy a nice bounce back season.

By Ray Flowers

2011 Positional Review – First Base

You remember back to March when I gave away all my position player rankings for free, right? For those of you who want to revisit my greatest hits, here’s where you would go to get all my rankings for hitters – 2011: BBGuys Hitter Capsules.

I’m nothing if not accountable, so I’ll review my top-10 predictions at each position as well as point out my biggest “hit” outside of the top-10 and my biggest “bust.” This should be fun.

CATCHERS

2011 FIRST BASE Top-10
1 Albert Pujols
2 Joey Votto
3 Mark Teixeira
4 Miguel Cabrera
5 Prince Fielder
6 Adrian Gonzalez
7 Kevin Youkilis
8 Adam Dunn
9 Ryan Howard
10 Paul Konerko

Pujols‘ run at history, which I wrote about in On the Cusp, fell just short as he ended the year with a .299 batting average, 37 homers, 99 RBI and 105 runs scored. An impressive season for a mortal, but a disappointing effort for Pujols.

Votto wasn’t as good as he was during his MVP effort but it was pretty damn close. He posted a .324-37-113-106-16 line in 2010 and followed it up with .309-29-103-101-8 this season.

Teixeira blasted 39 homers and drove in 111 runs for the Yankees giving them the power they expected.   Unfortunately he scored “only” 90 runs, and for the second straight season he hit under .260 as he limped home to a career worst .248 mark.

Cabrera was as he always is, fantastic. I admit it, my concerns over his drinking issues were apparently unfounded. I touched on that in Braun: Best of the Bunch.

Fielder was second in the NL in homers (38), RBI (120) and OBP (.415) while he was third in OPS (.994). Someone is going to get awfully rich this offseason.

Gonzalez proved me half right, and half wrong. You can learn more by reading Player Profiles: 2011 Review.

Youkilis was limited all year by injury and his final line looks pretty bad (.258-17-80-68-3). Still, he was on pace to hit more than 20 homers with 100 RBI while his OBP was .373, not bad for a down season. He should be at full health next season.

Dunn fell off more than virtually any player in recent memory (Andruw Jones was close a few years back). Dunn was unquestionably the biggest failure in the game in 2011 as he hit .159 with 11 homers over 415 at-bats. I literally felt a sickness in my stomach well up writing that sentence.

Howard hit his 33 homers and had 116 RBI, but he also hit a mere .253 and scored just 81 runs. He could easily miss the start of the 2012 season as well since he ruptured his Achilles tendon on the final play of the season for the Phillies.

Konerko was strong yet again hitting .300 with 31 homers and 105 RBI. He has no speed, it’s almost surprising that he stole a base, and despite playing 149 games with a .388 OBP he scored only 69 runs for the White Sox.

Hit: Freddie Freeman #25
Freeman took a while to get going, if we remove his .225 April he hit .293 the rest of the way, an in the end he batted .282 with 21 homers and 76 RBI for the Braves. Hey, it’s first base where everyone can hit. It was hard to find a guy who really stood out past the top-15.

Bust: Dunn
U-n-b-e-l-i-e-v-a-b-l-e.

By Ray Flowers

One Day Left

With one day left in the season, and so much left to be decided with the Rays/Sox and Braves/Cards tied for the Wild Card, you gotta love it. I hope the Rays and Cards make it. Just my personal preference.

Adam Dunn is having one of the worst seasons in the history of baseball. He was threatening to become just the second player ever, Rob Deer is the lucky winner, to have a batting average that is less than the players strikeout total. Oh Dunn has that trick pulled off with 177 punchouts and a .159 average, but it won’t officially be recognized because he is a handful of plate appearances below the number needed (502) to qualify for the batting title. In addition to that dreadful bit of news, Dunn has also lost one of the most impressive homer streaks in league history. From 2004-10, Dunn hit at least 38 homers in every season. This year he’s scored 36 runs. I don’t know what to say other than this is, like I wrote at the top, one of the worst performances in the history of baseball.

