Jonathon Niese (SP—Mets) Now is about the time we should start paying some serious attention to Jon Niese. Certainly, the Phillies are paying attention after Friday's game where Niese pitched 7 strong innings, allowing just 1 ER, 4 hits, 1 BB and 7 K's. He lowered his season ERA to 3.10 and earned his first victory on the young season. Up until Friday, Niese had been doing well, but he had been playing with a considerable about of fire as he had a H/9 of 12.3 and a BB/9 of 4.5. That's a lot of base runners. Consequently to keep his ERA low, you would expect an elevated LOB% and you'd be right. Niese had a LOB% of 79.3%. But looking at his 3.83 FIP showed that it was very much in line with his ERA at 3.63. However, his BHIP was through the roof at .397. Man, somebody play some defense when Niese is pitching, will ya? With a BHIP that will almost certainly go down, we may see some similar outings like the one we saw against the Phillies. Niese appears to be pretty solid and certainly worth a pick up in NL leagues at this point and some deeper mixed leagues with good match ups.
Brad Lidge (RP—Phillies) Well, it was a fine how-do-you-do for Brand Lidge who made his first appearance of the season Friday against the Mets. Lidge was removed from the 15 day DL with knee and elbow issue and was promptly greeted by Rod Barajas who took Lidge's third pitch of the season, a 93 mph 4-seamer, and parked it into the stands for a home run. Eight pitches, a line out and a single later, Lidge was hitting the showers with a 27.00 ERA to start his 2010 campaign. Lidge has the potential to be one of the best closers in the game, but after an erratic 2009 season, it's tough to know what you're going to get. To make matters worse, interim closer Ryan Madson went on the DL with turf-toe, and it appears that Lidge would be in line for the job. But if Friday's outing is any indication of what to expect from Lidge this season, Charlie Manuel is going to have to go to Plan C (if there is one). Stay tuned as the Lidge saga continues and its uncertain, at this point, which direction it will take. Closer or not? Time well tell.
Rickie Weeks (2B—Brewers) After a very hot start of the season Rickie weeks has cooled off considerably and has been struggling finding the hits that were in his bat at the start of the season. The past 7 games has seen Weeks go 2-for-29 and his AVG. dip 66 points to .258 with 15 strikeouts. The strikeouts will happen with Weeks as he has never possessed a strong contact rate at 73%, but over the past week it has dropped down to 67%. The more positive news about his recent slump is that he is still squaring up on the ball pretty nicely with a LD% of 21%. He’s hitting ground balls at the rate of 64% which is not a terrible thing with a guy that has speed like Weeks. But his BHIP the past week has only been .214 so it appears that this is really a case of bad luck. This should change. Weeks is healthy and finally proving what he can do. The ball should start to bounce his way, so keep him in your lineup as he is due for an upswing.
Barry Zito (SP—Giants) Barry Zito walked away with his 4th win of the year and seems to have gone through some sort of metamorphosis during the off season. Going into Friday's game Zito had held opposing batters to a .161 batting average. He did little to hurt that average as he allowed only 5 hits against Colorado in 8 innings with 2 ER and a 1.53 ERA. His WHIP is 0.84 and he looks every bit the Zito of old. A couple of starts ago, I would have recommended a sell high strategy on Zito, but he continues to provide solid outing and has 5 quality starts in as many games. One slight word of caution: Zito's LD% is around 14% compared to a career LD% of 20%. It would seem that the LD rate is too low for him to maintain. Additionally, his BHIP is an impossibly low .202. While Zito does tend to have a lower BHIP than most pitchers, the current number will definitely rise and get closer to the .275 to .300 area. However, the excellent start that Zito has put out so far can absorb a little upward adjustment and regression to the mean. He still looks in line to be putting up solid numbers going forward.
Placido Polanco (3B—Phillies) Placido Polanco has cooled down considerably since the start of the season. Through the first ten games of the season he was batting .444 but in the last 7 is only hitting .130. Still, going into Friday’s match up against the Mets, his overall average was a solid .313. But Polanco went 0-for-4 and his BA has now drifted below .300 for the first time this season. The main cause for the slump seems to be an issue with pitch recognition. Polanco appears to be swinging at 5% less pitches within the strike zone compared to his season average and he also seems to be swinging at 4% more pitches out of the strike zone. Also his CT% his 8% lower than usually. Expectedly, his BHIP traveled south and currently is resting at a reasonable .303 and his LD% of 21.2% also is in line with his BHIP. Polanco should start to come out of this bad spell and pick it up. He’s a solid hitter in a very well balanced lineup that should provide him with run generation opportunities. He will probably hit around .300 for the year an is a solid infielder option albeit not an elite one.
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