I get quite a bit of e-mail from those asking for fantasy baseball advice. People want to know who to drop, who to pickup, and whether or not a certain proposed trade bodes well for them. Though I do not consider myself to be an expert, by any means, there are certain tips I usually give out, many of which are derived from this site.

One recent e-mail included the following question: “Should I trade Roy Oswalt? He’s got a 5.33 ERA and is giving up a ton of home runs.”

Though I initially scoffed at the idea of getting rid of arguably the most consistently good pitcher of the decade, it soon dawned on me that fantasy baseball still uses more conventional statistics. In an online world where BA, W-L, and ERA still run rampant his “dilemma” is more of, well, a dilemma. Still, though…

Oswalt has not posted an ERA+ under 125 since 2004 and has been a lock for 30+ starts, 210+ innings, and 150+ strikeouts. This year, though, he has an ERA+ of just 78, a WHIP of 1.49, and has already surrendered 11 home runs. In the four-year span prior to this season he averaged just 17 home runs.

The problem here can be solved by looking at his splits. Oswalt got off to a very rocky start but has definitely picked his game up of late. In his first three starts:

0-3, 9.00 ERA, 16 IP, 30 H, 16 ER, 2 BB, 12 K; Average Game Score = 29; Opponents hitting .400/.410/.720.

In his five starts following that:

3-0, 3.55 ERA, 33 IP, 28 H, 13 ER, 13 BB, 30 K; Average Game Score = 56; Opponents hitting .228/.307/.447.

He has definitely been more Roy-like lately but the home runs surrendered are a tad alarming. Also alarming is how his walks have increased and strikeouts have decreased from 2005 to 2007. To answer, no, unless you can get an absolutely tremendous offensive player to fill a desperately needed void, do not trade Roy Oswalt.

On the other hand, though, you might want to start convincing others in your league that he’s lost a step and you’ll “take him off of their hands.” Even if he is not exactly the same pitcher he was from 2002-2006 he is still a consistent and durable ace that any team, fantasy or professional, should be happy to have.

Finding a designated hitter is very easy. The skills required to be a successful DH aren’t rare, and there are an abundance of guys with offensive abilities and defensive problems that a team can generally count on getting quality production from the designated hitter spot. Unless, of course, that team is the Seattle Mariners, who simply can’t figure out how to find a guy who can hit and do nothing else. So far, in 2008, their DHs have combined to hit .208/.268/.308, a pathetic .575 OPS that translates into -0.71 WPA/LI. That’s brutal. For comparison, Arizona Diamondbacks pitchers are hitting .242/.292/.333 (thank you, Micah Owings).

The main culprit has been Jose Vidro, whose collapse was the easiest thing to see coming this side of a neon freight train. However, the Mariners haven’t gotten any improvement from switching to Jeff Clement a week ago, as he has struggled to adjust to major league pitching since coming up from the PCL. His problems ran so deep that the team used Willie Bloomquist to pinch hit for Clement in the 9th inning of last night’s game. Willie Bloomquist!

Greg Norton had 11 successful at-bats before he was discarded as a less useful part than Miguel Cairo, a decision so unfathomable that I don’t even know which wall to begin banging my head on.

The Mariners offense has been horrendous the last few weeks, and the lack of production from their DHs is one of the main reasons why. When you have a group of players whose entire value is derived from their offense and they’re getting outhit by another team’s starting pitchers, you’re in trouble. And the Mariners are certainly in trouble.

The Cincinnati Reds do not get enough credit for having a solid 2007 draft. Almost one year later, the Reds continue to reap the rewards of that draft, after the club skillfully combined prep and college picks together to creating an intriguing mix for the future.

Catcher Devin Mesoraco, drafted out of a Pennsylvania high school, was the club’s highest pick at 15th overall. He was a late riser as the draft approached and was not considered a first round pick when the high school season began in 2007. He has a nice combination of skills but he adjusted to pro ball slowly, not surprisingly for a 19 year old, and hit .219/.310/.270 in the Rookie League in 2007. He began 2008 in Extended Spring Training but has just been promoted to full season ball in the Midwest League, so it will be interesting to see how he adjusts.

