Do I really have to dive into a deep talk about Miguel Gonzalez right now? After nearly going a CGSHO against the Yankees in under 90 pitches Gonzalez went 8.0 IP, 0 ER, 2 Hits, 1 BBs, 5 Ks last night against the Royals, lowering his ERA to an even 2.00 with a 1.07 WHIP and…yeah. That’s about it. His strikeout production is pretty lame, averaging five punchouts per start, though he’s needed a 6.75 IPS to get that. Meanwhile, his xFIP is 4.53, SIERA is 4.29 and while 22.5% hard contact and just 11.4% line drives is nothing to scoff at, he’s faced the Royals, Yankees, Twins, and Indians. Guess what, his one bad start was against the Tribe. This isn’t your solution to your battered staff, nor is Gonzalez the guy you want at the end of a 12-teamer to help your ratios each week. He’s going to hurt more than help, which means I’m have to say, Miguel…no.
Let’s see how every other SP did yesterday:
Matt Cain – 6.0 IP, 0 ER, 2 Hits, 1 BBs, 3 Ks. Don’t think he is Abel to do this often. This is just a One Night Bland…just like me making a Cain and Abel joke. I get one a year. ONE! I guess it’s important to note that Cain left with a hamstring injury in the seventh, but you weren’t actually going to pick up Cain, right?
Zack Greinke – 6.0 IP, 1 ER, 6 Hits, 0 BBs, 11 Ks. Padres. This was the Padres and they are living up to their name of providing grossly OP stat lines. Still, Greinke did everything you could ask and more and he’s looking like a definitive Top 25 if not Top 20 arm right now. Let’s hope it holds when he faces the Rockies in his next two starts.
Jesse Chavez – 6.0 IP, 1 ER, 4 Hits, 4 BBs, 7 Ks. Four walks are all you need to know to understand that this isn’t legit.
Hyun-Jin Ryu – 6.0 IP, 1 ER, 5 Hits, 1 BBs, 3 Ks. It’s boring, but it works as Ryu finally faced a team that doesn’t have an above average offense. We could be seeing a good amount of starts like these from Ryu, but we’ll also see a fair share of clunkers. We also may see him shake his head and walk off the mound next time out to not pitch again for the rest of the year. As of now, I love his future schedule of Phils + Padres and I’d jump all over those two starts. After that he heads to Coors so don’t get too attached to him.
Jacob Turner – 6.0 IP, 3 ER, 6 Hits, 0 BBs, 6 Ks. I feel like the parent that is just trying to relax at the pool but Jacob keeps yelling my way. Did you see that one?! Six Ks! That’s nice Turner. BUT DID YOU WEREN’T LOOKING! Turner was taking Strasburg’s spot in the rotation as Stephen welcomes the birth of his child, so it was nice seeing you Turner.
Phil Hughes – 6.0 IP, 2 ER, 6 Hits, 1 BBs, 2 Ks. 2:1 K per BB? You’re losing it Hughes. But only 2 ER! We know that’s a skill that can’t be repeated so why bother mentioning that?
Brett Anderson – 6.0 IP, 1 ER, 5 Hits, 6 BBs, 3 Ks. We streamed Anderson because we wanted a cheap win. We got a cheap win. Streamer Record 10.5-6-2.
Martin Perez – 6.0 IP, 3 ER, 6 Hits, 3 BBs, 3 Ks. He’s so boring and bleghy but this is technically a QS and put himself in a situation where a Win could have been had. That’s what you’re getting from Perez against weak teams.
Francisco Liriano – 5.1 IP, 2 ER, 5 Hits, 4 BBs, 2 Ks. If this was Liriano regressing to his worst, that’s a good thing. Be happy a 4 walk and 2 K night resulted in just 2 ER. Don’t be happy you had to wear a 1.80 WHIP without anything to show for it.
Matt Garza – 4.0 IP, 1 ER, 4 Hits, 3 BBs, 4 Ks. For the first and definitely not the last time this season, Garza is making owners feel like this.
Tyler Anderson – 5.2 IP, 4 ER, 6 Hits, 1 BBs, 5 Ks. We’re still a ways away from believing Anderson can be any sort of valuable like he was last year.
Jason Vargas – 5.0 IP, 3 ER, 7 Hits, 0 BBs, 5 Ks. So he’s still getting a strikeout per inning…? Weird, everything else looks to be regressing per usual. This was against the ChiSox. Ahhhh there it is.
Chris Archer – 6.2 IP, 5 ER, 6 Hits, 5 BBs, 5 Ks. Bleeegggghhh. The O’s aren’t this good Archer and five walks are everything that we hoped you were done with. Odd fact: Archer has had 5 Ks every other start thus far, like he wakes up and says “welp, guess I have to be mediocre today.”
