Investing & Maybe Fantasy Baseball

Hisashi Iwakuma was only able to throw six innings despite only throwing 70 pitches. His day was finished earlier than expected because of a blister on his right middle finger, his throwing hand. The blister problem has been an issue since April 5 in Oakland. This has been an ongoing problem because he left the game early on April 12. The biggest change is the ground ball rate, last year it was 53 percent, but this year he’s only at 30 percent. However, his strikeout rate has increased three percentage points; his strikeout rate is 22.5 percent. I tend to avoid fly ball pitchers because they’re more susceptible to the home run and blow outings, but Iwakuma is a must start.

Tony Cingrani outpitched Jose Fernandez last night, but Cingrani had the luxury of playing with Major League caliber players. Cingrani’s box score of five innings, five hits, three walks, eight strikeouts and one earned run makes it sound like he was more dominating than he truly was. His changeup lacked good movement and depth. The command of the curveball/slider was loose; only about half of them were thrown near the strike zone. That said, there were one or two curveball’s that looked really good. Twice during the game runners were on 2nd and 3rd with one less outs with the 4th and 5th batting (Placido Polanco and Gregg Dobbs) and he was able to escape those innings without allowing a run. I have to imagine if he was facing any semblance of a quality lineup he would have given up three runs instead of one. Also, he was extremely inefficient as he was only to go five innings while throwing 102 pitches. So what’s Cingrani’s fantasy value? I’m sure he’s owned in every league that he’s available. In NFBC Leagues I bet he’ll go for around the same price as Jose Fernandez went for ($100-$400), which is to high for me. Todd Zola wrote a great article about how fantasy owners should deploy their FAAB. Basically he said you should try to spend as much of during the beginning of the season to get the most value. If Cingrani looked better I would be willing to bid $200, but I have doubts he’ll stay in the rotation and that he will be more effective than other free agent pitchers such as Chris Tillman and Felix Doubront.

Jose Fernandez looked mortal for the first time this year, giving up five earned runs, six hits, three walks in only four innings. For the first two innings he was dominant, striking out three and not allowing a ball out the infield. Starting in the 4th inning is when the wheels became to fall off; Reds hitters started swinging at the first pitch, which were all fastballs up in the strike zone. Basically he became predictable and when Major League notice a pitcher’s tendencies they’ll exploit them like they did last night.

Lastly, Justin Verlander is really really good before he fell victim to a couple of bloop hits.

Wade Davis pitched really well, throwing and mixing his pitches (fastball, cutter and curveball) throughout the entire game. He pitched inside to right handed batters. The cutter, thrown 88-90 mph, had good glove side run and reminded me of a plus slider. This was the first start where he really mixed his pitches really well, throwing the curveball and cutter more often.

Chris Tillman’s velocity increased after the second inning. Initially the fastball sat 89-91 mph, but starting in the third inning the fastball say 91-93 mph. Even though he didn’t have the desired results today, his mechanics looked good and repeated his delivery.

Matt Moore was more efficient in his outing, requiring only 104 pitches to pitch 6.67 innings. What made this a dominant outing was the consistent release point for the curveball and fastball. He pitched ahead in the count to the majority of the batters he faced. The curveball worked well to both right handed and left handed batters. He had three walks and it looks as though he’ll always be a high walk pitcher because no matter how well he’s pitching, he tends to lose command of his pitches randomly.

Bud Norris did not have a lot of movement on the slider and a lot of his pitches were elevated in the strike zone. It appears as though he was struggling gripping the ball because he kept licking his fingers after every throw.

Shelby Miller’s day started with a triple by Sterling Marte to right field that Carlos Beltran misplayed. Miller’s command was shaky in the first inning, but after that inning he settled down and didn’t allow a base runner for the next four innings. What I was most impressed with the last fastball he threw (pitch #98) was 95 mph. The biggest takeaway is the Cardinals defense isn’t very good anymore. Beltran has limited range, Daniel Descalso and Matt Carpenter are both below average defenders.

Lance Lynn has two bad starts and one good start this year and yesterday was another bad start. Lynn relies heavily on his fastball, throwing it 76% of the time this year; last year he threw it 70% of the time. In the two starts he performed poorly his fastball velocity was low, maxing out at 93 mph while in his good start his fastball maxed out at 95 mph. It could be an oversimplification to say velocity is the reason for his poor performance, but his secondary pitches are fringe average and need to work with the fastball to be effective. If the fastball isn’t effective the secondary stuff will not be as well. In terms of yesterday, he missed the location with his fastball, getting too much of the plate to both lefties and righties. He clearly labored just to get through the five innings he pitched.

James McDonald’s velocity was down to start the game and he was missing up in the zone with the fastball and curveball. It looks as though he’s no longer throwing the slider; last year he threw it 15.6% of the time and got the highest swing and miss rate (whiff rate) of all his pitches last year. I’ve read throwing the slider can put extra strain on a pitcher’s elbow and the pitchers who abandon it is usually a precursor to getting hurt. Maybe that’s why he abandoned it, but either way it’s concerning that he would scrap his best pitch after a year he was extremely effective for 2/3 of a season. Instead of throwing the slider, he’s throwing the curveball more, which doesn’t miss enough bats. If he continues to not throw the slider I’m going to drop him in all my 12 team NFBC leagues.

Aaron Hicks got the day off yesterday. To say he’s looked bad the plate is an understatement. Hopefully Twins manager, Ron Garddenhire moves him down in the order to put less pressure on him. It’s only a matter of time before he’s back in the minors working on his approach.