Todd Frazier was the 34th overall out of Rutgers University and has been on the prospect radar since he was a kid. He also has two brothers who have played pro ball. Frazier is currently at shortstop but many feel he will have to move to third base as he climbs the ladder towards a major league career. He had a nice debut in 2007 and hit .319/.405/.538 over two levels. The Reds were cautious with him in 2008 and started him out at Dayton, where he ended last season, and he hit .321/.402/.598. The right-handed batter beat up on southpaws to the tune of .414/.485/.724. He was just promoted to High-A ball.

Right-handed pitcher Scott Carroll, who was drafted 104th overall out of Missouri State University, has been solid but not flashy. After a nice performance in the Pioneer League last season, Carroll has again been good, but not overwhelming, in the Midwest League. He has a 2.97 ERA in six starts, but he has struck out only 14 batters in 30.1 innings of work. He has done a respectable job of keeping the ball in the yard and has allowed only one homer. If he can miss a few more bats, he could be an interesting middle-of-the-rotation option.

Right-hander Kyle Lotzkar (British Columbia high school, 53rd overall), infielder Neftali Soto (Puerto Rico, 109th overall) and catcher Jordan Wideman (Ontario high school, 349th overall) are some other interesting prospects to keep an eye out for when the short season leagues begin play shortly after the June Amateur Draft.

Following a disastrous 0-6 start that saw him allow 56 baserunners in 28.2 innings, the Giants demoted Barry Zito to the bullpen. How bad was his start to the season? His average game score, which measures the in-depth quality of a start, comes in at 34; with game scores, 50 is the starting point for quality. He struck out just 11 batters while walking 15 and surrendering four home runs. Though his FIP of 5.81 suggested a 7.53 ERA may have been too harsh, 5.81 is not going to help a manager sleep at night.

Prior to a game against the Phillies, cameras spotted Zito getting advice from the venerable Jamie Moyer. I guess since Zito is already pitching like a 70-year old lefty he might as well learn how to be effective as one. Or maybe they were talking about Moyer’s favorite episode of Dharma and Greg.

Either way, Zito’s demotion did not last long as he made no relief appearances and was given the ball to start last night. Perhaps the demotion served its purpose as a wakeup call or one of those trips to the disabled list with a phantom injury.

As the title of this post suggests, though, Zito actually pitched pretty well. Generally a fastball, curveball, changeup pitcher, Zito had been struggling with velocity; if his fastball lacked speed there would not be enough of a separation between that and the changeup. Additionally, if hitters knew he had a weak fastball, he could not utilize it to keep them off guard; therefore, his curveball would look like hanging junk instead of the devastating out pitch it used to be.

In his previous start, April 27th against the Reds, Zito got clocked with a fastball ranging from 80-82 mph. In fact, some of his fastballs were so slow that the classification algorithm mistook them for changeups. Last night, however, against the Pirates, the Pitch F/X data says that the vast majority of Zito’s heaters came in the 84-86 mph range.

He threw a first pitch strike to just 7 of the 18 batters that did not put it in play on the first pitch. Despite this, he only walked two batters, and recorded a season high five strikeouts. Of these strikeouts, he did not follow a pattern in using a specific out-pitch but he did use his curveball as a major device. If he didn’t strike a batter out with the curve he would use it to set up the following pitch. All five of these strikeouts came from either a curveball or a sequence set up by the curveball.

His changeup was quite effective last night, however two poor ones resulted in the only two runs he surrendered; essentially, these hanging changeups handed him a seventh loss. Throwing it exclusively to righties, here is a location chart:

The circled pitches are the two hits that cost him: a single and a home run in the fourth inning given up to Jason Bay and Xavier Nady respectively. The home run came on the pitch with the larger circle.

Here is a look at Zito’s movement last night:

Though a few of his curveballs lacked efficient movement the larger majority moved quite a bit. Very interesting is his fastball movement. Last night it averaged around five horizontal inches and twelve vertical inches. Here is his movement from the 4/27 start:

Here his fastball averaged about three horizontal inches and eleven vertical inches. Not only has his fastball lacked velocity but apparently it has also lacked sufficient movement to garner some positive results. His changeup was much more consistent last night as well.

Hopefully, for the sake of Giants fans, Zito can build on this in his next start. While he is still on pace to at least tie the all-time losses record (29), this particular loss must have been pretty uplifting for his confidence.

Dear American League Middle Infielders,

You suck.

Truly,

The Year 2008.

