Fantasy Al Central

Coming into the season, the Tigers were everyone's darlings. Why not? They had a ridiculous offense and a starting rotation capable of piling up the wins with the large expected run support. The problems that most overlooked were that the bullpen is awful (with injuries to Fernando Rodney and Joel Zumaya the main benefactors), Dontrelle Willis sucks, and Kenny Rogers is ancient. Personally, I didn't like them as much as others because of all this. Still, though, no one expected Justin Verlander and Jeremy Bonderman to struggle this mightily. Both should have been armed and ready for a big season.

Bonderman is still only 25 -- doesn't it seem like he's been around forever? -- and has shown the ability to strikeout hitters (202 K in '07) and control his pitches (only averaged 56 BB/season from '05-'07) with the best. His ERA has never been stellar, but with a natural progression and the bashers supporting him you had to expect he'd be able to garner the victories in '08.

Verlander is also 25, and he's a phenom. He won 35 games in the past two years while upping his punchouts to 183 last year in just over 200 innings. With a triple digit heater and some filthy off-speeders, you'd figure him for the Cy Young race this season.

Instead, something is wrong. With both of them.

There is no one hotter in Major League Baseball than Cliff Lee right now. He is 5-0, he has a 0.96 ERA and he has 32 strikeouts in just under 38 innings. But if you own him in fantasy baseball, you need to shop him immediately.

Lee might not come crashing back to Earth in a painful manner; after all, his 2005 demonstrates that he does have a skill set to pitch well. But besides the fact that his peripherals are telling for some statistical recession, what he's doing right now is mind-blowing just in terms of history. From BP Unfiltered:

We have game logs going back to 1956, courtesy of Retrosheet and Baseball-Reference.com. Since 1956, do you know how many pitchers had made three straight starts with 8+ innings, <=3 hits, <=1 walk, and 8+ strikeouts? Here's the list, which I have put in alphabetical order for your convenience

Cliff Lee.

The fantastic ideas we had for Francisco Liriano's return in 2008 were not single game pitching lines like this: 0.2 innings pitched, 35 pitches, five hits, six earned runs, three walks and zero strikeouts. But that's exactly what he produced in an Oakland shellacking of the Twins.

Liriano's peripherals are down across the board (BB/9 is up to 9.31 and his K/9 is down 6.10). Of course, they're not the only things down now, as Frankie as been reassigned to Triple-A Rochester.

Liriano took the loss in all three of his starts with the Twins so far this season, including giving up six runs in two-thirds of an inning Thursday afternoon at Oakland. In those three starts, Liriano has allowed 15 hits, walked 13 and struck out seven while posting an 11.32 ERA.

[...]The Twins have had problems with Liriano since Spring Training, when the pitcher arrived late to Fort Myers after having problems acquiring his visa.

Well, that seems unnecessary, doesn't it. Sure, there may have been some mishandling on both sides of this debacle, but there's no reason to take a shot at Liriano now. He went from "greatest pitcher of all time" hype-status to "done-cakes" in less than two years. There's still a chance that he will be able to come back and pitch in the majors again; certainly aided by the fact that he apparently "feels no pain", even though he has not pitched like it.

I hope he does. He was a thrill to watch in 2006 and utterly untouchable for a really brief period. But after he failed to mention the pain to the team and then the team [most likely] brought him back to early, well, it seems like too much to ask for Liriano to ever bring back 2006.

Bonus Fantasy Spin: Liriano is a strong enough talent that you can't drop him just yet, unless you're in a small league. In fact, because of the "pain free" element to his pitching status, I almost think he's a buy low at this point, if you already have a stout pitching staff or deep bench and can afford to take an upside-riddle risk.

Fantasy Felony tells you how to melt other owners' faces via swindling them in trades.

If you Google "Gavin Floyd Fantasy", you'll see plenty of articles mentioning his hot start. Trust me, I just did it. I wanted to make sure he was a sell high candidate. Just in case his 2-0 record, 1.40 ERA and 0.88 WHIP didn't make him a hot enough commodity. I found no less than four articles (just scanning quickly) that recommended picking him up. So the hype is there.

So are the stats, at least on the face of things, as you can see above. But if we dig a little deeper, we'll see that Gavin might be pitching above his head (kind of like the White Sox are playing -- no way!)

First of all, Floyd is experiencing a spike in fly balls allowed this season, up to 53.7%. No big deal; outs are outs. Until you see that he's only allowing 6.9% of those fly balls to become home runs, an unsustainable pace. Like, that's not even my opinion or anything, man. It's just a fact.

Also unsustainable? His strand rate of 85.5% and his BABIP of .136. In other bad news, his K/9 and K/BB are both down (to 4.66 and 1.25, kind of respectively) while his BB/9 is actually up (3.72).

So to recap: basically every peripheral stat that we look for to determine if a pitcher is getting lucky with a really nice start points the wrong way for Mr. Floyd.

Gavin is a very talented pitcher with a wicked curveball. People have been talking about him as a great prospect for several years now. And they're talking again, because he's pitching well. But every single one of the peripherals surrounding his hot start point to him being lucky. And, yes, it is very difficult to peddle that young talent-ridden, upside-mcgriddled prospect that's been teasing fantasy owners for years. But facts is facts.

He's going to come back down to Urf, and you would be immensely better off packaging him with another player to deal for a struggling stud. Players that come to mind are Roy Oswalt or the almost recovered John Lackey and Scott Kazmir. All three would be absolute hijacks, even if you had to include another midlevel player for Roy.