Matt Garza is one of the most consistent pitchers in baseball. He only went 10-10 in his first year in the NL, but he did strike out a career best 197 batters in 198 innings. Garza has made at least 30 starts and thrown at least 184.2 innings each of the past four years. Even more than that, look at his BAA marks – .245, .233, .248 and .245. How about his WHIP you say? I thought you would never ask – 1.24, 1.26, 1.25 and 1.26. I’m not making that up. Check it out.

Micah Owing is 8-0 as a reliever for the D’backs (he did make four starts). Bartolo Colon made 26 starts for the Yankees and recorded only eight wins.

Brandon Phillips is one hell of a ballplayer. He’ll end the 2011 season, he has a strained left quad, hitting .300 with 18 homers, 82 RBI, 94 runs scored and 14 steals. Since he joined the Reds in 2006 he’s tied for 4th at the position with 124 homers, he is 4th with 486 RBI, he’s 5th with 524 runs scored and 3rd with 135 steals. Like I said, he’s a hell of a ballplayer.

Jimmy Rollins would like to sign a 5-year contract this offseason to take him through his 38 year old season. I don’t know if anyone will give him that long a deal, but he proved he still has a lot left to give after an injury plagued 2010 season (Rollins has 16 homers, 63 RBI, 87 runs and 30 steals in 141 games for the Phillies). He’s also hit .271, a three year high. Moreover, for the 7th straight time in which he’s appeared in 135 games he stole 30 bags with 10 homers, 50 RBI and 75 runs. Those aren’t fantastic numbers, but for a shortstop they are strong.

Alfonso Soriano was nowhere near as bad as Adam Dunn, but it’s not like he hasn’t had some issues of his own in 2011. Soriano has hit 26 homers with 88 RBI, solid totals for the Cubs’ outfielder. Here is where it gets interesting. Soriano is hitting a terrible .244, and given that he has walked a mere 27 times, his OBP this season is a sickly .289. As a result of not getting on base very often, and the fact that 81 percent of his at-bats have come out of the 6th and 7th spots in the lineup, Soriano has scored only 50 runs. I’ll save you a trip to the calculator. That means Soriano has scored 52 percent of his runs on his own home runs.

By Ray Flowers

Boring Is As Boring Does

You want boring, don’t read this blog. You want boring, don’t listen to my radio show on Sirius XM Fantasy Sports Radio. You want boring, go home.

Why all this boring talk? Because of the main guy I’m gonna highlight today. His name is Mark Buehrle, and word on the street is that even his wife is bored by him. Ah, but is boring necessarily a bad thing? I’d posit, at least in this case, that it’s not.

Buehrle hasn’t won more than 13 games the past three years. He’s never won 20 games, and only once has be won more than 16 (he came in with 19 victories in 2002). Still, he’s won at least 10 games each of the past 11 years.  It doesn’t sound like much, but the only other pitcher who can match that run is CC Sabathia.

He owns a career ERA of 3.80. That’s solid, but unexciting, possibly even boring some might say. Still, hie ERA has been under 3.90 in three of the past four years and his current mark of 3.06 says he will make it four of five years.

Buehrle never strikes anyone out. His career best for a K/9 is 6.05, and he’s now working on a third straight season under five at 4.79.

So why am I talking about Buehrle? Because his boring old self has been pretty amazing of late. How amazing? Buehrle worked his 18th straight outing last night in which he allowed three or fewer earned runs (he tied Frank Smith’s 1909 record). That’s over 100 years people. In those 18 starts he’s also posted a “quality start” (six or more innings pitched with three of fewer earned runs allowed), ready for this, 17 times. Now tell me, do you want that boring guy on your team? I do.

NUMBERS

I know none of you listened when I warned about Jose Bautista and the likely fall his batting average would take in the second half, but you should have. Bautista hit .334 in the first half, but in 22 games since the All-Star break he has hit all of .205. He’s still hitting a strong .309 on the year, but I’ve said it over and over again — even hitting .300 has always been a huge stretch for Bautista who has never hit even .265 in a season.

Adam Dunn is hitting .167 in the second half. Amazingly, that’s seven points better than he batted in the first half.

Aubrey Huff is the Giants leading hitter right now with a .249 average (he has the highest average on the club of any player with enough at-bats to qualify for the batting average title – 3.1 plate appearances per team game). He’s been on fire of late though, finally, hitting .353 in August and .305 over his last 24 games. Finally.

