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The battle of the division leaders is the
Mike Shaw Subaru Super Mo Replay Matchup of the Week 13.
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Sometimes life knocks you down and kicks you in the teeth. Sometimes it gives you a glimpse or a sign that lets you know that you are on the right path. This weekend, the wife and I took the girls to see their Uncle (not Jimmy) play baseball because we havent yet this year. He threw a 3 hit shut out, striking out 7 or 8 and walking 3, in case you were wondering. On the way, we were driving north on 52 when we saw some really strange liscense plate. It looked like it had mountains in the background, but the writing and numbers on the plate were all in pink. We tried to get closer to see what state it was from (because I am a huge geek and love seeing liscense plates from other states and imagining what the people are doing so far from home). Traffic was moderate, so we werent getting much closer. As I tried to read it, my wife mentioned that she liked the look of the car and that we should consider a Subaru (it was an Outback) when we start looking at new cars to replace the Jeep.
The first thing that popped into my head was that buying a Subaru from anywhere other than Mike Shaw Subaru seemed like heresy, which is totally bananas mccrazypants, but whatever, its what I thought. So...we talked about the Outback (and the Crosstrek...I like me that Crosstrek) and traffic started clearing as we went past the eastbound Rt 14 exit and we were able to get up next to the Outback. The liscense plate? A Colorado breat cancer awareness plate. In my head? Mike Shaw Subaru is in Colorado. Sure as shit...
I texted this to Kyler with the photo:
Christians and Jews have Jerusalem. Muslims have Mecca. Tot Heads have Mike Shaw Subaru...and this car has been to the Holy Land. A big thanks to my wife, who took this picture even though she thinks I am an idiot for thinking that this was like a huge moment in life.
Anyways, this matchup of top teams wasnt quite the barn burner we were hoping for. In fact, this was more one sided in favor of Bob for much of the week with Kyler gaining back some ground on Sunday culminating in a Sunday Night save for Koji Uehara that broke the tie there giving Kyler his 2nd win of the week.
| Team |
R |
RBI |
SB |
AVG |
OBP |
SLG |
W |
K |
ERA |
WHIP |
QS |
SV+H |
Score |
| BySs |
28 |
24 |
5 |
0.286 |
0.355 |
0.414 |
2 |
49 |
4.76 |
1.36 |
3 |
10 |
2 |
| Bobs Aters |
28 |
19 |
5 |
0.327 |
0.366 |
0.481 |
2 |
54 |
3.26 |
1.27 |
4 |
9 |
7 |
I liked High 5, Low 5 last week, and it fits with this week's MO. So were gonna go with that.
5) C Jonathon "Dont call me Matt" Lucroy - BySs - 375/464/458 2R 3RBI
Before Kyler went to the Brewer game a couple weekends ago, I asked him if he was going to call Lucroy a "Sally" because he didnt hit the ball out of the yard very often. Lucroy may never hit more than 20 HRs in a season, but he is very quietly turned into one of the premier offensive catchers in the National League (334/403/515 on the year). I cannot remember the last good Brewer catcher that they didnt immediately try to move to another position (looking at you, BJ Surhoff). At 28, Lucroy isnt exactly a young pup, but he doesnt have a ton of milage on his body yet and should give the Brew Crew, along with Braun and Scooter Gennett (I had to put him in there) a solid start to building a playoff team.
4) RP Greg Holland - ATers - 1W 7K 3.00 ERA 0.33 WHIP 2 S/H
Dont be fooled by the ERA. Holland was nasty this week, striking out 7 in 3 innings of work and earning both a win and a pair of saves for Bob. For the season, Holland has 49 strikeouts and only 9 walks in 31 innings. Paired with Wade Davis, the Royals have a lock down bullpen for the first time since Dan Quisenberry was flinging frisbee balls at the plate in the 80s. This isnt a one yaer wonder either. Holland has been on of the AL's best RPs since 2011, averaging well over a K per inning.
3) OF Billy Hamilton - ATers - 344/344/469 4R 5RBI 3 SB
He might not be able to work a walk, but there hasnt been much else Hamilton hasnt done spectacularly well over the past couple of weeks. Over the past 14 days, Hamilton has gone 351/362/491 with 9R 10RBI 9 SB, good enough for 6th on the Yahoo Player Rater. $30 looked like such an overpay just a few weeks ago, now it is looking like an all time bargain.
2) SP Yu Darvish - BySs - 1W 10K 0.00 ERA 0.63 WHIP 1 QS
Darvish was billed as the next big thing to come over from Japan in 2011. There a number of skeptics, seeing as how Dice K, and Hideki Irabu and numerous others before him were "the next big thing" before they became "the next discarded thing." Since coming to the US before the 2012 season though, all Darvish has done is win 37 of his 76 starts, throw 505 innings giving up 387 hits and striking out 626. Oh yeah, his home ballpark is one of the best hitter's environments in all of baseball. Thats some pretty impressive shit that he is throwing down there in Texas. Darvish is coming up on his 28th birthday, so there is no reason why he cant continue this run for the next 4-5+ years.
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| Best GIF eva! |
1) 2b/SS Dee Gordon - ATers - 481/500/630 3R 2RBI 1 SB
This one stings a little extra for Kyler. He bid on Gordon the week that Bob picked him up, just not high enough. Kyler has told me that he regrets not going a little higher, and that Gordon had one of his best weeks of the season this week against the BySs has got to chap Kyler's ass a bit. This run has got to stop eventually right? Dee Gordon is not this good at baseball, right? I dont think so. I went back and checked out his minor league stats and...this is what he is. At nearly every stop in the minors he was within percentage points of his minor league career 301/360/388 slash line with lots and lots of stolen bases and absolutely zero power. His MLB line right now...295/348/419 with 40 stolen bases (the SLG is up a bit because he has a pair of HRs and 9 triples). Maybe we had all been thinking a little too much Emilio Bonifacio and not enough Delino DeShields (thats a compliment to Gordon, by the way.