Picking up Armando Galarraga in a league this evening, I got a little excitement out of the transaction, just because I started thinking about the "Big Cat", Andres Galarraga. The "Little Big Cat" went six and two-thirds innings on Wednesday night, holding the Indians to one hit, a David Dellucci first inning tater. Galarraga struck out six and only needed 81 pitches to pick up the win, retiring 17 straight Cleveland batters at one point in time.

Before you get excited though, there's a good news/bad news thing here. First the good: he's a two start pitcher next week, and he's a very legitimate start in AL-Only or deeper mixed leagues. He's also pitching for the suddenly hot Tigers, so in H2H formats, I'm taking the gamble. Now the bad: as Tom Herrera pointed out, he "seems like a AAAA player, but he could surprise". That's a pretty accurate statement; he plowed his way through the Cleveland lineup by pounding the strike zone with low 90's fastballs and a slew of sliders with some nasty bite to them, but he got a lot of quick outs from some free swinging Indians.

In other words, you have to wonder how much good a little patience would have done Cleveland. By the time they did start sitting back and taking some pitches, he was pretty dialed, and racked up some mid inning K's. In fact, he was dialed enough where he probably could have gone the distance but -- and we fantasy owners should applaud this -- Jim Leyland pulled him after he plunked two guys in the seventh and started getting a little wild through only 81 pitches.

I'm not expecting two outings like tonight's next week, but I feel like I can almost guarantee at least one win (which is rare enough already) and decent ratios with middling strikeout totals. That's more than worth the pickup in my mind, especially with the upside he could have in a one week league.

New Studs takes a look at players ready to make the leap from "possibly productive fantasy player" to "must-have fantasy stud." This is not a "you've never heard of this dude, but ... " series -- these should be names you already know.

This week is special. Why? Because the player you see smiling at'cha on the right is special. Even if you don't recognize him (I mean, he does play for the Royals), you've heard of him.

He's Mark Teixiera with speed.

He's David Wright with more power.

He was the best college baseball player in 2005 and the Double-A player of the year in 2006.

So why is Alex Gordon a "new" stud to fantasy ballers? Well, it's that pesky little thing called 2007, the fallout of which was decimated expectations from short-sighted owners for this season.

Going into last season, Gordon was a hype machine. Pundits everywhere hailed him as the "Next David Wright ... but maybe even better!" The problem was that he wasn't ready to take that next step yet. Obviously he was ready to play in the majors, but he just wasn't ready to be, well, himself.

To get you ready for draft season, Fantasy FanHouse will be running through each major league team, covering lineups, rotations and sleeper/busts.

Meet the ...
Old Dirty Bastards. Dirt McGirts. Or, if you prefer, the Gritty McHustles. Perhaps you know that Darren Erstad played college football. If not, you should know that his hustle:dive ratio exceeds even scrappy David Eckstein. I don't have the energy or the chops to out-funny Ken Tremendous, of course, but you get the point. And Erstad is in Houston now, so that doesn't help. The White Sox are stuck in this non believing land where they think their team will continue to compete in an ever improving AL Central. They will not. They do offer, however, some decent fantasy options.

The Breakout
Alexei Ramirez is probably not going to get drafted in a lot of leagues. However, second basemen are always at a premium, and if you can find one cheap, well, you're way ahead of the curve. Ramirez hit 20 homers in Cuba last year and while signed to a four year deal, he's not guaranteed playing time in anything more than the immediate future, meaning he has to produce early and often to keep playing. I like those odds. Draft him late, laugh at the owner who spent an early pick on Dan Uggla and use your early pick to get a bounceback slugger or ace pitcher.

The Bust
No one is getting drafted high enough to really be considered a bust, but I'll take Paul Konerko here. He's aging, people still think of him as underrated for some reason (well, actually, that's probably fair). Anyway, just look at Konerko's career numbers, in terms of power, and you can pretty obviously see the natural progression, where he broke out following an injury plagued 27 year old season and hit his peaked out early in his 30's. Now he's 32 and going to continue trending downward. If you're burning an 8th or 9th round pick expecting a rebound, it's just too early.

Major League Mongering will look at players rumored to be on the move between now and the July 31st pseudo-trade-deadline.

Why does this need to happen? Because Reggie Sanders is 39 years old and in the last year of a two-year contract. I mean, seriously, the Royals are in the middle of a youth movement, have been vying for the worst record in the league since Opening Day, and are still giving at-bats to someone five years shy of middle aged?

Besides, it's no secret that Sanders wants to be dealt to the Red Sox -- in fact, he's outright campaigning for it. From the Boston Herald:

"No, not at all," Sanders said when asked if he would be adverse to a trade to the Red Sox. "It's a great group of guys over there. I have never played there, but I have felt like I have just because of the way they embrace everybody."

Sanders has relished his role of elder statesman on this ultra-youthful Royals team for the past 1 1/2 seasons. But he also has heard about the euphoria that can come with playing in Boston from his friend Curt Schilling. And there is also the prospect of making a fourth World Series appearance.

"I think so," Sanders said when asked if the Red Sox would be among the teams at the top of his list, if traded. "(Schilling) is probably over there trying to make it happen right now."

Sanders certainly wouldn't be anything more than a fourth outfielder for the Sox, but it's not like he's racking up the playing time in KC -- he's played in just 18 games, missing two and a half months with a torn hamstring.