Probable Starters for MLB 7-21-13! Harvey vs Lee

So what happened here?  I'm allergic to posting in July or something?  I'll tell you what happened, I had my family visiting for the week of the 4th of July and didn't really have the boring downtime to write up the daily pitching matchups of the days.  Then the family left and I felt weird jumping back into it as if nothing happened, and now I'm sitting here wondering what went wrong after that?  I guess it was just an All-Star break.  Not much to write about there, except perhaps a recap, in my own opinion, of the first half of the season.  But I didn't do that either.  Now I'm here, back at the same spot before I had a week or two of posts that were not even that bad for once.  Oh well, let's just jump back into it.

Today there are many pitching match ups that you should be aware of, and some are better than others, as usual.  That's why I highlight one here and call it the Safety Squeeze Pitching Matchup of the Day ™

First off, a screen grab of those match ups from around the league.  (also I think I'll finally admit that matchup is two words starting now.)

For me, I have to choose Cliff Lee against Matt Harvey.  Matt Harvey had a bit of a coming out moment getting to start the All-Star game on Tuesday, which is nice for him.  I mean, he mostly got the nod because he's the home town hero right now, as much as the Mets have as far as heros go.  He's been solid, as many predicted.  Cliff Lee is absolutely no slouch, in fact, I'd say he's at least top five in the world.  Too bad he plays for the Phillies.  And too bad Harver pitches for the Mets, too.  Because I really want to like these guys, but man, I just can't do it too loudly because of the hats they wear.  I pick this one because I really don't know who's going to win this game.  I think the Mets are a better team than the Phillies (seriously) but Cliff Lee is too good to lose to the Mets.  What a quandary.  

Other notable match ups include Doug Fister against "Big Game" James Shields.  Did you know Big Game James gave himself that nickname?  YOU CAN'T DO THAT JIMMY.  It doesn't work that way.  Other people have to call you a name before it becomes a nickname that can be repeated,  

Enjoy baseball today.  

Starters for 6/23/13 Around the MLB

I'd like to do this daily, but I doubt I will.  I will do this as often as I can, because I think it's interesting, at least.

It's Sunday, and you know what that means!  That means every team in all of Baseball is in action today.  Looking at the schedule, I noticed that there is only four games on the schedule tomorrow, so set your fantasy rosters accordingly.  But lets not get ahead of ourselves here, let's focus on today's games.

Here's the starting pitchers for today, as of this writing:

 As you can see here, there's a few interesting match ups today, but mostly I see a lot of mismatches.  Samardzija vs Jordan Lyles, perhaps?  But then you stop and realize it's the Astros vs the Cubs, so that's not interesting.  The one that pops out to me is Mat Latos and the Reds against the (still) first place Diamondbacks and Randal Delgado.  Former Atlanta Brave Delgado was part of the Justin Upton trade.  I've been to three Braves games in my life.  The starting pitchers for those Braves games were John Smoltz, Tim Hudson...and Randal Delgado.  You can imagine which one the Braves lost, right?  Yeah, but anyway, he's made two appearances and one start for the Diamondbacks this season.  That one start was this past Tuesday evening, where gave up eight hits and two runs while striking out six over seven innings against the suddenly resurgent(?!) Miami Marlins.  By all accounts, a solid outing.  He was given a no-decision but the DBacks won on a Paul Goldschmidt walk-off home run.  Delgado was a top prospect in the Braves organization before sputtering out in his chance in the majors, and ultimately dealt to Arizona along with a number of other prospects and my beloved Martin Prado for Justin Upton, a trade that at this point has been won by Atlanta, I think.  But Delgado has an upside.  At first, it seemed to be a trade of Prado for Upton, but who knows?  Maybe Delgado will thrive in Arizona and somewhere down the line, we'll be asking ourselves "They traded him for HIM?!?"  I guess a lot of that future began last Tuesday, and continues today against the Reds and their highly touted offense, led by my fantasy hero, Joey Votto.  

(no one cares about my or your fantasy team...remember that in the future.)

Other pitching highlight today is the next start from the electric Matt Harvey.  It's against the Phillies, so you never know how that will go.  

Highly touted pitching prospect TBD (awful parents for naming their child that!) gets the start for Baltimore

I'm very interested to see what Matt Cain does today against the Marlins.  His starts have all kinds of inconsistent numbers lately.  We'll have to see which Matt Cain shows up today.  He has a 7.22 ERA in day games, but I don't know how many day games he's pitched.  I know he got lit up by St. Louis in a day game, and I'm sure that's probably throwing that number off.  Anyway, We shall see. 

Joe Blanton will go for his 11th loss today.  Cole Hammels got his on Friday night.  At least Hammels has more than one win, however.  Ouch.

Adam Wainwright pitches tonight. Not a good pitching match up though, so it don't get featured here.  It just gets mentioned at the end.  

So enjoy the games today and mostly, enjoy the pitching.