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Brandon Beachy | ATL | SP: I was originally planning to write about Beachy last week when he was just returning from the DL, but he’s still owned in just 47 percent of Yahoo! Leagues, so I thought I’d discuss him today anyway.  Beachy is a guy I absolutely loved coming into the season, going as far as to say that he was the proper choice over Minor for the fifth spot in the rotation when many thought it was crazy. He was dropped in a lot of leagues when he was injured, but he returned last week and absolutely dominated an elite Blue Jays offense. He’s actually performed well against quite a few top-notch offenses this year, including the Cardinals and twice against the Brewers.

His fastball isn’t much better than average at 92 mph and is relatively straight, but he gets pretty good rise on it and complements it with three above-average secondary offerings, changing speeds well. He can go from 92 with the fastball to 81 with his change to 75 with his curve. He’s not the 10.2 K/9 pitcher he’s been so far this year, but he should be significantly above average at getting whiffs and has good control, so he’s a guy that really needs to be owned in all but the absolute shallowest of leagues.

Javier Vazquez | FLA | SP: In case you haven’t noticed, Javy is cruising lately. Over his last eight starts, he has an 8.3 K/9 and a 2.4 BB/9. Those are a bit inflated by a high BABIP, but given that he’s owned in 24 percent of Yahoo! leagues and just 2.5 percent of ESPN leagues, it’s time to pick Vazquez back up.

Perhaps the best news for Javy’s prospects of keeping this up is that his velocity seems to have returned. It still might be a tad early to really say that it’s back, but over his past three starts, Vazquez has been averaging 91 mph on his fastball. That’s still a mph less than he was throwing in 2008 and 1.5 mph less than 2007, but it is in line with his dominating 2009 campaign with the Braves and up two mph from his disastrous 2010 with the Yankees. Also of note is that he’s throwing his changeup 1.5 mph slower than last year, creating the same 11-plus mph velocity separation he generated in 2009 between his fastball and change.

Because Vazquez has such a good history, PECOTA sees him as a 3.77 ERA pitcher right now despite his struggles last season and early this year. Pair this with his excellent peripherals over the past six weeks and the return of his velocity, and Vazquez is looking like he could be a steal as a waiver wire pickup.

Wily Mo Pena | ARI | DH/OF?: Pena is a fascinating case. He was once a top prospect heralded for Hulk-like power, but with lots of strikeouts, not enough walks, and poor defense, he never managed to secure a full-time job. He’s been out of the fantasy picture for a few years now, but his utter domination of Triple-A this season cased the D’Backs to call him up to DH during interleague play. He’s blasted two home runs thus far, but a .211 average without a walk can’t impress them. Still, his power is incredible; both of his homers have gone over 450 feet with (it seems like) a third that went nearly as deep but didn’t clear the fence (per HitTracker).

One somewhat encouraging sign is that Pena was striking out just 20 percent of the time at Triple-A before his callup, describing it as a change in approach:

My approach is just to hit for average. I think everybody knows that I would just worry about hitting home runs, just think about that. But I've realized I have to go to the plate and just make contact. I know I've got power. I just told myself that I have to prove that I can hit for average, too. I'm taking pitches, taking some walks and striking out less. I was surprised when I saw my numbers. I was like, wow, that's not me, not the way I used to strike out before. My main thing is just to make contact. If I make contact, something will happen. Just trying to put the ball in play and we'll see.

That approach hasn’t translated at the big-league level, though; Pena is striking out 47 percent of the time thus far. That won’t cut it if he hopes to remain with the club after they return home next Monday. Further hindering his cause is D’backs manager Kirk Gibson’s apparent reluctance to play Pena in the outfield during their short stint at home during this stretch of interleague play:

"He's probably in a little better shape than he was in spring training, but that's not his strength," Gibson said Wednesday. "I don't have any plans to play him in the outfield right now."

Gibson quickly added that those plans could change.

 Overall, things aren’t looking to good for Pena beyond this week, but he’s certainly worth a speculative add in the interim in case things change, he starts striking out less, and the D’backs decide to give him some time in left field over Gerardo Parra. His monster power warrants as much. Still, Parra is better defensively, and the team has Collin Cowgill hitting well at Triple-A to make the situation even murkier, so keep your expectations in check. 

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prs130
6/27
raw power - that's why Dmitri Young used to call him "Gorill-y Mo"
ssimon
6/27
Derek - If this week you had to start one of Wily Mo and Ryan Raburn, which would it be?
derekcarty
6/27
Raburn. The Tigers play seven games this week, and he's a good bet to start five or six of them. Pena may only get three games in a bad hitter's park in Oakland, a fourth only if he's lucky and gets to play the outfield one of the other days.
cfinberg
6/27
Vazquez has led me to the opposite conclusion: The BB/9 and K/9 this month are nice, but he's allowed 19 earned runs on 39 hits (including 5 dingers) in 24 innings. He's also averaged under 5 IP in those five starts. Yes, his June BABIP is crazy, and has occurred against some freakin good lineups, but I'm still skeptical. I mean, I hope you're right as he's definitely still available in my league, but I'm not seeing the light just yet.
derekcarty
6/27
I wouldn't worry too much about the surface results. As I showed last week (http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=14293), hits and home runs are incredibly unstable. If the peripherals are there, good surface numbers will follow.

Averaging under 5 IP in those starts is merely a function of the bad luck, which drives his pitch count up and gives the manager more reason to yank him early because he's giving up runs.

And the fact that he's put up such good peripherals against quality offenses like Arizona (twice), Milwaukee, Philly, and Tampa is an even better sign.

I'm not saying Vazquez is a lock to be a stud the rest of the way, but for what he costs, he may have one of the highest upsides of anyone that's freely available right now.
Gep7Llaro
6/27
Off topic, but I was curious if you buy into this kind of analysis:
http://www.fangraphs.com/fantasy/index.php/just-enough-home-run-laggards-impending-power-surge/

That is, do you accept the idea that Just Enough rates for home runs should regress to some leaguewide mean?
derekcarty
6/28
I do to an extent. I think HitTracker data can have a lot of value if used correctly, and while there are some ways people use it that I'm not really a fan of (perhaps a topic for a Thursday article as it's been one I've been meaning to finish writing for a while), this one I'm okay with, for the most part. It's not the be-all-end-all of evaluating a hitter's power, but I imagine that it does have some predictive value (maybe another good article topic to see just how much).

One of the biggest problems is that the ND/PL/JE classifications are park-specific. A JE home run in one park could conceivable be a ND home run were it hit exactly the same distance and to the same location in another park. This can create great disparity among hitters based on their home park and adds additional noise based on where hitters happen to have created certain other hits on the road. Still, it will have some predictive value, if not a ton.

I remember running some crude tests on ND and JE types this off-season and finding that players with extreme rates in one season tend to hit a couple more/fewer home runs the next. I think that ND home runs were a bit more important than JE and that a high ND combined with a low JE was better than one being high/low and the other being neutral, but I could be remembering wrong.

There are many ways we could make incredible use of the HitTracker system, but given what we have available to us, JE/NDs are at least worth a look.