Hunter Pence- HOU- Cold- We may be seeing some regression to the mean in action. Even with a 3-for-22 in his last 6 games Pence still has a BABIP of .374. He has been extremely lucky so far this season and it may finally be catching up to him. The Astros are possibly looking to sell high on Pence and so should you.
Aramis Ramirez- CHN- Hot- Ramirez now has an 8-game hitting streak in which he has 3 homers. The odds of him changing teams increases. This makes him more of a risk in NL only leagues but in AL only leagues a player to be ready to jump on if a deal to the junior circuit happens.
Cory Luebke- SD- Hot- Luebke didn't put up a quality start but even when he was struggling against the Phillies on a hot night he didn't put up horrible numbers. He needed 110 pitches to get through 5 IP, continuing the trend of increasing his pitch counts in each of his starts so far. Luebke only allowed 2 ER (3 overall) on 6 hits and a walk while striking out 4. There isn't anything there to be any less high on him.
Ryan Madson- PHI- Rise Value- Madson closed out yesterday's game, pitching a perfect 9th, in his first save opportunity since being activated from the DL last week. Manager Charlie Manuel said that Madson will handle closing when there is a predominantly right handed lineup coming up while Antonio Bastardo will close some games when there are more lefties coming up.
Chris Carpenter- STL- Caution- The first three times Carpenter threw 110 or more pitches this season his following outing wasn't a quality start. Then he went through a stretch of 3 consecutive starts where he threw at least 124 pitches, a level he hadn't hit since coming back from 2 injury filled years in 2007 and 2008. He followed up with quality starts each time. That may have taxed him in the longer run, though. In his last 3 starts Carpenter has only had one of the quality variety. His usage is definitely up. In 2009 Carpenter threw 4 games of 110 or more pitches. Last year it was 10. So far in 2011 he has already hit that mark 8 times. Watch Carpenter's next couple of starts carefully to see if he shows more signs of declining performance.
Follow me on Twitter all season - @fantisticspaul
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