Matt Harrison:
Baseball is a funny game sometimes. Matt Harrison could not have entered Saturday night’s contest with worse numbers in his first 7 major league starts from either an actual performance or peripherals perspective. Yet there he was tossing 8 dominant innings against the first place Rays shutting them out and allowing just 3 hits and zero walks, while striking out 8. The outing earned Harrison his 5th win of the season. How you get 4 wins in 7 outings with a 7.07 ERA I have no idea, but Harrison had managed it. Even with the tremendous outing Harrison needs to be avoided in all formats. His 15:19 K:BB Ratio, which was 7:19 going into last night’s outing, shows some of the weakness for a 22 year old who has been promoted aggressively this season. Harrison’s got a future long-term, but he should be in AAA right now where he posted a 1.42 WHIP in 38 innings.
Carlos Pena:
Back at the beginning of August I noted a likely increase power surge coming from Pena because of a rising extra base hit rate in July. In that time Pena’s rewarded my faith by blasting another 5 HR’s, 2 2B’s, and a 3B in 42 AB’s. While the power has come on in bunches of late, more importantly the EYE is starting to come along with it. Last year much of Pena’s improvements in the EYE category (career high .73) translated into improvements across the board. This season the EYE evaporated again, but of late Pena’s been seeing the ball extremely well, as evidenced by his .77 EYE in August. Rising power and rising plate patience are a good sign for a player whose fantasy value is dependent on both factors.
Marlon Byrd:
Schuyler touched on Byrd at the beginning of the month noting his improving peripherals and rising value. At that point Byrd was making a clear cut case for his value in deeper formats, but his continued hot bat is making it apparent he needs consideration in all formats. Any time a hitter gets hot in Texas or Colorado you need to take notice and Byrd’s combination of improved opportunity (with David Murphy hurt) and fast rising peripherals (Improved EYE, improved XBH Rate, etc), make Byrd an immediate add as a back-end OF in all but the shallowest leagues. Byrd’s posting an EYE well above 1.00 since the beginning of July and making contact at an impressive 91% Rate, while racking up extra base hits at rate of over 13%.
Justin Verlander:
Verlander got back on track on Saturday night tossing 6 shutout innings against the Orioles. Schuyler had an excellent breakdown of Verlander earlier in the month, but it’s one I happen to disagree with. Decreased velocity and decreasing peripherals along with a heavy workload at a young age are all certainly legitimate signs of concern and ones Schuyler appropriately pointed out, but I have some other theories here. Verlander’s been relied on heavily this year to throw extra innings as the lone Tigers reliable SP (before Armando Galarrage came along) as a result he’s been asked to clear 110 pitches in 12 of his 26 starts, while throwing less than 95 pitches in just ONE start all season. I think this may explain some of the dips in overall velocity as he’s been stretched deeper into games than in years past. Similarly while Verlander’s overall K and BB Rates look terrible compared to last season, the trend has been basically the same as 2007 since June. After an awful first 2 months of the season, Verlander has posted a .95 K Rate (.91 in ’07) and a .39 BB Rate (.33 in ’07). There is still a slight elevation in the BB Rate but I still feel some of that may be the result of pitching tired late in games. For example he’s walking batters in 9.9% of AB’s in the first 6 innings of games and walking batters in 16.4% of AB’s in the final 3 innings. Are there concerns about Verlander’s workload impacting his performance? ABSOLUTELY, and those concerns are only extended by this year’s abuse, but I don’t feel Verlander’s 2008 peripherals have really deteriorated as much as the overall numbers suggest. I think they’ve just been tainted by two horrible months.
Paul Konerko:
It’s certainly a small sample, just 39 AB’s, but its worth noting that Paul Konerko has started looking like his old self of late. He’s hit .308/.431/.590 in August and posted a tremendous 10:8 BB:K Ratio in that span along with racking up 5 Extra Base Hits and 3 HR’s. Konerko’s track record has been so solid and so consistent over the last 4 years that the small sample intrigues me. I haven’t started adding Konerko in some of the more shallow formats I’m currently playing in, but he’s certainly on the radar and in any format deeper than say 12 teams, he needs to be added immediately as a speculative pickup with big upside.
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