Now that the miserable and pitching-dominated All-Star game is over we can get back to some fantasy baseball forecasting.
Henry Rowengartner's encore
These flame-throwers won't need to break their arms to post solid fantasy numbers this week. Make sure you lock them in to your lineup.
Indians starter Francisco Liriano -- Liriano is 2-0 with a 1.80 earned run average and 15 strikeouts in 15 innings pitched this season against his opponent this week, the Cleveland Indians. He is coming off a solid start against the White Sox on Friday, but was 0-4 in his final five games leading in to the All-Star break. For the season Liriano is 7-7 with a 3.76 ERA and 125 strikeouts in 115 innings.
Cubs starter Carlos Silva -- Silva has been the ace of the Cubs staff this season in terms of cold, hard numbers, and this week he'll have a great opportunity to build on his ace-like numbers with two starts against division opponents he has been lights out against in 2010. The Astros and Cardinals are up next for the Cubs right-hander; two teams he has pitched a total of 14 innings against, and has allowed zero earned runs while striking out 16 in two starts.
Yankees starter A.J. Burnett -- Heading in to Saturday, Burnett seems to be finally back on track, and has a team struggling to score runs, the Kansas City Royals, on tap for his right arm to mow down. In his previous appearance against the Royals in 2009, Burnett went just over six innings, allowed one earned and struck out eight Royal batters.
Roger Bomman's Binoculars Say...
Lock these seven two-start pitchers in to your starting rotation.
- Carlos Silva vs. Houston and St Louis (see above)
- Johnny Cueto vs. Washington and Houston
- Dave Bush vs. Pittsburgh and Washington
- Clayton Kershaw vs. San Francisco and New York (Mets)
- Max Scherzer vs. Texas and Toronto
- Diasuke Matsuzaka vs. Oakland and Seattle
- Scott Baker vs. Cleveland and Baltimore
Fantasy lineup card
Turn this lineup card in this week, and you should score plenty of offensive fantasy points. (All stats as July 17th)
SS Erick Aybar -- Against Seattle and Texas this season Aybar is hitting .357 and .348.
CF Carlos Gonzalez -- The Rockies outfielder has five multi-hit games and four homeruns in his last nine games. To say that he's red hot is an understatement.
LF Brennan Boesch -- The Tigers will be at home all week. Boesch is hitting a smooth .375 in the friendly confines of Comerica Park this season.
DH Vladimir Guerrero -- Vlad could be the lock of the week. For the season he's hitting .533 and .526 against the Tigers and Angels with a combined five homers and 16 runs batted in.
RF Corey Hart -- Hart has four home runs against the Pirates this season, and is currently full of power.
1B Adrian Gonzalez -- The Padres will be road trippin' this week, and Gonzalez is batting .350 with 12 of his 19 homeruns coming away from PETCO Park this season.
3B Aramis Ramirez -- Ramirez has seven multi-hit games in his last eight games, and is batting .400 thus far in the month of July. He seems to have found his good swing.
C Joe Mauer -- The only catcher guaranteed to put up even decent numbers.
2B Gordon Beckham -- Surprisingly his bat has come to life in the last four games, as he is eight for his last 14 with two homeruns and five RBI.
Final Thoughts
Earlier this week I had an interesting conversation with a good friend of mine. Well, actually it was more like a wild Drew Olson-Dan Needles D-List battle.
Being that the Brewers were and still are in the middle of some hot trade rumors naturally the topic of discussion was Corey Hart. Now, many loyal readers to OnMilwaukee.com should already know that I believe the Brewers need to trade away the "Prince" that will get them more in return while allowing more flexibility to keep Hart in the lineup for needed power and Braunie protection. However, this friend and I went much deeper.
His cries for sending Hart packing were the same negative cries being echoed by many Brewers fans. The argument turned from bitter to downright sour like Warhead candies by the time the dust had settled. And after throwing in a few Sabermetric stats and batted ball percentages to back my argument he said what I thought he would say as his evidence to back his argument, "Well, you don't watch almost every game on TV like I do."
Jeepers cats!
It's okay though, because I have forgiven him. See, he didn't and still doesn't realize that every pitch type, every batted ball, and every percentage that could possibly be measured is done so by sites like Fangraphs.com. It's a MLB enthusiast and fantasy baseball owner's best friend in essence, and lately it has become mine, too.
For instance, most who watch Sportscenter know that Tigers MVP candidate Miguel Cabrera is hitting .346 with 22 homeruns and 78 runs batted in. However, they probably don't know that Cabrera is swinging at 73.4 percent of pitches inside the strike zone indicated by his Z-Swing percentage, and that's the tip of the iceberg. The most important percentage when it comes to the Tigers first baseman is the O-Contact % number, or the number of pitches the hitter makes contact with outside the strike-zone. Cabrera's is 70.4 percentage this season, the highest percent of his career by 6.5 percentage.
This would probably explain why Cabrera is putting more balls in play, and having a career year. I don't have to watch any Tigers games to figure out why his numbers are so good.
Now, lets get back to Hart for a second. My friend's argument eventually reached a point where he was claiming that Hart swings at junk pitches too much. Indeed, he is right, if we were still in 2008 when he swung at 31.7 percent of pitches outside the strike-zone indicated by his O-Swing Percentage. In 2010 Hart has cut that percentage down by almost eight perent to 23.9.
Again, I don't need to watch almost every single Brewers game to know this, although I wish Bob Uecker would come back to radio soon before my head explodes.
The point I'm trying to make here is that you don't have to witness every moment to get the perfect image of how certain players perform. With tools like Fangraphs.com, any fantasy owner can become player smart if they just take the time to learn the percentages, and look past what they see and what's within the bottom line stats.