Seriously, what is up with the junior circuit’s middle infielders this year? It’s early, yes, and there’s a couple talented players who will do better as the year wears on, but this is one ugly start to the season. Brian Roberts is the only second baseman in the AL with a positive WPA/LI, and he’s coming in at a whopping 0.07. Way to set the bar high there, Roberts. Every other second baseman is running a negative WPA/LI, and as a group, they’re running a -5.39 WPA/LI. That’s terrible. Robinson Cano is the main culprit, as he’s been the worst hitter in baseball so far this year, but he’s just one among a group of slackers that make him feel welcome.

The story is slightly better when you look at shortstop. Over there, two guys have positive WPA/LI marks through the start of the season. The problem – they both play for Texas. Michael Young and Ramon Vazquez are #1 and #2 on the list among players with at least 50 plate appearances, and they both get the benefit of playing their home games in a very friendly offensive environment. Once we get past the Rangers duo, though, it’s right back to the lousiness, with Derek Jeter being a little bit less terrible than everyone else and Tony Pena Jr giving Cano a run for his waste-of-money.

Everyone knows the bar for offensive production from premium defensive positions is lower than at a corner spot, but right now, the bar is just sitting on the ground. The all-star game is two months away – does anyone want to play like they belong there? Please?

Today, Brad Penny played a game of “anything you can do I can do better” with Jon Lieber, seeing his four homers allowed in one inning and raising him 10 earned runs allowed in a single start. His ERA jumped from 3.19 to 4.79 with this single performance, as the Mets just throttled the Dodgers all-star starter. It’s not everyday that you see a team allow a starter to stay in long enough to give up double digit earned runs, so using Baseball Reference’s Play Index, I decided to see just how rare it is for a pitcher to take this much of a beating on a single day.

Turns out, it’s more common than I would have guessed. Justin Germano and Mark Redman both pulled it off earlier this year (they apparently don’t care about pitchers’ psyches in the NL West), and it’s actually happened 136 times in the last 20 years. The worst of those drubbings belonged to Mike Oquist back in 1998 – he gave up 14 runs (tying the major league record for runs allowed in a single game) in just five innings of work for the A’s on August 3rd of that year. If only Oquist was some sort of household pet, Tony LaRussa would have taken better care of him on that day. This joke would have worked much better if this had happened in 1988, as I originally read it, so that LaRussa would have actually been the A’s manager at that time. Whoops!

The list of guys who have had this happen to them is more distinguished than you might guess, actually. Last year, the double digit performance was put up by Jeremy Bonderman, James Shields, and Jon Garland, and Ben Sheets, Roy Halladay, and Randy Johnson have all had it happen to them at one point in their careers.

I’m sure Brad Penny won’t take solace in this knowledge, but at least he’s not the only good pitcher to take a beating for his club.

Drew Stubbs has always been a talented ballplayer. He was a third round pick of the Houston Astros out of high school (He’s a Texas native) but chose to attend the University of Texas. He was then selected in the first round (eighth overall), and signed, by the Cincinnati Reds in 2006.

The 6-5, 190 pound outfielder looks like a ballplayer; he oozes tools and has excellent makeup. But there have always been questions about how well he would adjust to pro ball with a long swing and a history of difficulties with breaking balls.

Those concerns appeared justified after Stubbs, now 23, made his debut in the Pioneer Rookie League and hit only .252/.368/.400, which should be considered below average for a collegiate player in a league comprised mostly of high schoolers and raw Latin players. He also struck out 64 times in 210 at-bats.

The next season in 2007, Stubbs started out slowly in the Midwest League while many other top 2006 college picks were already in High-A ball. He was striking out at an alarming rate and many said those Ks would be the downfall of his professional career. Then the Dayton management, tired of seeing the players strikeout too much, forced everyone to choke up on the bat for a week.

Stubbs was so successful with that approach that he kept doing it, even after the choking-up enforcement was lifted. In the first year and a half of his career, Stubbs struck out 190 times in 161 games. In his last 24 games of 2007, Stubbs struck out only 16 times.

This season, though, the strikeouts are back with 34 in 31 games (115 at-bats), but he is hitting .296/.388/.470. Overall in 2007, he struck out 28.6 percent of the time. In 2008, he’s at 29.2 percent. If Stubbs can maintain his triple-slash rates while striking out at the same pace, he can still be an effective everyday ballplayer. However, it’s hard to believe he can continue to do so once he hits the better pitching that comes at the Double-A and Triple-A levels, let alone the majors.

