Kevin Slowey (SP—Twins)—I’m a little perplexed by Kevin Slowey. I can’t really decide what kind of season he is putting together. Yes, he is tied for the major league lead in wins at 10, so he has been getting the job done. But the path to 10 wins hasn’t really been attractive and without warts. Saturday’s game was definitely a blemish on the face of Slowey’s season. He was only able to survive 3 innings, giving up 5 ER on 6 hits and taking his 3rd loss of the year. While Saturday’s performance was a wart, he has had 9 quality starts out of 15 and has shown some real dominance in some of them. Earlier this month he struck out 10 Cubs in 6 innings and another game against the Yankees, he struck out 8. Despite some of the high strikeout games, Slowey is essentially a pitch-to-contact pitcher with a CT% of 82%. With that comes a lot of hits at 10.8 per 9 innings but also the walks are low allowing only about 1.5 a game. So that’s good, he makes the hitter earn his way on base, right? Well, a concern with Slowey though is that with such a high contact rate, hitters are stroking home runs over the wall at better than 1.5 per game. Saturday, saw Slowey up his season totals of home runs allowed to 14. OK, OK, both were to Albert Puljos, but forgiveness points don’t show up in the box score and when you are negotiating contract extensions, there’s no separate split for how you pitched against Albert Puljos and how you pitched against everyone else. It is what it is. With a BHIP of .342, we are hoping that some of those batted balls find there way in to some fielder’s glove for Slowey’s sake and we should see a decrease in ERA from 4.41. But with a nagging rib injury, I’d use a little caution when starting Slowey for a while. He’s a great sleeper, but just hasn’t shown very strong consistency. For now, I’d look for favorable matchups and keep him on the bench against anyone named Puljos.
Scott Podsednik (OF—White Sox)—He’s not going to drive in a flurry of runs, or hit mammoth homers. And he certainly doesn’t leap over tall building in a single bound. But what Scott Podsednik has been providing this year is some nice, consistent hitting and speed thrown in for good measure. Saturday, Podsenik was had a stellar day going 4 for 5, a triple shy of the cycle (yeah, that’s the tough one to get). But on a rare occasion saw Podsednik hit a home run, his 3rd of the year and raise his BA to .319. These kinds of days shouldn’t be expected out of Podsednik on a regular basis, but he does offer the fantasy owner some nice consistency this year. There’s not a lot of “wow” factor to Podsednik, but he has been able to maintain a batting overage over .300 for the better part of the season. For the month of June he is batting .307 which just so happened to be his season BA going into Saturday’s game. Now that’s consistency! He has also been able to rob 8 out of 9 bases and has a fairly decent OBP of .375. Podsednik’s BHIP is a high .331 but with a CT% of 93% he has the bat skill to maintain that average above .300. He’s got a good EYE at 0.80, which personally I feel should be better if he could take more walks. He has only 16 BB on the year. His O-Contact% is over 85% so he is hitting the ball even on poor pitchers, so it would be great to lay off some of those bad pitches and get his walks up. However, with a TotA of just under .700, there are better outfielders out there that can help to produce more runs, but in deeper leagues or AL only leagues, you might be inclined to insert Podsednik as a good #3 outfield option.
