Starters and What to Watch For, 6-29-13 MLB Preview

I hope you guys managed to figure out who was starting all the games in the MLB the past two days without me.  Somehow, I know most of you struggled to figure out who would be the best matchups for each day, but honesly, I have company coming this weekend, so I had to spend a lot of time deep cleaning the apartment.  Also, I find it hard to sit down and type when my wife is home, and she took the last two days off work, so I was busy.  Is that okay with you?  It better be...

Here's today's starters.

As you can see, a full slate on a Saturday, per usual.  The trick is looking at these wonderful matchups and figuring out which ones are the ones to watch.  I've spotted a few, but I've not gone through all the trouble to figure out which ones are the most interesting besides the obvious choices...

So, the Safety Squeeze Pitching Matchup of the Day ™ ™is...

Cliff Lee and Hyun-Jin Ryu...wow way to branch out, Blogger.  Yeah, just take two guys who were already featured here this past week and rehash that shit.  Well, let me tell you, it's the best matchup.  The Dodgers got housed at home last night by these Phillies, but today is a new day.  The only reason that Dodger Stadium didn't empty out faster than **insert pop culture reference about substance abuse here** is because there was a fireworks show after the game.  Or, as Vin Scully would have had you believe if you were listening to his broadcast last night, to witness one more at bat of Yasiel Puig.  Ha, no Vin, you're the best, but they wanted to see the fireworks they already paid for.  Should be a good one.  

Another matchup that caught my eye is Chris Archer and the Rays against the Tigers and Justin Verlander.  Verlander's stats aren't that far out of line from what he's done throughout his career except his BABIP.  I expect Verlander to turn that around, as BABIP is a determination of luck, and his BABIP is elevated.  Once that BABIP evens out, expect Verlander to appear to be the guy he used to be, which he technically already is.  He's just been unlucky. Plus, it's not like the Tigers have the greatest defense.  I imagine a lot of the line drives that are being hit off him would be caught if the defense behind him was better.  

Okay, that's all.  Go watch the Tigers Rays game then the Phillies Dodgers game late, and you'll be a happy baseball fan of you make these choices.  

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.