DeShields was a game changer in the years his groundballs found holes, and was not when they didnt)
On the flip side:
5) SP Sonny Gray - BySs - 0W 4K 9.00 ERA 2.00 WHIP 0 QS
Kyler called him one of his team's best bargains...this is how he gets repaid. Sonny should be just fine. The Marlins are a suprisingly strong offensive team (TMGS!) Gray is pitching to more contact as the year is going on, so the Ks are coming down and the hits are likely to go up a bit. As long as the walks stay low, the hits will even out as Gray finds the right mix to continue pitching. He has never thrown more than the 170 innings he threw last season; this season he is on pace for 208. The biggest thing that could hurt Gray is any innings cap the A's throw on him. They will likely be in the hunt for a playoff spot, but they could skip him a few times to conserve pitches and avoid too big of a jump in his innings pitched.
4) SP Hisashi Iwakuma - ATers - 0W 3K 11.25 ERA 2.25 WHIP 0 QS
This was Iwakuma's second consecutive flop start and his 3rd in his last 6 outings. Color me apprehensive about Iwakuma's season long outlook. First, his early season finger injury could potentially limit the effectiveness of his splitter, which was one of the best in baseball last year. Second, he jumped from 125 innings in 2012 to 220 last year. And though the 33 year old did throw more than 1500 innings in Japan before coming over a 100 inning jump for any pitcher in a single season is a massive extra work load.
3) SP Garrett Cole - BySs - 0W 4K 11.25 ERA 2.50 WHIP 0 QS
Cole came off the DL for his start this week against the Mets and showed a bit of rust. The velocity was there on his fastball, but he wasnt fooling anyone (and its the METS!) so I would deduce that his movement wasnt where it should have been. Cole is still one of the best young arms in the Bigs and should bounce back quickly.
2) SP Shelby Miller - BySs- 0W 6K 10.57 ERA 2.74 WHIP 0 QS
Are you seeing a trend here? Kyler's pitching staff lost 4 categories this week, and these 3 young starters are a big part of the reason why. Miller was on the wrong side of another Kershaw gem on Saturday, but he didnt do himself any favors against the Dodger lineup. Miller is smack dab in the middle of a sophomore slump. Afer having a stellar rookie year (15-9 3.67 ERA 1.20 WHIP), he is only 7-7 this year with a 4.10 ERA and 1.42 WHIP. His strikeouts are down and his walks are up so much that he leads the league in walks issued this year. His hit rate and HR rate are both pretty much the same as they were last year, but his swinging strike rate is down almost 5% from last year. Basically, he is throwing fewer strikes than he was last year and the strikes he does throw are fooling people less. Those are not good trends. He is talented enough that he can rebound if he makes the proper adjustments (this is probably the first time in his entire life that he has had to make any adjustments).
1) OF Alex Rios - ATers - 056/100/056 0R 1RBI 0 SB
Rios avoided the Yanger Zone with a 7th inning single off Kyle Gibson in Sunday's game against the Twins. Rios hasnt run as much as he has in recent years and the HRs (3) have been few and far between so far in 14, but he is still hitting 304/336/438 on the season despite this week. Rios has been a boom or bust player in his career, at one point earning a 7 year-$70 million dollar contract (from the Blue Jays, who also PAID Vernon Wells) but then getting put through waivers on a season and a half into that deal. The Jays let him walk for NOTHING but salary relief when the ChiSox claimed him. The ChiSox got a couple of 20-20 seasons out of him before flipping him to the Rangers for a wet bag of peanuts (Leury Garcia).
I have really no idea how to transition from that to fantasy baseball so I will just dive right in. In looking through the box scores from our match ups this week, I was struggling to come up with some kind of narrative thread that ties everything together. Hitters, as a whole, were neither dominant nor useless. Pitchers were all over the board. About all I could come up with was the impressive line that Paul Goldschmidt put up this week, hitting under .100 (.067) while still having an OBP over .400 (.417). That is not something I would recommend trying at home. Then...then I came to Jose Altuve. Jose Altuve stole 10 bases this week. TEN...mutherfuckin TEN! And it is not like he went on a 1 game binge against late career Fat LeCroy (who threw out 2 of the last 43 base stealers trying to steal against him including the epic May 25, 2006 game where the Astros stole 7 bases in 7 innings, forced LeCroy into 2 throwing errors, and saw Nats manager Frank Robinson remove LeCroy in the middle of an inning). Altuve stole at least 1 base in every game this week and has 2 steals in each of the last 4 contests. He may look like a pudge 12 year old named "Carlito" and he may not be knocking any one in, but he is running literally at will...and he wants to run now...and now...and now. Just to put the 10 steals in a bit of context...the previous high in steals by a TEAM for a single week was 10 (now its 11...Altuve +1).
Only 36 players in the majors have more than 10 steals ON THE SEASON. Altuve is second in MLB with a .347 batting average and the player with the most steals that has an OPS similar to Altuve is Carlos Gomez...who has 13 steals. His combination of speed and BA/OBP/SLG is entirely unmatched in MLB. The lack of RBI and walks keeps him from being in the true upper echeleon of fantasy players (in our scoring format) but the batting average, runs and steals leave him in the next tier, and definitely put him at the top of the 2b rankings (at least in my mind...and Yahoo!'s. He is the #1 2b as of yesterday). It looks like the answer to "How many Altuve's?" is "Never Enough."