Jon Lieber did something today that not a whole lot of pitchers can claim to have done. He gave up 4 home runs in a single inning. He started off the fateful second inning with back-to-back home runs by Adam Dunn and Joey Votto, but eventually settled in and got Edwin Encarnacion to pop-out.

Lieber surely breathed a sigh of relief, only to have Paul Bako hit a home run on the very next pitch. Three batters later Jerry Hairston Jr. hit the final home run of the inning, tying what I believe is a record for most home runs allowed by one pitcher in a single inning.

The last pitcher to do it was Chase Wright of the Yankees, who gave up four home runs in a row on April 22nd last season. Luckily for Wright, it was a nationally televised game against the Red Sox.

Primarily due to the MLB Extra Innings package and my sheer love of the sport I am a true baseball junkie. I don’t care if it’s the generic Red Sox/Tigers matchup on ESPN or the local feed of a Reds/Nationals game; watching various games helps me connect better with players who would otherwise be nothing more than names on a page. Something that comes with the territory of watching so much baseball is listening to different sets of broadcasters and their terminology or beliefs.

Though many differ in opinion over issues pertaining to clutch hitting, or Barry Bonds, one common weapon in their broadcasting arsenal involves some form of the following phrase: “Well, (insert pitcher) needs to just shut them down this inning to keep the momentum going.”

These assertions generally occur after their team has scored to either a) take the lead, b)tie the game, or c) make a significant effort to come back. Regardless of which takes place, the idea is that momentum has begun its shift into their dugout and, by shutting down the opponent in the following half-inning and preventing them from tacking on more runs, it can sustain its new position.

Hearing about these magical shutdown innings so much made me research which pitchers are truly the best at ensuring a change in momentum is not a fluke. Essentially, I’m defining these Shutdown Innings (SHIP) as any half-inning following one in which the team scores, to bring themselves within a maximum of four runs (ahead or below).

Trailing by nine runs and scoring two would not cause the following half-inning to qualify as a potential shutdown inning; trailing by nine runs and scoring five or six would. On a similar token, leading by one run and then scoring five would not lead to a SHIP; however, leading by one and then scoring two or three would.

Just looking at the National League, for now, I took every pitcher with 41+ innings (the top 25) and scanned their individual game logs to come up with the following top ten:

1) Todd Wellemeyer, 9-9, 1.000
2) Braden Looper, 10-11, .909
3) Scott Olsen, 7-8, .875
4) Ryan Dempster, 11-13, .846
5) Tim Lincecum, 10-12, .833
6) Jake Peavy, 9-11, .818
7) Mark Hendrickson, 13-16, .813
8) Jair Jurrjens, 12-15, .800
9) Dan Haren, 12-15, .800
10) Aaron Cook, 11-14, .786

Wellemeyer and Looper have provided 19 SHIP out of a possible 20. Of these 25 players, the worst three were:

23) Roy Oswalt, 6-11, .545
24) Adam Wainwright, 5-10, .500
25) Brett Myers, 8-16, .500

The next step of this, which I’ll get into later in the week, deals with just how much the failed SHIP attempts (trying really hard to resist a dock or anchor or sea metaphor) effected the teams; some players may be handed a four-run lead and give up just one run whereas others will be given a four-run lead and give up four runs. Shutdown Innings do not tell us which pitchers are better but rather who sustains the momentum discussed by broadcasters most often.

If I asked you who the best setup men in the American League were, I’d imagine you’d probably rattle off the list of usual names: Joba Chamberlain, Rafael Betancourt, Scot Shields, and Pat Neshek to name a few. It might take you a while before you got to Santiago Casilla, but 2008 has been his coming out party, and he’s quickly establishing himself as a potential relief ace.

Always a guy who could get swings and misses, he’s blowing hitters away with increasing frequency, but more importantly, he’s now commanding his power fastball/slider combination, walking just three of the 62 batters he’s faced this year. With that combination of command and swing-and-miss stuff, he is yet to give up a run in 2008, and his dominance in the 7th and 8th innings is one of the reason the A’s are hanging with the Angels in the A.L. West race so far.

Relievers are fickle by nature, but Casilla’s always had the arm, and he’s showing now that he’s able to pound the strike zone with dominating stuff. If Casilla continues to throw strikes and not get himself in trouble, the A’s will have found themselves another legitimate high leverage weapon to help them win close games.