Buy Low/Sell High June 21st (Clement/Branyan)

Buy Low: Jeff Clement

Key Stats:

Pitcher:	BABIP	K/BB	PTO%	qERA	ERA Dif	P/IP
Hitter:	BABIP	P/PA	BB/SO	GB/FB	HR/FB
2008	0.178	4.05	0.80	1.222	0.00%
2007	0.286	3.58	#DIV/0!	0.500	25.00%
2006	#N/A	#N/A	#N/A	#N/A	#N/A

Jeff basically got screwed over his first go round up here this year. He’s been told that he will get more playing time behind the plate his time up, moving Johjima over to DH and 1B time (especially if the Mariners release Sexson). He’s a run producer behind the plate in similar molds to Posada (think 20HR/85-90RBI). In this weird year, he could be an excellent sleeper for the remainder of the year and for all deep keeper leagues.

Clement, Jeff C SEA for Molina, Yadier C STL

Clement, Jeff C SEA for Rogers, Kenny SP DET

Clement, Jeff C SEA for Lowe, Derek SP LA

Sell High: Russell Branyan

Key Stats: 

Pitcher:	BABIP	K/BB	PTO%	qERA	ERA Dif	P/IP
Hitter:	BABIP	P/PA	BB/SO	GB/FB	HR/FB
2008	0.180	3.93	3.50	0.154	38.46%
2007	0.152	3.86	2.25	0.683	24.39%
2006	0.175	4.09	2.75	0.682	27.27%

Branyan has had a decent run, but two numbers tell me there’s no possible way he’s going to continue this. First, he is basically hitting all FB (specifically 26 FB to just 4 groundballs). He’s also hitting 38% of his FB for HR. These are so out of whack from his career norms that there is only one place to go and that is down. It’s not like his BABIP is out of whack from his career norms either.

Branyan, Russell 3B MIL and Brocail, Doug for RP HOUOswalt, Roy SP HOU and Wigginton, Ty 3B HOU

Branyan, Russell 3B MIL and Kuo, Hong-Chih SP LA for Cain, Matt SP SF and Delgado, Carlos 1B NYM

Branyan, Russell 3B MIL and Maine, John SP NYM for Saunders, Joe SP ANA and Young, Chris B. CF ARI

Injury News

We have some good (depending on how you look at it) news today.

1. Schilling will have season ending and likely career ending surgery to repair his shoulder. He is reported to have both rotator cuff and labrum/biceps tendon injuries. Given his age and his declining skill set already, the likely extensive surgery almost gaurentees his career is over. Too bad he can't bribe someone anyways for a Cy-Young vote (at least $1 mil is on the line for him)
2. Mike Gonzalez is returning from the DL and will slot into the closers role for now. When Soriano comes back there is a chance that he returns to the closers role and Gonzalez will move to the 7th but my gut feeling says he'll stay in the closers role. If you need saves, here's you chance to get some quick vulture saves for now.
3. Francisco Liriano will likely stay down in the minors for a "few more" good starts in order to make sure his head is in the right spot. Speculation is that it is only due to monetary reasons from the front office. Fantasy owners everywhere (including me) need him to come up sooner rather than later and help my d**n team.
4. Dr. Andrews confirmed that Hafner does not need surgery, which is good news. The bad news is that no-one knows (including the medical staff) how long he will continue to be out. What the hell are you going to do? You're just going to have to keep him on your bench/injury slot and hope he comes back strong. In the meantime, you're going to have to try and patch the production with guys on hot streaks (like Thames from a week ago or J.D. Drew for the past month)
5. As I believed, Tulowitzki returned to the team and is expected to play on Friday. Put him in your lineup right away and be thankful it wasn't longer.
   

Carlos Zambrano PFX analysis

As promised, here is the PFX analysis of Zambrano. One limitation I had was that this most recent start was in Tampa and this is the only time he's pitched there this year. Therefore some of the values might be not be the most accurate, but it is the best that we currently have so on we go.


