Brandon Maurer has become an extremely effective ground ball machine his last three starts. During said time frame he’s generated a 49 percent ground ball rate as well as 1.89 ERA, 1.00 WHIP and 17.3 percent strikeout rate. These starts didn’t come against lollipop teams, but instead the Rangers twice and the Angels. I’m a believer again. Since his ERA for the season is 5.61, you can get him for $1 in NFBC Leagues.

Carlos Peguero hit a home run in his first game in his first game since being called up from Triple-A. It could be an understatement to say the Mariners are in disarray based on their latest player evaluation decisions…sorry Brendan Ryan. In the last two years, in the minors and majors, he has 42 home runs in 792 plate appearances. If you’re looking for cheap power with a .220-240 batting average then Peguero is someone you should target if he gets full time playing time. With Michael Saunders on the DL I believe he gets everyday at-bats, but with Eric Wedge as the manager I wouldn’t be surprised if the continue to have the corpse of Raul Ibaenz playing the outfield.

Garrett Richards has really good stuff; his fastball and cutter sat at 95 mph and maxed out at 97 mph. Richards is a reliever masquerading as starter. His biggest problem is the lack of command of his secondary pitches, which is primarily the slider. Without command of the slider there’s no velocity separation in the cutter and fastball, which makes those pitches easier to hit. Speaking of the fastball, if he misses up in the zone it becomes flat and more hittable.

In bursts James McDonald looked really good and it’s no surprise because he finally started throwing his slider. Actually, he started throwing his slider in his previous start and had great results. The curveball was extremely sharp at times and worked really well with the fastball, but he lost command randomly again. McDonald is the type of player who will go 7 innings of shutout ball one start then go 4 innings and allow 7 earned runs.