With the calendar flipping from April to May, we’re inching closer to the summer. As the summer arrives, many prospects shall follow. Every year teams manipulate service time in order to save money through the arbitration process. You’ll begin to see more and more mention of the Super Two deadline. Here’s a link to MLB.com’s definition of Super Two. Around June, teams will be more willing to call up their top prospects without fear of having to award those top prospects an extra year of arbitration eligibility. What this means to you, the fantasy gamer, is that it’s a great time to ramp up prospect research. Reading the tea leaves and determining which prospects appear poised to receive the call up to The Show can help gamers improve the bottom of their roster on the cheap. Much like combing over the waiver wire for saves, it’s cheaper to speculate and stash than to wait until a closer change or, in this case, a call up occurs. There are many great sources for prospect information, and some of my favorites include MLBpipeline.com, FanGraphs, Baseball Prospectus, Baseball America, and 2080baseball.com. Some of the prospect content at Baseball Prospectus and Baseball America is behind a paywall, but both sites, as well as the other three websites, also offer great free prospect coverage. Moving along, let’s check out the notes for the upcoming week.
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Matchup Notes for Hitters
Favorable
Nationals @ Orioles (2), vs. Orioles (2), vs. Phillies (3)
Not that you should be benching any of the top boppers in Washington’s lineup anyway, but this week shapes up nicely for them. The Beltway series will feature a pair of games at each team’s home park, and that means a designated hitter for two contests as well as hitter-friendly ballpark factors. The pitching Washington will be facing is unimposing, too. The Orioles rank 15th in ERA, per FanGraphs, and the Phillies check in 19th. Both teams appear to have enjoyed a bit of luck as well with higher marks in FIP and xFIP than their respective ERA marks, and Baltimore’s SIERA is also higher than their ERA.
Rockies vs. Cubs (3), vs. Dodgers (4)
The Rockies play seven games next week, and all of them are at home. The first three games of the week against the Cubs will feature Jake Arrieta, John Lackey, and Kyle Hendricks towing the rubber. All three are having down years relative to 2016, and the lowest ERA among the trio is Hendricks’ 4.18. They draw Clayton Kershaw in their 4-game set with the Dodgers, but he’s much less scary at Coors Field than elsewhere with a 4.71 ERA and 1.30 WHIP in Colorado in 18 career starts, per his splits page at Yahoo!.
Brewers vs. Red Sox (3), vs. Mets (3)
It’s a week of home cooking for the Brewers. Miller Park is a home-run hitter’s paradise, and they’ll avoid white-hot Chris Sale. Drew Pomeranz, Eduardo Rodriguez, and Jacob deGrom could offer the Brewers a formidable challenge if they’re sharp, but Pomeranz and Rodriguez aren’t the most efficient pitchers, and Rodriguez has below average control. deGrom was also just roughed up by the Braves. ESPN also shows the Brewers slated to face Robert Gsellman and Matt Havery, and both are sporting an ERA north of 5.00. The Red Sox don’t have a listed starter for Wednesday, May 10th, but that’s Kyle Kendrick’s turn in the rotation.
Unfavorable
Orioles vs. Nationals (2), @ Nationals (2), @ Royals (3)
The O’s draw Gio Gonzalez, Max Scherzer, and Stephen Strasburg as well as Danny Duffy. Yuck. Two games in a National League park will result in a designated hitter-free lineup for both, and three games at Kauffman Stadium should take a bite out of their fence-clearing pop.
Pitcher Notes
Price is working his way back from an elbow injury that cut short his spring and resulted in a disabled list stint to kick off 2017. He threw a 50-pitch simulated game on Thursday, and Cameron McDonough of NESN reports the southpaw sat in the 93 to 95 mph range. He’ll need to avoid any setbacks and continue to build up his pitch count and stamina, but things are trending upward for Price. Gamers who invested in him in drafts knew they’d have to play the waiting game for Price, so don’t expect to get him for too cheap. Having said that, if the team he’s being stashed on was bit by the injury bug and you’re staring at an open DL spot, it’s worth engaging Price’s owner in trade dialogue. Otherwise, I probably wouldn’t attempt to trade for him.