To start with, looking at his release point, it appears that the whole game at Tampa Bay he was release the ball lower. This can both occur due to and cause an injury to the shoulder and elbow. Instead of the shoulder transferring the energy like a whip, some of the structures begins to fail as the energy is not transferred optimally for that person. In the next series looking at the release points across starts, it also appears that he wavers horizontally in his release point as well. As the release point comes closer to 0, his mechanics change. This can occur because he is dropping his shoulder, extending his elbow too late (again causing excess stress on the shoulder), releasing the ball later in the motion, or because of a purposeful mechanical change. I don't think it would have been due to a planned mechanics change or else we would have heard about it earlier.



Will Carroll of Baseball Prospectus have shown that control often goes first when an injury occurs. Looking at his pitch location chart, I don't really see any discernible difference between his home starts and his start against Tampa Bay.



It looks like he's consistent with his previous starts. Sure there are some that appears a little more inside, than others but overall they are spread apart evenly as expected. Normally the first sign of injury is loss of command but I think this is only in cases where the condition doesn't happen all at once, where it occurs over time. This didn't happen to Zambrano. He described it happening all at once, so the pitch location chart isn't very relevant to this discussion.

So looking at his velocity of his pitch types across the starts, it looks like there might be a slight dropoff in his fastball velocity (about 1 MPH). Again, this is ever so slight but because it is the average there are several better ones and several ones that are even slower that that. Looking at a table of his averages, you can see that almost all of his movement pitches were thrown at a less velocity in his last start than others.

pitch	CH	FA	FC	SI	SL
Start
1	76.9	84.1	81.3	----------	75.7
2	78.0	82.9	----------	82.8	74.6
3	78.4	83.6	82.1	82.5	75.9
4	77.1	84.5	82.7	81.5	78.1
5	76.9	82.8	82.3	79.9	75.8
6	77.6	83.5	82.9	----------	76.7
7	78.3	83.4	81.8	----------	74.2
8	79.3	83.9	82.9	82.8	75.9
9	78.4	83.7	82.2	83.2	74.7
10	77.0	83.2	77.3	82.8	74.3
Avg.	77.9	83.6	81.9	82.4	75.6

Looking at his movement, across his starts. One interesting thing comes up.
In his last start, there appears to be more movement horizontally than in his other starts. It almost appears that everything is shifted to the left. Unfortunately, I cannot definitely say this is because of an injury or if this is a minute difference in the PFX setup.

Summary, evaluating PFX data across starts to evaluate a pitchers health is at it's infancy. Like others have noted, I'd love to be able to synchronize, the PFX data and video in order to get a true accurate read on a pitchers' mechanics. That doesn't mean that people shouldn't analyze what they have available to them though, this is the foundation of true understanding. As time goes on, we'll have better tools available to us.

Zambrano appears to have slightly changed his delivery in his last start. His velocity also suffered which can provide more information. Based on his symptoms and how he described it, I still believe there will be a labral tear and/or at least a partial rotator cuff tear. Unfortunately that means a lengthy stay on the DL and a possibility of ruining your chances of a fantasy crown unless you take action immediately.

UPDATE: This is why they do these kinds of tests. Despite describing symptoms that mimic a more severe problem, Zambrano was diagnosed with a "minor rotator cuff strain, but no structural damage" according to team officials. The plan though is still unclear which still leaves me wondering a little bit. I guess this is good news but in terms of returning to pitch, noone is sure right now. It all depends on how long his symptoms last. These things are notorious for being minor but resulting in a DL stay of longer than the minimum. Everything needs to be perfect or else he could do major damage during pitching. Hopefully more updates will follow relatively soon, so everyone can fully plan their lineups.

Buy Low/Sell High June 19th (Halladay, Parra)

Buy Low: Roy Halladay

Key Stats:

Pitcher:	BABIP	K/BB	PTO%	qERA	ERA Dif	P/IP
Hitter:	BABIP	P/PA	BB/SO	GB/FB	HR/FB
2008	0.288	6.620	32.9%	3.09	0.000	13.97
2007	0.304	2.90	28.65%	4.08	-0.368	14.78
2006	0.279	3.88	30.35%	3.76	-0.571	13.84

I know most people are going to be like great, he’s telling me to buy an elite pitcher. There’s real good reason though. A lot of people only look at the W-L record and the number of K’s. just look at his peripherals though and you will understand why. The K/BB ratio is well above elite status and he’s throwing an incredibly low amount of pitches per inning. Of great appeal though is that he’s doing all of this with a normal BABIP.

