Jason Kubel, Arizona Diamondbacks OF
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, August 9th.
5 Good Nights
- Jason Kubel: 2-5, 2 R, 2 HR, 4 RBI
- Mike Morse: 2-3, 2 R, 2 HR, 3 RBI
- Jacoby Ellsbury: 1-4, R, 3 steals
- R.A. Dickey: 9.0 IP, 5 H, ER, 10 K’s, W
- Jordan Zimmerman: 6.0 IP, 3 H, 0 ER, 11 K’s, W
Honorable Mention: Jason Donald, Jon Jay, Roger Bernadina, Billy Butler, Andres Torres, Jose Lobaton, Adam Wainwright, Joe Saunders, Will Smith, Doug Fister, Matt Moore, Lucas Harrell
5 Bad Nights
- Wei-Yin Chen: 4.2 IP, 9 H, 7 ER, BB, 5 K’s
- Felix Doubront: 4.1 IP, 7 H, 4 ER, 2 BB, 4 K’s
- Henderson Alvarez: 4.2 IP, 11 H, 4 ER, 3 BB, 2 K’s
- Nick Swisher: 0-5
- Stephen Drew: 0-5
Dishonorable Mention: Quintin Berry, Wandy Rodriguez
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.
- Alex Rios (back) will reportedly return to the lineup today.
- Pablo Sandoval (hamstring) will play five innings at High-A San Jose and is scheduled to play a few games with the club before returning to the Giants’ lineup.
- Mike Napoli expects to be back in the lineup today after missing two games with quad soreness.
- 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 didn’t play yesterday. (.345, 87 Runs, 20 HR, 60 RBI, 36 steals on the season).
Bryce Harper: Harper was given a day off yesterday. (.251, 59 R, 10 HR, 30 RBI, 13 steals on the season).
Anthony Rizzo: Rizzo went 2-2 with two runs and one RBI yesterday. (.301, 18 R, 9 HR, 24 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
Clayton Kershaw at Miami Marlins
Felix Hernandez at Los Angeles Angels
Stephen Strasburg at Arizona Diamondbacks
3 Down
Max Scherzer at Texas Rangers
Ricky Romero vs. New York Yankees
Trevor Cahill vs. Washington Nationals
Throwing Darts
Paul Maholm at New York Mets
Mark Buehrle vs. Los Angeles Dodgers
Homer Bailey at Chicago Cubs
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
- Starlin Castro is 4-for-13 (.308) with two home runs in his career against today’s starter, Homer Bailey.
- Aramis Ramirez is 6-for-17 (.353) with two home runs in his career against today’s starter, Bud Norris.
- Carlos Beltran is 14-for-43 (.381) with two home runs and 10 RBI in his career against today’s starter, Roy Halladay.
- Elvis Andrus is 2-for-15 (.133) in his career against today’s starter, Max Scherzer.
- Erick Aybar is 9-for-49 (.184) in his career against today’s starter, Felix Hernandez.
- Chase Utley is 4-for-24 (.167) in his career against today’s starter, Kyle Lohse.
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.
- Albert Lang’s back with his Hot N Cold Fantasy Baseball All-Stars to help you identify who’s hot and who’s not.
- There’s been an update to the Closer Identifier Algorithm Results…make sure you don’t miss Patrick DiCaprio’s latest!
- Matthew Dewoskin revisits hitter’s BABIP in this week’s Leaders and Laggards.
- Make sure you check out Patrick DiCaprio and the crew on last night’s episode of the Fantasy Baseball Roundtable Show.
- Lenny Melnick needs your help in the latest episode of his award-winning podcast.
- The calendar has turned to August, which means it’s officially fantasy football season! Before you start drafting, make sure you check out Paul Greco’s pre-season rankings, including Quarterback, Running Back, Wide Receiver, Tight End, and Strength of Schedule.
- WWPGD? (What Would Paul Greco Do?) You don’t have to wonder anymore, as Paul gives you his personal favorites (and least favorites) – starting with Gotta Have QBs and Dump On QBs.
- I hope you enjoyed Paul’s QB picks, because he just updated his personal Gotta Have RBs!
- Paul’s Personal Projections are out! Get started here with his Quarterback, Running Back, Wide Receiver, and Tight End, Defense, and Kicker projections.
- Paul also broke out his calculator so he could give you a whole bunch of Stats You Need to Know.
- Collin Hager’s got an update to the ADP Report to help all of you early-drafters!
- Collin also took a look at some Impact Quarterbacks and identified three that can be frustrating to own.
- Dan Stack hands some more Blair Thomas Awards (for Running Back Busts). Guess who the lucky winners are…
- Dan also has an in-depth look at Impact Wide Receivers in the latest edition of that series.
Latest posts by Nick Raducanu (Posts)
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With the night games about to start, make sure you check out today's Daily Notes at @FP911 before you set your lineups! http://t.co/bGafY4aO
2012 Fantasy Baseball Daily Notes 8/10: Each and every day, I’ll be combing over box scores and scouring local b… http://t.co/sQnhjjSo
Today's Daily Notes column is my 100th post at @FP911…check it out! http://t.co/bGafY4aO #FantasyBaseball