Looking to cycle spot-starters each day? Check out the Stream Team, where we tab pitchers that are likely to help you in your quest for fantasy gold.
Yesterday we gave you Hiroki Kuroda, and he was amazing, giving up three hits and no walks in eight innings, striking out five. He gave up two runs on sacrifice flies, but we'll take a 2.25 ERA, 0.38 WHIP any day, especially when it comes with a win attached. That gives us six straight quality starts, and anyone shadowing the Stream Team this week has a great shot of winning ERA and WHIP in their playoff H2H matchup.
Poppin' out of the box scores and right into your cubicle, the Roto Rush is your double espresso shot of fantasy baseball advice every weekday.
By now we all know of the greatness of San Francisco pitcher Tim Lincecum. He's the best pitcher in baseball this season, with a 2.34 ERA, 1.02 WHIP and 233 strikeouts in 200 1/3 innings. But there's another hard-throwing young kid in the Giants organization that, like Lincecum, has a shot to be one of the league's best very quickly. He's a guy you want to burn that No. 1 waiver priority on, in case he sticks in the rotation for the rest of the season. He is Madison Bumgarner.
Looking to cycle spot-starters each day? Check out the Stream Team, where we tab pitchers that are likely to help you in your quest for fantasy gold.
After another terrible outing, this time from Clay Buchholz, it seems it's time to alter our strategy. Buchholz wasn't able to get through five innings yesterday, which would have likely secured us another win, even with the bad ratios. From now on, we should stress selecting pitchers that are playing the worst offenses in the league, as opposed to those who have boom-or-bust potential like Buchholz. Will Ryan Rowland-Smith be the first step back in the right direction?
There is a pretty even distribution of talent this week as 43 pitchers will be two-start pitchers for the week.
Of the 11 "Must Start" options I really like Yovani Gallardo who gets the enviable task of facing the Nationals and the Pirates. Roy Halladay has it the worst of the bunch as not only does he have to face the Rays and the Red Sox, but he has to face two starting pitchers with sub-four ERA's.
The other 17 pitchers are "Risky Business". You should only be considering these guys if you're in super-deep leagues or just massively desperate for strikeouts. None of these are viable options.
Looking to cycle spot-starters each day? Check out the Stream Team, where we tab pitchers that are likely to help you in your quest for fantasy gold.
Aaron Laffey got off to a rough start yesterday but was able to right the ship and deliver us our fifth straight quality start. The Indians pitcher held Seattle to three runs over seven innings, striking out just two along the way. It wasn't good enough for the win, but the quality start is our 15th in 22 August picks. Today, Bud Norris faces the Diamondbacks, who are thankfully trotting out a Mark Reynolds-less lineup today (Chad Tracy starts at 3B, while recently-promoted prospect Brandon Allen gets another start at first).
Poppin' out the box scores and right into your cubicle, the Roto Rush is your double espresso shot of fantasy baseball advice every weekday.
By all accounts, this has been a season to forget for Josh Hamilton. While it would have been hard to meet the expectations that come after a 32-HR, 130-RBI season (Hamilton's numbers in 2008), no one could have predicted a fall this precipitous.
After a .242, two-HR April, we called it a rough start. Hamilton followed that up with a .237 May and went on the shelf for a month. The struggling Texas outfielder entered the All-Star break hitting .243 with just six HRs on the season. By August 2, his average was down to .220.
The proposed deal? The Red Sox would have received King Felix by bringing in the Padres as a third team. The Mariners would have received Gonzalez, Clay Buchholz and two other prospects from the Red Sox. The Padres would have gotten back upwards of four top-notch prospects along with Brandon Morrow.
So you thought that once Matt Holliday went to St. Louis and Cliff Lee wound up with the Phillies deadline day itself would be anticlimactic? Hardly.
Three All-Stars, including a former Rookie of the Year and Cy Young, went elsewhere on July 31, and all that happened while the biggest name on the market all month, Roy Halladay, stayed put.
No, this deadline did not disappoint. There was a flurry of activity right down to 4 PM ET and a legitimate shocker to finish it all off. What better way to wrap up all of the intrigue then with a look at the early winners and losers? Join me -- and a few other members of the MLB FanHouse crew -- as we break it all down after the jump.