Halladay, Roy SP TOR for McLouth, Nate CF PIT

Halladay, Roy SP TOR for Sherrill, George RP BAL

Halladay, Roy SP TOR for Thames, Marcus LF DET

Sell High: Manny Parra

Key Stats: 

Pitcher:	BABIP	K/BB	PTO%	qERA	ERA Dif	P/IP
Hitter:	BABIP	P/PA	BB/SO	GB/FB	HR/FB
2008	0.329	1.690	26.3%	4.72	-0.497	17.59
2007	0.338	2.17	32.40%	4.35	-0.595	15.36
2006	#N/A	#N/A	#N/A	#N/A	#N/A	#N/A

Nothing about this looks good to me. Low k/bb and PTO. High P/IP and qERA. Be thankful that someone will pay for his wins.

Parra, Manny SP MIL for Votto, Joey 1B CIN

Parra, Manny SP MIL for Harang, Aaron SP CIN

Parra, Manny SP MIL and Theriot, Ryan SS CHC for Victorino, Shane CF PHI

Carlos Zambrano Injury Evaluation

I didn't want to comment on this until I had some idea of what was going on and now that I know what kind of MRI they're doing I can tell you.

Carlos Zambrano had his MRI pushed back to Friday because they are now going to be doing an arthrogram (basically a fancy name for an MRI where they inject dye inside the shoulder joint) They usually don't like to do this because it is an invasive procedure and that always carries at least some risk.

This can only mean one thing. They are worried about damage inside the shoulder in the form of either a tear to the labrum, rotator cuff, or joint capsule. Given his symptoms I wouldn't be surprised to see either a rotator cuff tear or a labral tear.

Honestly, I would try to shore up your pitching staff with other pitchers if possible because I expect he will be on the shelf for a little while. I will be doing a PFX article on him by tomorrow.

Buy Low/Sell High June 19th (Jo-Jo Reyes/Masterson)

Buy Low: Jo-Jo Reyes

Key Stats:

Pitcher:	BABIP	K/BB	PTO%	qERA	ERA Dif	P/IP
Hitter:	BABIP	P/PA	BB/SO	GB/FB	HR/FB
2008	0.315	2.610	30.8%	3.72	0.698	15.49
2007	0.295	0.90	23.77%	6.24	-0.019	17.10
2006	#N/A	#N/A	#N/A	#N/A	#N/A	#N/A

Jo-Jo could be just what the doctor ordered for your fantasy team. He’s now up to 50 something IP so we have a fairly decent sample size to work with. All of his peripherals look good and the 2 that I like the most is the K/BB and the qERA combination. He’s striking out a lot of people and he’s also getting outs fairly easily. Atlanta needs him in the rotation so I don’t see him going anywhere anytime soon. He could be had for a minimum price since his name isn’t that well known yet.

Reyes, Jo-Jo SP ATL for Bergmann, Jason SP WAS

Reyes, Jo-Jo SP ATL for Kouzmanoff, Kevin 3B SD

Reyes, Jo-Jo SP ATL for Weathers, Casey P COL

Sell High: Justin Masterson

Key Stats: 

Pitcher:	BABIP	K/BB	PTO%	qERA	ERA Dif	P/IP
Hitter:	BABIP	P/PA	BB/SO	GB/FB	HR/FB
2008	0.173	1.800	31.7%	4.26	-1.361	14.94
2007	#N/A	#N/A	#N/A	#N/A	#N/A	#N/A
2006	#N/A	#N/A	#N/A	#N/A	#N/A	#N/A

As much as I hate to say this as a Sox fan, you need to see Masterson now, and I mean right now, since his value is at it’s highest. Only two of the 6 peripherals above are in the good zone, everything else points to a collapse soon. Find a Sox fan and trade him high while you can.

Masterson, Justin SP BOS and Navarro, Dioner C TB for Shields, James SP TB

Masterson, Justin SP BOS for Rivera, Mariano RP NYY

Masterson, Justin SP BOS and Miller, Andrew SP FLA and Zimmerman, Ryan 3B WAS for Beckett, Josh SP BOS