September 20, 2012

Value Picks

Starting Pitching for 9/20/12

by Paul Sporer

The season is almost over, you guys! Is everyone as upset by that as me? There is some good news, though. First, we still have the playoffs immediately after the regular season, and they should excellent again this year. Second, we still have a couple weeks left in the regular season, and if you are in the thick of a fantasy pennant chase, these will be extremely fun, tension-filled weeks and give you a chance to over-manage the hell out of your squad. Lastly, even when the games on the field end, the hot stove burns hot enough to make baseball a year-round sport.

Let’s see what the wire is offering us in terms of Value Picks on the mound.

Returning
An ugly six start run from July 31 to August 26 left Homer Bailey (Yahoo! 35%, ESPN 48%, CBS 76%) with a 4.24 ERA which still would have been a career-best had the season ended, but it severely dented the chances of his first sub-4.00 ERA season. He has rallied with a September surge, however, that has him on track to put a nice bow on his breakthrough season. He has a 1.29 ERA, 0.83 WHIP, 26 strikeouts, and six walks in 29 innings across four starts pushing, his season ERA down to 3.82.

All told, Bailey is poised to set career highs all over the board. Note that he did get fat on weaker competition in September, however, facing the Astros twice plus the Cubs and Pirates once apiece. Don’t fret, though; he has the offensively-challenged Dodgers and then the Pirates again to close the season.

Arriving
Travis Wood (Yahoo! 12%, ESPN 13%, CBS 29%) could be a strong mid-rotation pitcher if he could curb his home run issues—difficult to do as an extreme fly ball pitcher. Even with his hideous 1.5 HR/9 rate, though, he is a solid back-end option with a 4.25 ERA in 140 innings of work. He has outings of five, four, and three home runs as well as a pair of two-homer outings, so they tend to come in bunches when Wood is on the mound. It shouldn’t be a surprise that when he finally strings together 30 homerless innings, he is able to post a 1.80 ERA. That is the current streak he is riding, dating back to the third inning of his August 28 outing and stretching through four September starts.

Though his sample is small, Jacob Turner (Yahoo! 2%, ESPN 1%, CBS 8%) has had home run issues that would make Wood laugh (would make Wood?). He has a 2.0 HR/9 in his 36 1/3 innings of work, though it’s down from 2.9 in 12 1/3 innings with Detroit (stop laughing… Wood) to 1.5 in 24 with Miami. More importantly, his peripherals are exponentially better in Miami (from 1.0 to 5.7 K/BB), which is why he has been able to enjoy some success despite the continued gopheritis.

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