Pedro Feliciano (RP - Mets) - Feliciano has been a Holds machine this year and he certainly hasn’t disappointed his fantasy owners down the stretch. He leads all pitchers with Holds in September (9 of them) and has posted a 1.88 ERA and 0.63 WHIP during that time span. His season totals aren’t in the top-10 for middle relievers if we’re using the Hold as the metric (he only has 21 compared to the league leader Luke Gregerson who has 37), but he has certainly been a big asset recently. Keep riding him to the end.
David Wright (3B - Mets) - Time to revisit David Wright’s fantasy value. He will certainly make a bounceback on draft day 2011 after a nice comeback season in the HR/RBI categories. After an atrocious 2009 that gave us a AB/HR 53.5, Wright bounced back to 20.4 for this season which is about his career average. He has hit the 100 RBI mark for the 5th time in his career and is generating an OPS of .866. Still low by his standards, as he was typically in the .900+ range for 4 straight years prior to 2009. The concerning part for Wright is his high K-rate. Sure, it improved since the beginning of the season, but he still averaged a K for every 4.1 PA, easily the worst of his career and even a decline from last year’s 4.4. His batting eye is at an all-time low of 0.43 with a steady decline of 0.82, 0.79, and 0.53 from years 2007-2009. The power return is nice, but his fantasy value still remains off from his pre-2009 levels.
Yovani Gallardo (SP - Brewers) - Gallardo is having one of the quietest seasons of 2010, but his numbers are certainly impressive enough to give him an up-arrow heading into 2011. He is 14-7 with a 3.84 ERA, 1.37 WHIP, K/9 of 9.73, and a K/BB of 2.67. That’s good for his second straight 200 K, 185 IP season.
Carlos Beltran (OF - Mets) - Just like they named the surgery after Tommy John, they should name the MRI after Carlos Beltran. This week’s MRI revealed inflammation in that surgically repaired knee which will officially shut him down for the season. Beltran didn’t play his first game this season until July 15th, but was actually having a decent month of September until this happened. After hitting just .207 and .227 in July and August, Beltran was hitting .321 with 5 HR and 13 RBI this month before the knee injury. Who knows what we will get out of Beltran 2011, but he will certainly be a huge injury risk and a late-round pick at best.
Clayton Kershaw (SP - Dodgers) - Taking a page out of the Brett Favre playbook, Kershaw was once again shutdown for the season. First he was, then he wasn’t, and now he is again. Kershaw hit the 200 IP mark for the first time in his career and he has certainly proved to be one of the elite fantasy pitchers. He posted his 2nd consecutive sub-3.00 ERA season (2.91 this year), broke the 1.20 WHIP mark with a 1.18 and once again eclipsed the 1.0 K/I mark with a 1.04. While his K rate was slightly down from last year’s 1.08, he improved his BB rate, leading to a K/BB improvement of 2.03 to 2.62. For 2011, there’s Roy Halladay in the top tier and nobody else. Kershaw easily falls into the 2nd tier of elite fantasy pitchers.
