Blake Snell, Tampa Bay Rays - Snell bounced back from a "bad" performance against the Mariners where he allowed five runs, one earned, in three and a third with a quality start allowing just two earned runs over 6.2 innings but took the loss. Snell walked three batters for the second straight game but Snell only struck out three in this game. The Indians are in the middle of the pack against lefties in terms of K%, but he fanned six Yankees in his ML debut and they have the second lowest strikeout rate in baseball against southpaws. Either way, three starts into his big league career he owns a 2.40 ERA and a 2.92 FIP thanks largely in part to not allowing any homers over his first 15 innings. His curveball has been his go to pitch as it's already worth 1.1 runs above average according to Fangraphs Pitch Values.
Corey Kluber, Cleveland Indians - Kluber tossed his second complete game shutout of the season Tuesday blanking the Rays over nine innings with nine strikeouts. Kluber's value to fantasy owners can be debated a bit but that mostly plays into the fact that his ERA is the highest it's been since 2012 which was the season that he got on the fantasy baseball map before winning the Cy Young award in 2013. There are six players this season with sub-2.00 BB/9 and an over-9.00 K/9 in baseball which includes Clayton Kershaw, Noah Syndergaard, Matt Shoemaker, Steven Matz and Jon Lester. Just based on how his luck seems to be trending this year, it just seems that there will be some duds in there every now and then but overall he's still an SP1 with outstanding peripherals.
James Paxton, Seattle Mariners - Paxton had another solid start with 7.2 innings allowing four runs, his first non-quality start since his first start of the season June 1st against the Padres. It's become a pretty large note as of late that Paxton currently has the highest velocity for fastballs among left handed starters. His fastball velocity has jumped up three MPH from last season and he's seen his cutter jump up two MPH as well and we've also seen his cutter usage jump from 3.9% in 2015 to.... Wait for it. 23.1% this season. That's insane. With that though it does mean something get abandoned and that happens to be all his offspeed pitches this year dropping his changeup and curveball usage by 6% each. Weirdly enough both of those offspeed offerings were slightly above average pitches according to Fangraphs while both fastballs were below average pitches to this point in his career.
Kurt Suzuki, Minnesota Twins - Suzuki had a monster game for the Twins going 4-for-5 at the plate with a homer and six RBI. For a catcher in 2016, Suzuki is putting together a decent season with a .265/.302/.411 with four homers and 25 RBI but it all adds up to a .307 wOBA and a 90 wRC+ which are less than desirable. Suzuki isn't walking at all this year as it's down by 3% from his career rate and his strikeout rate is up by 5% to this point in the season. In deep leagues at catcher if you want to play the hot hand at catcher you can, as he's posted a 167 wRC+ since June 11th and three of his four homers have come in that span along with 13 of his 25 RBI.
Jurickson Profar, Texas Rangers - Profar continued his blazing return to the majors with his third homer of the season and is currently triple slashing .345/.374/.517 in 91 plate appearances while getting starts at third base, shortstop, second base, first base and DH. As a big Jurickson Profar fan, I was surprised to dig deeper inthis numbers and see he's only making hard contact at a 18.6% rate while hitting the ball to the opposite 10% more than he did in previous seasons. It obvious then that his .345 average is almost completely BABIP fueled, and those contact rates don't make me all that excited that he'll continue to hit at this rate. If someone were to send you an offer with a bigger name player for him I'd absolutely take it, but Profar has the prospect pedigree to make me want to hold him unless I'm overwhelmed by an offer.
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