Mike Napoli (C—Angels)—Unless we are talking about Torii Hunter, Vladimir Guerrero or Chone Figgins, I always have a difficult time recommending Angel hitters. It’s certainly not because of the lack of talent or ability of some of their key players. No, it has more to do with Mike Scioscia’s managing style. I imagine Scioscia as a young lad being the kind of kid who would like to empty all of his toys out of his toy chest and lay them all out. Once laid out, he then would go through and pick they ones he would play with that day and the rest would go back into the chest. Yes, he had his favorite toys that he loved to play with everyday, but he liked variety and to mix and match as he saw fit. It is with this vision that I think Scioscia developed his managing style where he likes a lot of movable pieces to interchange. One of those movable pieces is Mike Napoli who shares his catching duties with the more defensive able Jeff Mathis. On Saturday, Napoli went 3 for 4, hitting his 10th home run of the season and raised his BA to .295. In a position that suffers from a lot of offensive talent, it’s frustrating from a fantasy standpoint to see Napoli not get more consistent playing time because the guy can hit. Napoli has a .500 SLG and hits a home run every 19 AB’s. He has also has an impressive TotA of .835. This is down from last year when his TotA was an elite 1.035. The biggest issue with Napoli is that he strikes out—A LOT. He is strikes out over 23% of the time which is a lot of wasted plate appearances that could be better served to help produce runs in other ways. Plus with EYE of 0.44, and a CT% of 70% there’s not a great deal of plate discipline on display. If ever, Napoli becomes the regular catcher, he would be a must start despite all of the strikeouts. We put up with Ryan Howard and all of his whiffs, right? But for now Napoli seems to be stuck in limbo somewhere in Scioscia’s toy chest where some days it’s a Napoli day and some days it’s a Mathis day.
Adrian Beltre (3B—Mariners)—When Adrian Beltre reported for the first time to the Mariners spring training camp in 2005, the Mariners were expected to be getting a guy who had just hit 48 home runs, 121 RBI and had a .334 BA. Even his SLG tipped the scales at .629 with a TotA over 1.000. Good stuff! Exciting stuff! The stuff that MVP’s are made of! Oh, imagine the jerseys the Mariners will sell!! But today, 4 ½ seasons after Beltre first put on a Mariner uniform, he goes on the DL with bone spurs that will require surgery and may keep him out for a good 10 weeks or so. So let’s play a game: take a look at all of Beltre’s seasonal statistics and tell me, which of all of these seasons is not like the other? Yes, the correct answer is 2004. At no time during his 4 ½ seasons with Seattle, have the Mariners ever seen a glimpse of that guy who had such an amazing year in 2004 with the Dodgers. I half expected the Mariners to place a missing person call to 911. Hmmm…I’ve also had to give a little cock-eyed look whenever I look at Beltre’s numbers against that 2004 season. Enough said. Well, the real Adrian Beltre hits home runs but more like 25 a year. This year he has only been able to get 5 over the fence and his XBH% is only a 7.9%. And with a BHIP of .295, his .260 average is going to be pretty much what you get. And to add insult to injury (pun intended), he has only been able to manage an OBP of .293 and an EYE of 0.23. So with that, it’s doubtful that with Beltre’s injury, he will be missed by many fantasy owners as more then likely they have already abandoned the underachieving third baseman and gone to plan C (I’m presuming that Beltre was never Plan A and could have only been a Plan B). At this point, he has no value and I’d move on to better options as you won’t have to look real hard.
AJ Burnett (SP—Yankees)—I’ll be honest; I’m not always sure what to expect from AJ Burnett. I will admit that I thought that he was a risky signing for the Yankees in the offseason. I thought it was risky because of Burnett’s history with injury and how in a contract year, he seemed to have put together solid numbers as he did in 2005 just before he went to Toronto. So, it’s with an eyebrow half raised that I regard AJ Burnett. But, on Saturday, there is no denying his dominance over the injury plagued Mets where he surgically dissected the batting order batter by batter only allowing 1 hit through 7, while striking out 10. Burnett has put together 9 quality starts this season. While he is a power pitcher averaging over 8.5 strikeouts per game, he also leads the league in walks allowing about 4.5 per game. Consequently, fantasy owners will not be enamored with his WHIP of 1.437. A couple of other red flags is that he has an ERC of 4.35 and a FIP of 4.84 which means that his ERA of 3.93 could be worse based upon how he has pitched independent of his defense and the hits and walks he gives up. That combined with a high side LOB% of 77.1, may make fantasy owners a little edgy waiting for poor outings that will eventually come. Burnett’s a talented pitcher who when he is on his game is one of the best as he showed against the Mets. But there will be times, every once in a while where fantasy owners will have to hold tight because Burnett will certainly have his share of white-knucklers.
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