Ubaldo Jimenez – 3.1 IP, 3 ER, 3 Hits, 5 BBs, 3 Ks. Yep, that’s Ubaldo alright.
Jhoulys Chacin – 6.0 IP, 7 ER, 8 Hits, 2 BBs, 6 Ks. Chacin is supposed to throw shutout ball every other start, so clearly this one wasn’t in the cards. Clearly.
Amir Garrett – 3.1 IP, 9 ER, 8 Hits, 4 BBs, 1 Ks. Annnnnd there it is. The day we knew would come when his questionable Fastball command burns him in a big way. Okay, 9 ER is a little bigger than I expected, but the 4 walks and 1 K seem a bit closer in line to the disappointment he was bound to bring. Does this mean that Garrett has zero value anymore? I wouldn’t say that and the his next three starts against the Cards/Giants/Giants makes me wonder if he’s worth streaming. But at least we can all toss out the idea that Garrett was going to be the waiver wire SP pickup of 2017.
Chad Kuhl – 1.2 IP, 9 ER, 8 Hits, 4 BBs, 1 Ks. Kuhl story, bro.
Today’s Streamer
Wei-Yin Chen vs. Philadelphia Phillies – I don’t want this one. I don’t believe in Chen to be a consistent starter, even against the Phils, but man there are no other options today. Maybe Jesse Hahn against the Angels? Whatever, these aren’t going against the streaming record.
Tomorrow’s Streamer
JC Ramirez vs. Oakland Athletics – On a day with essentially zero acceptable options, I’m going with the guy that has an exceptional heater and flashed good breaking stuff in the previous outing. Don’t love him, but I’ll go with the upside pick. Half point please.
Day After Tomorrow’s Streamer
Adam Conley vs. Philadelphia Phillies – Conley gets another easy opponent in the Phils and I prefer rolling with him over Bartolo Colon against the Mets.
Game of the Day
Clayton Kershaw vs. Ty Blach – There are a good amount of interesting games today, but I’ll give the nod to watching Blach return to the starting role for a hot moment against the better pitcher on the planet.
I’d point out with Vargas that it was one HR into the first row and 6 SINGLES. So regression, but not solid contact.
Love the site, thanks for all the insight! Instead of doing a win-loss of your streaming pick, which feels really arbitrary, could you show your season log of number of streaming starts, wins, quality starts, k’s, ERA, WHIP? That would be more helpful to the reader I think.
Thanks again!
Interesting idea, though I would think that there will certainly be some major clunkers in there that would skew the data as a whole.
In my head, there are two questions here: “How often does a streamer that Nick selects have a beneficial outing?” and “If I always stream by Nick’s suggestion, what does my end season line look like?”
To me, the more beneficial question is the first one, I’d imagine most people aren’t streaming every day and want to know if in general it will help their team or not.
I could be way off base here, but that’s my line of thinking.
All good thoughts. You are right that the first question is important and probably more useful; I guess I just don’t have a firm grasp on what qualifies as a win in the stream (fwiw, I think you do a great job of picking streams and have used them for the past couple years). Also, I think the clunkers should skew the results, because if we select that streamer and he tanks our ratios, that hurts more than just a “loss” in the stream. For instance, if I streamed Garrett last night, that would have hurt a ton more than streaming Jason Vargas. Maybe both pieces of data would be useful? A running win-loss and the year-to-date stats? It might also be useful to see what streaming every day would impact your ratios.
Thanks for the response!
Ramirez or Shoemaker as a stream tomorrow?
Conley, Hellickson, or Robbie Ray for Thursday?
Looks like Ramirez is going today instead of tomorrow…Thanks for that catch! Obviously I prefer Shoemaker.
Ray against the Padres, definitely.
Whoops, Ray’s unavailable. So – Conley or Hellickson for Wednesday? Have the roster space for both and it’s a QS league, so could snag both.
Hellickson over Conley. Both are startable.
Hey Nick,
Thanks for the continued awesome work on these roundups! Is there any way to search the content of articles (rather than just headlines) in the site search? For instance, if I search “Lester”, I get results where you used “Lester” in the article title (most recently in 2016). I’d love to be able to see all articles where Lester is mentioned in the actual article.
Thanks!
Hey Pat!
Thanks for the feedback! So I just tested the search and it looks like it first returns everything with Lester in the headline, then chronologically every time “Lester” has appeared inside an article.
Assuming you’d want to use this to find what I’ve said about Starters in past SP Roundups, we’re hoping to add an blurb archive on player pages this season. Would be an easy way to track my thoughts about players through the year!