Hisashi Iwakuma was only able to throw six innings despite only throwing 70 pitches. His day was finished earlier than expected because of a blister on his right middle finger, his throwing hand. The blister problem has been an issue since April 5 in Oakland. This has been an ongoing problem because he left the game early on April 12. The biggest change is the ground ball rate, last year it was 53 percent, but this year he’s only at 30 percent. However, his strikeout rate has increased three percentage points; his strikeout rate is 22.5 percent. I tend to avoid fly ball pitchers because they’re more susceptible to the home run and blow outings, but Iwakuma is a must start.
Tony Cingrani outpitched Jose Fernandez last night, but Cingrani had the luxury of playing with Major League caliber players. Cingrani’s box score of five innings, five hits, three walks, eight strikeouts and one earned run makes it sound like he was more dominating than he truly was. His changeup lacked good movement and depth. The command of the curveball/slider was loose; only about half of them were thrown near the strike zone. That said, there were one or two curveball’s that looked really good. Twice during the game runners were on 2nd and 3rd with one less outs with the 4th and 5th batting (Placido Polanco and Gregg Dobbs) and he was able to escape those innings without allowing a run. I have to imagine if he was facing any semblance of a quality lineup he would have given up three runs instead of one. Also, he was extremely inefficient as he was only to go five innings while throwing 102 pitches. So what’s Cingrani’s fantasy value? I’m sure he’s owned in every league that he’s available. In NFBC Leagues I bet he’ll go for around the same price as Jose Fernandez went for ($100-$400), which is to high for me. Todd Zola wrote a great article about how fantasy owners should deploy their FAAB. Basically he said you should try to spend as much of during the beginning of the season to get the most value. If Cingrani looked better I would be willing to bid $200, but I have doubts he’ll stay in the rotation and that he will be more effective than other free agent pitchers such as Chris Tillman and Felix Doubront.
Jose Fernandez looked mortal for the first time this year, giving up five earned runs, six hits, three walks in only four innings. For the first two innings he was dominant, striking out three and not allowing a ball out the infield. Starting in the 4th inning is when the wheels became to fall off; Reds hitters started swinging at the first pitch, which were all fastballs up in the strike zone. Basically he became predictable and when Major League notice a pitcher’s tendencies they’ll exploit them like they did last night.
Lastly, Justin Verlander is really really good before he fell victim to a couple of bloop hits.
