Aaron Crow got the save last night, but Greg Holland and Kelvin Herrera were both unavailable. Holland is still the closer, but Herrera is the next pitcher in line for the job.
Roy Halladay’s fantasy owners who were hoping for a bounce back start with a good matchup against the Mets were disappointed as he had another disaster outing last night. In short bursts he looked better than his first start, but he wasn’t able to throw his secondary pitches for strikes. After the 3rd inning he was clearly laboring. He reminded me of a high school freshman giving his first presentation about how Holden Caulfield was nothing more than a whiny kid who thought the world revolved around him in Mr. Bisson’s English Class. I didn’t buy Halladay in the preseason and I’m not buying now. If I were in a 12-team NFBC league I would drop him and find a better option.
Clay Buchholz had another impressive box score yesterday, going seven innings striking out eight and giving up zero runs. I watched the game last night and he wasn’t as dominant as the box score suggests. He missed up in the zone a lot and there were at least three fly balls that were caught at the warning track. Buchholz has a history of having several great starts in a row before imploding. During the past two seasons he’s made 43 starts and in 21 of those starts he had a game ERA 4.39 or higher. That’s 49% of his starts! When you start him you’re playing with fire because at any time he could put up a four innings, seven earned runs and 12 hits outing.
After his first bad start to begin the year I confidently started Jeremy Hellickson this week despite the poor matchup. Hellickson didn’t pitch as poorly as the box score would indicate. The first run he allowed came on an error Sam Fuld made in the outfield. The home runs he allowed were a function of missing up in the zone with fastballs. His next starts are @ Boston, Oakland, Yankees, and @ Kansas City – all pretty good matchups. I’m not worried at all about Hellickson.
After Ervin Santana’s first start I wrote I was extremely down about the decrease in his fastball velocity. Well, yesterday the velocity was up, way up. His fastball velocity averaged 93 mph with a max velocity of 96 mph. Not only did his velocity increase, he had great command of the strike zone with his secondary pitches. Compare and contrast the pitch location of his pitches in the first start against the second start. This is a great time to buy low as he could be ready to return to his pre-2012 levels.
