BP Work This Week

A quick look at my work available over at Baseball Prospectus this week.

First up was the Starting Pitcher Value Picks piece in which I looked at A.J. Burnett, whose meltdown against the St. Louis Cardinals has scared everyone off of him despite the fact that he has been excellent in every other start. Since the May 2nd disaster, Burnett is 2-0 with a 1.98 ERA, 1.14 WHIP and 22 K in 27 innings. He has chiseled his ERA (at 8.04 after the implosion start) down to 4.19, too. I also took a look at J.A. Happ and his surging strikeout rate.

Next up was the Weekly Planner piece which takes a look at the all the two-start pitchers for next week and decides who you should go with and who you should probably avoid. Aces are light this week meaning you will have to look at some lesser options if you want to load up on two start starters in H2H leagues. James McDonald and Trevor Cahill are among my favorites in that group. I also added a feature that ranks all the pitchers across both leagues.

I also appeared in the Lineup Card for the first time since joining Baseball Prospectus. The week’s topic was “Mr. Almosts” and I discussed how Mickey Mantle and Barry Bonds both hit .298 for their career.

And finally, episode 5 came out for the The Towers of Power Fantasy Hour, a BP Fantasy Podcast. We discussed a ton of players of varying import ranging from stars to lower tier “only” league options. In lieu of specific segments like most weeks, the meat of the show were these in depth breakdowns on players. We also read plenty of your emails. Send your emails to fantasyhour@baseballprospectus.com. We record on Thursdays. We also have a Facebook Group that you should definitely join.

Baseball By Paul