Adam Lind is hitting .196 since the All-Star break. The team says the blame rests with a mechanical flaw in his hack. Let’s hope that is the case, but he is unusable right now in mixed leagues.

Kerry Wood has struck out 8-straight batters to tie the all-time Cubs’ record. Kyle Farnsworth and Juan Cruz also pulled off the trick. With the hot stretch Wood has upped his K/9 mark to 9.64 on the year, still nearly three quarters of a point below his career mark of 10.33.

By Ray Flowers

What’s on Tap?

photo © 2008 Dirk | more info (via: Wylio)

Tonight’s a big night for me as I get ready to make a big home cooked meal. What’s on the menu? Pancetta and peas, creamed corn and a main course of stir fried chicken and eggplant. I know you wish you were coming over. Don’t lie.

Heath Bell and Francisco Rodriguez are two of the better closers in baseball, but will they remain so for the duration of the 2011 season? Both pitchers are gearing up to be dealt by their respective clubs. You have to figure that both will be dealt to a team that will ask them to close, but what if a team like the Yankees comes a calling? Mariano Rivera is going to remain the closer for the Yanks, we all know that, so an addition in the pen would be one in which the new guy would be asked to serve as a setup man. Again, I don’t anticipate either bell or K-Rod going to a team that won’t ask them to work the 9th inning, but it’s something to keep in mind if you own either hurler right now.

Adam Dunn please wake up from your slumber. Perhaps he made a wish in a water fountain that resulted in him switching bodies with his friend who always wondered what it would be like to be a big league baseball player? I know that sounds stupid, but it is the same basic plot of The Change-Up, minus the baseball connection, a movie that will be in theaters in August (it stars Ryan Reynolds and Jason Bateman for all you ladies out there). Dunn is hitting .175 with seven homers in 217 at-bats. Are you kidding me? Dunn has hit at least 38 homers in 7-straight year, tied with Babe Ruth for the second longest such streak in baseball history. He’s looking like he may not even get to half that mark this season. He’s been so awful that his career OBP of .378 dwarfs his current slugging percent (.323). My goodness, his SLG is only .009 points higher than his OBP this season. You simply can’t lose your skills overnight, can you?

Do you need a laugh? If you do, and you missed this yesterday, here’s a wonderfully amusing story about Josh Hamilton who says that he can’t hit during day games because he has blue eyes.

Orlando Hudson has appeared in 1,180 games in the big leagues in a career that started in 2002. He just set a career best with his 11th theft of the year. He’s only appeared in 40 games this season. It’s pretty rare for a guy to go from stealing eight bases a year to 44 (his current pace if he played 160 games). Hudson certainly will not get there because of missed time, but it’s still remarkable to consider how out of bounds he is right now on the bases. Guys don’t suddenly take jumps like this in performance. Now where is my update on Jose Bautista again?

Speaking of Bautista he will be the Blue Jays third baseman moving forward. You can’t blame the Jays for bringing him in from the outfield, not when the third base position has produced five homers, 26 RBI and a .177 batting average this season for the team from the Great White North.

I love bacon. By itself, on a sandwich, in a salad or wrapped around some type of fish. If you disagree with my assessment that bacon is the best food on the planet then I don’t know what to tell you.

Have we all overlooked just how amazing that catcher Brian McCann is when he has a bat in his hands? McCann is currently hitting .305 with 13 homers, 45 RBI an a .903 OPS – fantastic numbers for a backstop. Since the start of the 2006 season he leads catchers in homers (120) and RBI (486). He’s also hit a robust .290 in his career.

By Ray Flowers

Around the Horn: June17, 2011

(1) Interleague play messes with players.

(2) Dan Uggla still can’t get her going.

(3) Jake Peavy to the bullpen?

(4) Daric Barton headed to minors?

(5) Ryan Vogelsong continues to amaze.

(6) Tommy Hanson dealing with shoulder woes.
(NOTE: After this video was posted the Braves put Hanson on the 15 DL after an MRI revealed shoulder inflammation).

By Ray Flowers