To start out today, I’m going to review some of the pitching performances of players I’ve mentioned from my team of note, whether good or bad. That way I’m being objective and not only sharing the positives that will make me look good or smart. I’m more in the business of getting it right and giving the best information and advice that I possibly can. Some of the performances and updates I’ll go over will be for Cade Horton, Ben Casparius, Matthew Liberatore, and Lucas Giolito. I’ll start with Cade Horton, since it’s not about a specific performance for him but an update on his likelihood to make his MLB debut with the Cubs in the next week or so. There have been some rumblings about a possible debut but no commitment from the Cubs. I obviously have a vested interest in this decision, but I also think it’s the perfect time for his debut. He’s in a rhythm right now and pitching well while showing improved command at triple A, and it’s as good a time as any to give him a shot. It looks like Chris Flexen is going to get the first start in place of Shota Imanage, who was put on the injured list with a hamstring strain,  but I remain optimistic he will debut. I believe the strategy could potentially be to avoid letting Horton debut in a tough spot, and that’s exactly what would happen with a tough road matchup with the Mets. I think the Cubs would prefer to debut him in what would have been Imanaga’s second start, which would come next week against a poor White Sox lineup at home. As long as he pitches well again in his upcoming outing at triple A, I think that would be a great plan to set him up for success in his MLB debut. 

For Ben Casparius, my plans to start him this week as a great win chance worked out, as he followed an opener against the Marlins on Monday and went 4 innings, giving up 5 hits, 1 earned run, 2 walks, with 5 strikeouts while earning the win for the Dodgers. That is definitely a productive outing when you include the win, and he improved to 4-0 this season. The WHIP here was a little higher than I’d like, as he allowed 7 baserunners in 4 innings for a 1.75 WHIP, but I’ll happily take the 13.5 points as a true positive given that it wasn’t guaranteed to work out well. He also accumulated 12 whiffs and got up to 70 pitches as he continued to stretch out to be a starter. He should be able to longer in his next outing and get to 85 pitches or so on Sunday in a tougher matchup, but he has swing and miss potential with his elite 15% swinging strike rate, so I have confidence in him.

Speaking of good outings, Liberatore was excellent on Tuesday night as he outpitched Paul Skenes and earned the win. Unfortunately for me I didn’t start him and get the benefits of those starts, but I’m happy to see him continuing to look like a breakout and be a reliable pitcher. In this game he went 7 innings, allowing 3 hits, 1 earned run, 3 walks, with 8 strikeouts. This was definitely his best, most complete start of the season, and he had all his pitches working in this one as well. That’s noteworthy, as he’s had to rely heavily on the slider. That’s his best pitch, but in a righty heavy batting lineup like the Pirates he had to execute his other pitches as well, and he came through in a big way. The fact the Pirates only had one left-handed hitter in the lineup makes his start that much more impressive, generating 17 whiffs on 99 pitches. He got 7/20 whiffs on the fastball, 4/10 on the cutter, 3/7 on the slider, 2/6 on the changeup, and a whiff on the one curveball he threw. He had all the pitches working, and while the 3 walks were a bit uncharacteristic for him, he still had a WHIP under 1. This also marks 6 starts out of 7 where Liberatore has pitched 6 innings or more, and the only start he hasn’t was one that was shortened by rain to 3 innings which hardly counts. At this point I see Liberatore as my 3rd best pitcher behind Woo and Nola, and has displayed consistency I definitely trust. So I’m starting him from now on, and his 67% roster rate on CBS is way too low at this point. He does line up for two starts next week, so I expect that number to continue to rise. He does face the Phillies on the road, but he’s come through even in tough matchups so far this season. Something else of note is that his velocity continues to increase on all of his pitches, averaging 95 on the fastball in this one and 91.5 on the cutter. His cutter was up the most, an increase of 1.7 mph compared to where he’s usually at. It was exactly the type of start you’d want to see from Liberatore, and I’m excited about this one as a legitimate breakout.

Unfortunately for Lucas Giolito, I’d honestly say for as good as Liberatore pitched, Giolito pitched just as bad without many positives to take away from this one. It resembled nothing of his first start, as his fastball velocity was way down in this one, and he couldn’t throw his changeup for strikes. When you consider that with the fact his breaking pitches have been bad, it’s easy to see why he got crushed. Even though he faced the Rangers who have struggled offensively, maybe the fact they hired a new hitting coach worked against Giolito as well. He had an ugly line in this start, pitching 3.2 innings and allowing 1o hits, 6 earned runs, 1 walk, with 2 strikeouts on 74 pitches. He only generated 6 whiffs total and his fastball averaged 91.6. He also got the loss and got -10 for my team, so that definitely didn’t work out. He has a 2nd start this week, so I’ll see how that goes but this was definitely cause for some concern. If the same things are going on in his next start it will probably be time to move on. If his velocity is going to be down with bad command as well it’s not going to be a recipe for success. So with all that said and in mind, I’m thinking I may drop him for Merrill Kelly or Ryan Weathers this weekend. Merrill Kelly isn’t an exciting option, but I do prefer his stability at this point and could use that on my team. He also happens to have two great pitching matchups next week in San Francisco and then face the Rockies at home in Arizona. As it is, he shouldn’t be available anyway with such matchups when you combine it with the fact he’s already owned in 85% of leagues. I see him as a worthy replacement for Seth Lugo anyways, as he’s basically a poor man’s version of the same pitcher with a good team context as well. You may be wondering what happened to Lugo, and I’ll discuss that below when I go through my trades. For Ryan Weathers, he’s a player that was looking like a breakout candidate as he was throwing harder at around 98 in the spring, but that all was forgotten when he suffered a forearm strain. He’s now on a rehab assignment so I’m keeping an eye on him. He does pitch for a bad team in the Marlins, but does pitch in a pitcher friendly home park which makes up for that. 

