Jason Vargas, Seattle Mariners SP
Each and every day, I’ll be combing over box scores and scouring local beat writers’ reports to make sure you have all the information you need in order to make the right decisions for your fantasy baseball lineup. Make sure you check back at this very spot for Hot/Cold Streaks, Injury News, Closer Updates, Daily Stats, and more so that you can stay one step ahead of the rest of your league.
As always, make sure you’re getting your daily fantasy baseball fix by playing the FP911Challenge.
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-committeefor 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 Thursday, July 26th.
5 Good Nights
- Jason Vargas: 8.0 IP, H, ER, 5 K’s, W
- Edwin Jackson: 7.0 IP, 8 H, 0 ER, 4 K’s, W
- Matt Harvey: 5.1 IP, 3 H, 0 ER, 11 K’s, W
- Chris Davis: 2-4, R, HR, 4 RBI
- Edwin Encarnacion: 2-4, 2 R, HR, 3 RBI
Honorable Mention: Stephen Lombardozzi, Adam LaRoche, Kelly Johnson, David Freese, Mike Carp, Jason Kipnis, Austin Jackson, A.J. Burnett, Jake Westbrook, Zach McAllister, Chris Tillman
5 Bad Nights
- Yovani Gallardo: 5.0 IP, 7 H, 7 ER, 2 BB’s, 6 K’s
- Chris Capuano: 4.1 IP, 11 H, 6 ER, BB, K
- Justin Verlander: 7.0 IP, 9 H, 5 ER, 2 BB’s, 4 K’s
- Miguel Cabrera: 0-4
- David Wright: 0-4
Dishonorable Mention: Joel Hanrahan, Dallas Keuchel, James Shields, Luis Mendoza, Tommy Milone, Aaron Laffey
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.
- Matt Garza (tricep) has has his next start moved back and won’t pitch until after Tuesday’s trade deadline (nice job mis-managing that one, Cubs…)
- Trevor Plouffe looks to have avoided the DL and will be in the Twins’ lineup today.
- J.P. Arencibia has been placed on the DL with a broken hand and will miss the next six-to-eight weeks.
- Trout/Harper/Rizzo/Bauer Watch: With two of baseball’s best prospects being called-up earlier this season, I’m going to dedicate this space to keeping tabs on the youngsters. Here’s to hoping that you were able to grab some of them! (UPDATE: Anthony Rizzo is the latest uber prospects to get the call, so I’ve added them to the list, as well.)
Mike Trout: The Angels did not play yesterday. (.356, 74 Runs, 16 HR, 49 RBI, 31 steals on the season).
Bryce Harper: Harper went 1-5 with one run yesterday. (.267, 52 R, 9 HR, 29 RBI, 13 steals on the season).
Anthony Rizzo: The Cubs did not play yesterday. (.323, 11 R, 5 HR, 12 RBI, 1 steal on the season).
3 Up, 3 Down, and Throwing Darts
Starting and sitting the right pitchers on a day-to-day basis is often the linchpin 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. I’m not going to proclaim that I’ll get these 100% correct all season, but anyone that does should be sitting on an island that they own in the Pacific – not writing fantasy baseball articles. The goal here is to play the odds the entire season and slowly build your “win” percentage closer to 100% than to 50%.
Here’s 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
Matt Cain vs. Los Angeles Dodgers
Cole Hamels at Atlanta Braves
Yu Darvish vs. Chicago White Sox
3 Down
Chris Sale at Texas Rangers
Jonathon Niese at Arizona Diamondbacks
Bronson Arroyo at Colorado Rockies
Throwing Darts
Jeff Karstens at Houston Astros
Ben Sheets vs. Philadelphia Phillies
Michael Fiers vs. Washington Nationals
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
- Corey Hart is 5-for-9 (.566) with two home runs in his career against today’s starter, Edwin Jackson.
- Andre Ethier is 22-for-47 (.468) in his career against today’s starter, Matt Cain.
- B.J. Upton is 9-for-26 (.353) with three home runs in his career against today’s starter, Dan Haren.
- Ben Zobrist is 2-for-21 (.095) in his career against today’s starter, Dan Haren.
- Dan Uggla is 8-for-53 (.151) in his career against today’s starter, Cole Hamels.
- Tyler Colvin is 1-for-14 (.071) in his career against today’s starter, Bronson Arroyo.
Don’t forget to check out the rest of the great content on FantasyPros911.com, starting with some of our most recent updates:
Fantasy Baseball
- Albert Lang takes a look at today’s pitching matchups in the latest edition of Pitch or Ditch.
- Matthew also gives you some insight into the ever-turning closer carousel in Blown Opportunities.
- Albert Lang identifies who’s hot and who’s not in his weekly Hot N Cold All-Stars.
- There’s been an update to Patrick DiCaprio’s Closer Identifier Algorithm Results that you won’t wanna miss!
- Chuck Anderson takes a look at Ben Sheets (among others) in the latest edition of Added and Dropped.
- And don’t forget to check out Patrick DiCaprio and the crew on this week’s episode of the Fantasy Baseball Roundtable Show!
- The calendar has turned to July, which means it’s time to start talking fantasy football! Before you start mock drafting, make sure you check out Paul Greco’s pre-season rankings, including Quarterback, Running Back, Wide Receiver, Tight End, and Strength of Schedule.
- Collin Hager identifies this year’s game-changing quarterbacks in his latest Impact Player update.
- Steve DeAngelo is taking a look at impact running backs, and Chris Johnson, Trent Richardson, and Darren Sproles are the subjects of his latest post.
- Dan Stack previews some impact wide receivers like Julio Jones and Eric Decker in his latest update.
- Dan also gives out the Blair Thomas Award to a few of this year’s running back busts.
Latest posts by Nick Raducanu (Posts)
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