Investing & Maybe Fantasy Baseball

Ike Davis had the golden sombrero last night (four strikeouts) and looked awful at the plate; it got so bad the Mets were cheering Davis when he made contact a curveball in the eighth inning. Before the eighth Davis swinged and missed at every curveball Kris Medlen threw in Davis’ first three at-bats. Seriously folks, you should take him out of your lineup.

Despite having a great matchup Tommy Milone got rocked by the Astros. The fantasy community has been touting him as a solid fantasy play because of his 20.6 percent strikeout rate and extremely low walk rate of 4.5 percent. I’m not buy a pitcher whose fastball sits 86-88 mph because can sustain that high of a strikeout rate.

The injury to Jim Henderson did not look. After he threw he 12 pitch and recorded his second out, he fell to the ground holding his right hamstring. If you’re looking for saves Francisco Rodriguez is the guy you want.

In his last four starts David Phelps has a 2.63 ERA, 1.02 WHIP with a 20.8 percent strikeout rate. I wrote about Phelps a week ago for Through the Fence Baseball if you’re interested in more detailed information on Phelps. He was forced to the leave the game after getting hit by a line drive, but it doesn’t appear that bad, but monitor closely.

I’m certain everyone has already given their two cents about Kevin Gausman, the fourth overall pick in the 2012, and how he looked yesterday. As an aside, it’s amazing that he was drafted a year ago and he’s already in the majors. I was impressed with his plus-plus fastball that sat 96-98 mph and touched 99 mph a couple of times. That velocity doesn’t come at the expense of the extra taxation of his arm/elbow/shoulder as his windup and delivery is very easy; it looks like he’s playing catch with the catcher.

He threw an easy plus changeup, slider and curveball. The changeup had good tumbling action, which looked like a splitter. He only threw 5-6 sliders and curveballs, but the slider had good bite to it. The curveball looked the least developed as he threw it as a get me over pitch.

Overall, his stuff is very very good, but he still has a lot to work on with the first being his command. Too often he threw fastballs in the middle of the strike zone (heatmap below). There were times he flashed good sequencing. The at-bat what stood out to me was the at-bat to Jose Bautista in the fifth inning; this is the third time Bautista faced Gausman. The first pitch is a slider down at the knees, below the zone. Guasman follows it up with a great changeup down and on the inside corner for a swing and miss. Then he throws a 97 mph fastball up in the zone that Bautista fouls off. And for the last pitch was a screw you 99 mph fastball up at the letters that Bautista swung and missed. If I could roster him I would because I rather have him than a Jeremy Hellickson, Scott Kazmir or Tim Hudson. In NFBC leagues he’s likely to go for at least Jose Fernandez money, which is too high for me. Even if he stays in the rotation all year, he will most likely be on an innings limit. He’s already thrown 50 innings this year. Maybe he get’s 100-120 more, which is about 14-17 starts.

Despite going 5 for 13 in the Houston Astros series, this isn’t the start of a positive trend for Eric Hosmer. If you want all of hit at-bats you will see three of those hits were fluky in nature. Also, a lot of the contact he made was weak contact in nature.

Fernando Rodney has battled command issues all year. One thing I’ve noticed is he taps his left foot on the ground multiple during his delivery. The problem is the toe taps are inconsistent and causes his mechanics to get out of whack. If you don’t own Joel Peralta already, you should.

Speaking of the Rays, Jeremy Hellickson threw a lot of strikes (69 percent) and limited the walks. The biggest take away was command of the curveball. For most of the year he’s been leaving it up, in the middle of the zone, but he had a good feel for the pitch and threw down in the zone. He gave up too many fly balls (70 percent), but he thew a lot of quality strikes. He’s still not the same pitcher as he was last year, but it’s a step in the right direction.

Francisco Liriano pitched fairly well, throwing a good number of strikes (65 percent), but was aided by his defense and had some luck on his side. There were several hard hit balls that found defenders and there were three remarkable plays by Pedro Alvarez that prevented from the first batters to open each respective inning. Also the poor approach by the Cubs hitters create a lot of easy outs. I’m still not a believer and next week he gets to face Detroit.

Tyler Lyons’ future is probably in the bullpen. His fastball sat 89-91 and touched 92 once or twice. He has an easy and clean delivery that’s conducive to a repeatable delivery, allowing the opportunity to have good command. His best secondary pitch was the slider, which he only threw to righties, which had a nice break. Last night he threw the fastball 88 percent of the time and threw a lot of strikes with it (65 percent), but for one reason or another he was reluctant to use his secondary pitches. Maybe it’s because the Padres poor approach at the plate made it unnecessary to deviate from the fastball.