James Shields – Shields has put up decent numbers so far this year despite a lot of bad luck. He gave up two more unearned runs last night, bringing his season total of unearned runs to 7 in just 5 starts, and on opening day, Carl Crawford dropped a ball that allowed two runs to score. The ruling on that play was a hit, so Shields’ unearned run total should actually be 9. Now, obviously these unearned run totals do not count against Shields’ ERA, but the shoddy defense behind him has forced him to throw more pitches, hurt his WHIP, and prevented him from receiving wins. Shields managed to battle through the bad defense early on last night to finish with the win after tossing 7 innings, giving up 2 earned runs off of 6 hits and 2 walks while striking out 5. Expect increased win totals and a much lower WHIP in the future when the defense behind Shields picks up.
Casey Kotchman – Kotchman, quickly becoming a favorite here at Fantistics, is continuing his hot start. Last night Kotchman homered off of Hideki Okajima. Over his career, Kotchman has always hit lefties well in terms of average (.270 against RHP and .277 against LHP), but his power has suffered (.442 slugging against RHP and .338 against LHP). So, his first career homerun off of a left handed pitcher is just another good sign that Kotchman is coming into his own this season.
C.C. Sabathia – Last night’s outing had to be a great relief for Sabathia owners. At first glance, as I and another Fantistics writer noted earlier, it seemed that Sabathia’s awful start could be explained by a possible injury as a result of the high amount of innings that he threw last season. This might still be the case, but a closer look shows that Sabathia, despite his poor performance thus far, has maintained his velocity. Instead, the control of his fastball has been the issue, maybe hinting that there has been something wrong mechanically with his delivery, rather than an injury. If that’s the case, Sabathia seems to have fixed the problem for now. He struck out 11 batters in 6 innings last night, after striking out only 14 in his first 18 innings pitched. This is definitely a positive sign going forward.
Travis Hafner – As a Travis Hafner owner, there was probably nothing more disappointing last night than checking the box score, after seeing that the Indians put up a 15 spot, just to see an 0 for 5 next to Hafner’s name. Sure, he had an RBI, but that doesn’t give you much comfort. One explanation to Hafner’s slow start is that he’s just not the player he was in 2006. I think it has more to do with his shoulder injury, though. Hafner was supposed to get a day off Sunday, but he never did and has done nothing productive recently. Hafner had a singles average heading into last night’s game of .227, about 25 points below where it is expected to be. Also, his HR:FB% was 15.8% compared to his career average of 20.7%. Owners need to find out if the shoulder injury is going to bother Hafner all year. If not, with a few days off one could expect Hafner’s numbers to increase. If it is going to be a constant problem though, Hafner could be headed to an even worse season than last year. Vernon Wells had shoulder problems last season; he tried to battle through them and wound up with his worst major league season, experiencing a low singles average and low HR:FB% like Hafner is currently experiencing. Hopefully Hafner does not endure the same fate as Wells.
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