May 17, 2013

Fantasy Beat

Weekly #streameroftheday Update

by Bret Sayre

For those of you unfamiliar with the #streameroftheday process, I recommend one starting pitcher per day who is owned in fewer than 10% of leagues (lower than your typical standards) and post it on Twitter at @dynastyguru. And this Friday post is where I stand in front of the firing squad, fully accountable for these recommendations. I ran a longer introduction in my first post of the season, explaining why my ownership limit is much lower than most others out there, but essentially it's to be helpful in deeper mixed leagues. If you want to read the whole thing, the link is here. With the pleasantries out of the way, let's jump into the action.

Here were the details for the last seven days:

 

Date	Pitcher	Opp	IP	ER	H	BB	K	Dec
5/10/13	Dan Straily	SEA	5	6	6	4	4	Loss
5/11/13	Francisco Liriano	NYM	5 1/3	1	6	2	9	Win
5/12/13	Chris Capuano	MIA	6 1/3	1	5	1	7	Win
5/13/13	Joe Blanton	KC	4 2/3	7	12	0	7	Loss
5/14/13	John Lackey	TB	4 1/3	5	9	1	3	Loss
5/15/13	Mike Leake	MIA	6 2/3	0	9	1	6	Win
5/16/13	Jose Quintana	LAA	6 2/3	4	6	3	4	ND

I swore I wouldn't do it. I swore to myself and to the rest of you that I wouldn't do it. And I did it. I put Joe Blanton back in there, and it turned a decent week into a much worse one. As he always does. I actually tuned in to his start and he's just absolutely infuriating to watch. He'll get ahead of almost everyone and then hang something. Case in point, everyone agrees that first strikes are vitally important to putting pitchers in a position of strength, but after throwing a first pitch strike in 2013, Joe Blanton is allowing a .355/.375/.505 line. That's disgusting.

On a positive note, Francisco Liriano has been great so far this year, and has made me look good by throwing him out here and running him up the Stash List. I really think Pittsburgh is a great place for him to pitch, given the league, the park and Russell Martin behind the plate. Leake and Capuano both had high quality starts against the Marlins, but we already knew they were a great matchup. I hope that Capuano can keep this going against higher level competition, as he's be a great guy to have back in this space if he's recovered from his injury and throwing well again. A date against the Braves on Saturday in Atlanta will be a good test of where he's at.

And here are my overall numbers for both the week and the season:

	Wins	Win%	IP	ERA	WHIP	K	K/9
Week	3	43%	39	5.54	1.67	40	9.23
Season	17	40%	239 2/3	5.14	1.45	179	6.72

This week was a solid one as far as wins and strikeouts go. In fact, my previous high for strikeouts in a week was 35. On the other hand, the ratios probably undid a good bit of that value. Right now, for the entire season, I'm very close to where I want to be in wins (40% clip) and strikeouts (7.0 per nine), but the ratios are going to take a good amount of work. What we need is some new blood to occupy the space in the wake of some of my most successful streamers losing their eligibility (now including Francisco Liriano). Tonight, a fresh face in Jeanmar Gomez faces off against the Astros, and we'll look for him to get us off on the right foot.

See you again next week.

Bret Sayre is an author of Baseball Prospectus. Follow @BretSayreBP
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