Robbie Ray (ARI), Zack Greinke (ARI), Patrick Corbin (ARI), and Taijuan Walker (ARI)
There’s no injuries to report for this quartet. Instead, I’d like to invite you to cast your eyes upon this FanGraphs leaderboard for swinging strike percentage (SwStr%) for qualified pitchers. All four of the men listed above check in with top-25 SwStr%’s with Ray ranking seventh, Greinke ranking ninth, Corbin ranking 16th, and Walker checking in 23rd. As I pointed out last week, Arizona intends on building and using a humidor at Chase Field this year. According to an April 6th article from Steve Gilbert of MLB.com, the construction of the humidor should take about four to six weeks, and MLB requires balls to be stored in the humidor for at least two weeks before being used in games. Using that time line, we could see humidor balls being used as early as this month. I would bump the value of all four pitchers up from the pre-draft rankings based on their solid starts to the season alone, but the humidor is an added bonus.
Playing Platoons
Santana was somewhat hyped entering the 2016 season and had some buzz entering this year, too. Entering play Thursday night, he was hitting just .213/.312/.463 with five homers, and three stolen bases. The power and speed combo is nifty, but the average is a drag. He’s a three-true-outcomes machine dating back to the minors, and with a high strikeout rate (25.8% K%) comes average risk. He could be settling into a nice groove, though, as he’s hit three homers in the last week. More importantly for gamers looking at using him this week, he’ll face a couple of southpaws. In 184 plate appearances against lefties in his young career, he’s hit .272/.370/.500 with nine homers, according to FanGraphs. Usually, I will only include a player in this section if they play a minimum of three games against the handedness of pitcher they’re best against. I’m making an exception this week due to the soft matchups he has on the weaker side of his splits. Prior to starting Thursday night, Kendrick last pitched in 2015 and surrendered a .288/.333/.540 slash to 334 right-handed batters faced that year. This season, righties are hitting .318/.366/.563 against Gsellman and .231/.329/.438 against Harvey.
Miguel Cabrera’s return from the disabled list means Avila will rarely start at first base for the time being. Miggy’s absence did open the door for Avila to shine at the dish while picking up some extra playing time. For the year, the 30-year-old backstop is hitting .391/.491/.696 with four homers, a 16.4% BB%, and 25.5% K%. Fellow backstop James McCann is hitting only .153/.282/.407 this season. Both Avila and McCann graded out as well below average pitch framers last year, per StatCorner. I’m not sure how the playing time situation will shake out, but with the left-handed hitting Avila holding the platoon advantage against righties and the right-handed hitting McCann better against lefties, the Tigers could opt to award Avila a few extra starts against righties. The Tigers face five righties next week. In 12-team leagues or larger starting two catchers, I’d be willing to ride out Avila this week in the hopes he’s earned something like three to four starts.
Chasing Steals
Kiermaier’s batting average is hovering around the Mendoza line, but he’s at least walked at a strong 10.4% rate. His .290 OBP entering play yesterday was still 28 points below the league average this season, but he might be doing just enough for stolen-base starved owners to roll the dice. The defensive wizard in center field is also a good base stealer with five in seven chances this year after stealing 21 bases in 24 attempts last year. The Rays sneak into the top half of the Majors in stolen-base attempts this year, and they have plenty of incentive to be busy early next week. They face the Royals for four games, and among all catchers, Salvador Perez is tied for the second most stolen bases allowed (16). He’s also successfully caught only one would-be base-stealer. They’re also slated to face Jason Hammel and Nathan Karns in the 4-game set, and that duo is tied for the fourth most stolen bases allowed (six) by all pitchers this year.
At the end of last month, DeShields was inserted atop the order for the Rangers. Since April 26th, he’s hit .280/.400/.440 with three stolen bases in four attempts. He’s a catalyst atop the order with blazing speed, and he has a dreamy week for wreaking havoc on the basepath. The Rangers play the Padres four times (two games in San Diego followed by two at home) and the A’s three times. The starting catchers for those teams, Austin Hedges and Stephen Vogt, have been two of the easiest to run on this season. Hedges is tied with the aforementioned Salvy for the second most stolen bases allowed (16), and Vogt has allowed the fourth most steals (14).
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Josh Shepardson is a featured writer at FantasyPros. For more from Josh, check out his archive and follow him @BChad50.
