Adam LaRoche, Washington Nationals 1B
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 dose of daily fantasy baseball by playing the FP911 Challenge!
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 Tuesday, September 4th.
5 Good Nights
- Adam LaRoche: 4-4, 2 R, 2 HR, 2 RBI
- Aaron Hill: 5-5, 3 R, HR, 2 RBI
- Mark Reynolds: 3-4, 2 R, HR, 4 RBI
- Wandy Rodriguez: 7.0 IP, 4 H, 0 ER, 7 K’s, W
- Zach Britton: 7.0 IP, 4 H, 0 ER, 8 K’s, W
5 Bad Nights
- Ryan Vogelsong: 3.1 IP, 9 H, 6 ER, 2 BB, 7 K’s
- Freddy Garcia: 5.1 IP, 5 H, 5 ER, 4 BB, 5 K’s
- Ian Kennedy: 5.2 IP, 7 H, 5 ER, BB, 5 K’s
- Hanley Ramirez: 0-5
- Buster Posey: 0-5
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.
- Your long wait is finally over! Joey Votto (knee) has been activated from the DL and returned to the Reds’ lineup today.
- Jeff Weaver is getting his bruised arm and shoulder examined and will likely miss his start this Friday (and possibly more).
- Kenley Jansen got good news on his irregular heartbeat and could possibly return to the Dodgers by September 18th. That’s still two weeks ago and things could change between now and then, so I’d still pick up Ronald Belisario and Brandon League if you need saves.
- Trout/Harper/Rizzo/Bauer Watch: With three 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!
Mike Trout: Trout went 2-5 with one RBI yesterday. (.333, 108 Runs, 25 HR, 75 RBI, 43 steals on the season).
Bryce Harper: Harper went 1-1 with one run yesterday. (.256, 75 R, 15 HR, 45 RBI, 13 steals on the season).
Anthony Rizzo: Rizzo went 2-3 with one run yesterday. (.291, 29 R, 10 HR, 31 RBI, 2 steals 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
Gio Gonzalez vs. Chicago Cubs
Madison Bumgarner vs. Arizona Diamondbacks
Adam Wainwright vs. New York Mets
3 Down
Ubaldo Jimenez at Detroit Tigers
Matt Moore vs. New York Yankees
Dan Haren at Oakland A’s
Throwing Darts
Brandon McCarthy vs. Los Angeles Angels
Shaun Marcum at San Francisco Giants
Miguel Gonzalez at Toronto Blue Jays
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
- Jay Bruce is 7-for-19 (.368) with one home run in his career against today’s starter, Roy Halladay.
- Ian Desmond is 14-for-25 (.560) with one home run in his career against today’s starter, Chris Volstad.
- Delmon Young is 10-for-24 (.417) with one home run in his career against today’s starter, Ubaldo Jimenez.
- Josh Willingham is hitless in his career (15 at-bats) against today’s starter, Jake Peavy.
- Dustin Pedroia is 4-for-19 (.211) in his career against today’s starter, Kevin Millwood.
- Carlos Santana is 3-for-21 (.143) in his career against today’s starter, Doug Fister.
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
- Collin Hager previews today’s pitching matchups in the latest edition of Pitch or Ditch.
- Albert Lang is back with his Hot N Cold Fantasy Baseball All-Stars.
- Patrick DiCaprio gives another update to his patented Closer Identifier Algorithm Results.
- Joshua Kay brings some perspective on a few late-season call-ups.
- Need Week 1 Rankings and Cheat Sheets? Look no further…
- Collin Hager kicks-off (pun intended) the season with his first Players in the News column.
- Chuck Anderson picks out some Week 1 Offensive Sleepers to help you get a leg up this week.
- Dan Leason answers some big questions about some big names in his newest update.
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2012 Fantasy Baseball Daily Notes 9/5: Each and every day, I’ll be combing over box scores and scouring local be… http://t.co/r3zhwsdT
Theres a few games in the books already, but dont forget to check today's Daily Notes at @FP911 before tonight's games! http://t.co/1lyTmnGi