Nick Raducanu provides a recap of yesterday’s performances and gives his recommendations for Tuesday’s games.
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5 Good Nights, 5 Bad Nights
It’s a fact of life that every baseball player goes through hot and cold streaks. It’s important not to let those streaks influence a player’s fantasy baseball value too much, but it is important to be aware of how a player is doing within a short period of time (a seven-day sorter is always a good tool to use). A player’s short-term numbers can be the difference between winning and losing in daily games, and it can also make a huge difference in year-long leagues. For instance, if you can keep finding the second basemen on hot streaks and dropping them for another streaking second basemen once they get cold, you can piece together a very useful middle infielder-by-committee for your roto team. So before we get to today’s games, let’s take a spin through last night’s box scores to identify who had a good night and who had a bad night on Monday, May 20th.
5 Good Nights
- Yan Gomes: 3-5, 2 R, 2 HR, 4 RBI
- Brandon Belt: 4-5, 4 R, HR, RBI
- Travis Hafner: 2-5, R, HR, 2 RBI, 1 steal
- Patrick Corbin: 9.0 IP, 3 H, ER, BB, 10 Ks, W
- Clayton Kershaw: 9.0 IP, 3 H, ER, BB, 5 Ks, W
Honorable Mention: Miguel Tejada, Marlon Byrd, Adam Dunn, Dan Uggla, Edwin Encarnacion, Ryan Raburn, Angel Pagan, Matt Dominguez, Seth Smith, Dominic Brown, Julio Teheran, R.A. Dickey, Bartolo Colon, Alex Sanabia, Jason Marquis, Freddy Garcia, Cole Hamels, Dylan Axelrod, Ryan Vogelsong
5 Bad Nights
- Casey Janssen: 1.0 IP, 3 H, 2 ER, BB, K
- Scott Kazmir: 3.0 IP, 7 H, 5 ER, 2 BB, 2 Ks
- Kevin Correia: 4.0 IP, 8 H, 5 ER, BB
- Manny Machado: 0-5,
- Michael Saunders: 0-5
Dishonorable Mention: Cesar Izturis, Derek Norris, Asdrubal Cabrera, Jeremy Guthrie, Jim Johnson, Chris Perez, Jon Garland, Josh Lindblom, Shaun Marcum, Jon Lester, Hisashi Iwakuma
Daily Grab Bag
Check back here for daily updates on injuries, closer battles, player news, and anything else that might affect your fantasy baseball team.
- Ryan Vogelsong broke his hand last night after getting hit by a pitch and will likely miss at least 6-8 weeks.
- With Steve Cishek struggling, Mike Redmond has said that the Marlins will use “everyone” at closer. This could get muddled with Chad Qualls, A.J. Ramos, Mike Dunn, and Ryan Webb all getting a look. If I had to grab one, I’d take a flier on the guy with the best stuff — Ramos.
- Jim Johnson has now blown three straight saves and while Buck Showalter said he’s not ready to take the keys away from Johnson just yet, it might be good business to go pick up Darren O’Day if he’s available.
- Matt Garza (arm) has been activated from the disable list and will start against the Pirates tonight.
- Twins prospect, Kyle Gibson, is likely to be called up on Friday to start against the Tigers.
- Corey Hart (knee) ran and took full batting practice yesterday and could start a rehab assignment in the next week or two.
- John Danks (elbow) and Gordon Beckham (hand) are both on-track to rejoin the White Sox by the end of the month.
3 Up, 3 Down, and Throwing Darts
Starting and sitting the right pitchers on a day-to-day basis is often the lynchpin of winning any fantasy baseball league – roto, head-to-head, daily, and otherwise. In order to give you some help picking your pitchers for today, I’ve gone through all of the stats that I could (pitchers’ career numbers vs. certain hitters and lineups, home/road splits, lefty/righty splits, etc) and have made nine recommendations.
Here are today’s recommendations with, 3 Up (three pitchers you shouldn’t think of sitting), 3 Down (three pitchers with some warning flags for today), and Throwing Darts (three pitchers that I’ll be taking a flier on):
3 Up
Adam Wainwright at San Diego Padres
Stephen Strasburg at San Francisco Giants
Yu Darvish vs. Oakland A’s
3 Down
Phil Hughes at Baltimore Orioles
Ian Kennedy at Colorado Rockies
Dan Straily at Texas Rangers
Throwing Darts
Jose Fernandez vs. Philadelphia Phillies
Matt Garza at Pittsburgh Pirates
Bud Norris vs. Kansas City Royals
Swings and Misses
A hitter’s career numbers against a pitcher don’t always tell the whole story, but it can be informative if used correctly. I’m of the opinion that some information is better than none, and while there are other pieces to the puzzle of setting your daily lineup (splits, weather, etc.), I think a hitter’s career numbers against a pitcher can be very indicative of future success or failure. Some guys just own certain pitchers, and vice versa. As such, I’ve gone through today’s matchups and picked the best (and worst) matchups I could find. Anything less than 10-12 career at-bats is a relatively small sample-size (so take those with a grain of salt), but sometimes that’s all that is available.
Swings
- Nate McClouth is 7-for-9 (.778) in his career against today’s starter, Phil Hughes.
- Albert Pujols is 23-for-74 (.311) with five home runs in his career against today’s starter, Aaron Harang.
- Brian McCann is 18-for-39 (.462) with two home runs in his career against today’s starter, Mike Pelfrey.
- Carlos Santana is 3-for-23 (.130) in his career against today’s starter, Max Scherzer.
- Alfonso Soriano is 6-for-44 (.136) in his career against today’s starter, Wandy Rodriguez.
- Josh Willingham is 1-for-20 (.050) in his career against today’s starter, Tim Hudson.
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