Now getting back to Lugo, I’ll mention both trades here and dissect them in-depth below. The first trade may seem like a lot, but a lot of times there are trades that feel like you’re overpaying, but when you break it down and are actually honest with yourself about your own players that’s not always reality. It’s normally better to just pay up and get the best player if you have the depth and can afford it. People often overvalue their own players, making them hard to trade with. What I mean is they view the player on their roster much higher than they’d ever view that player on someone else’s team. That’s also an advantage to being in more than one league when you know what it’s like to face your own players. It may seem small but using that to put everything in context can be helpful. In the first deal, I traded William Contreras, Trea Turner, Anthony Santander, and Sandy Alcantara for Mookie Betts and Adolis Garcia. I know it sounds like I gave up a ton of value, but looking at it realistically I don’t think I did. With how they had been performing, I was more glad to trade Turner, Santander, and Alcantara more than I was upset. Those were players I wanted to get rid of and was actively trying to trade. Santander has been really bad and doesn’t look good either, as he’s still batting under 0.200. Alcantara has been bad too, and you don’t really even need to do a deep dive to see this with either player. I think we all made the mistake of overvaluing Alcantara coming into the year, and that includes me. Like I’ve said many times before in my posts, just because you make a choice and it doesn’t work doesn’t mean you can’t pivot and use that to your advantage. I’d rather make the decision that’s best for my team and not be stuck in my ways or stubborn about it. I probably didn’t sell all those players at the full price I got them at, but I’d rather do this than be stuck with them all year trying to get their original value. Now that I look at Alcantara I question how reliable and consistent he actually is. He was awesome in 2022, but at this point it’s been 3 years and he hasn’t resembled that player since, even when he has pitched. There is a good chance that season will never be replicated again for Alcantara. He’s been bad enough that he’s a free agent in two of my leagues, and so is Santander. 

For Turner, he hits for next to no power anymore, so I actually thought going from Turner to Neto was an upgrade, and it has been so far. I even found out after the trade that following last season Turner’s manager told him not to worry about hitting for power anymore and just get on base. Which is fine, but I want more out of my shortstop than someone who can run but is only hitting singles and doesn’t record a ton of walks. Neto hits for power and speed and leads off, with 7 steals and 4 home runs already in just 17 games. Contreras was the hard one to lose as a true standout at the catcher position, but he’d been off to a slow start and I already wondered if he may take a step back just because of how good he was last year. It turns out he’s playing through a broken finger which seems to be affecting his hitting. 

On the other side, I even dropped Garcia after the trade because I didn’t want him. I just wanted Betts, whose dual eligibility at shortstop and outfield makes him extra valuable, and I love getting to have both Betts and Ramirez in my infield. It worked out so well that I don’t actually have to rely on Neto and can start him at utility by choice. It gives me an extra hitter, so when Tommy Edman went on the injured list I was able to shuffle my players around to cover that. Another thing is I love to do a trade like this where I can then go pick up 3 players to add to my roster. At least one of those players is bound to be useful, I added Casparius who has already helped more than Alcantara, and I have more pitching options. I feel good about Cade Horton, and Colin Rea as a streaming option. I tend to be the only one in the league willing to trade valuable pitching, but my philosophy is that I’ll just find more good ones and that I trust my own process. I then added JT Realmuto off the wire, so when I look at my offense and think that I swapped Turner, Santander, and Contreras for Betts, Neto, and Realmuto I feel really good about that swap. I also had benched Santander so he was no longer even useful for my team. In my other trade, I was offered Julio Rodriguez for Seth Lugo and Cody Bellinger and I had to take that. I had just acquired Lugo from the same person, but think about how this worked out overall. I buy low on Lugo, then he’s great for two starts, and the same person then overpays to get him back. The way I see it, I traded Shane McClanahan, who’s still hurt by the way with no timetable, and Cody Bellinger for his 2nd pick in the draft. Clearly I like Lugo but I’d never trade an elite player for him. I don’t point this out to be critical of other owners, it’s more that I’d like to see a clear process and plan and how the absence of one causes these mistakes. 

I have principals that I will make myself hold to because I know it’s best in the long run. The same person drafted Yordan Alvarez 4th overall, and I didn’t understand it. I used to be as big of an Alvarez fan as anyone, but he gets hurt every year and has chronic knee problems. Taking him over someone like Kyle Tucker didn’t make sense to me, and I actually even preferred to trade for Rodriguez over him. He happened to go on the injured list right after the trade, but he wasn’t even injured at the time. Bellinger is another example of someone I was simply wrong about in draft season, but I definitely got good enough value for him. Now that I have Tyler Soderstrom, I don’t need him. Santander and Bellinger were both players I no longer wanted to start, so I traded them. The underlying numbers for Bellinger aren’t good, and I mean for most of his career actually. If you take out his rookie year and MVP season he’s otherwise been an average hitter. That doesn’t disqualify those seasons, but he hasn’t been that player for 6 years now so it’s probably not coming back. It was another trade that allowed me to add another player so I felt it was an easy trade to accept. Now in hindsight, if I’m able to add Merrill Kelly ahead of this two start week the trade is essentially Seth Lugo and Cody Bellinger for Merrill Kelly and Julio Rodriguez. It also likely gives me the best trio of hitters in the league, or at least puts me in the conversation, and that’s important to me. I like to structure my teams this way, where I have the most complete offense with no holes but also have the top end talent, then I have enough reliable pitching that I’m able to build around it and find the hidden gems. I feel really good about my strategy and execution so far, and mastering my process and strategy for winning is what matters to me. I have Jose Ramirez, Mookie Betts, and Julio Rodriguez, and one trio it compares to is Bobby Witt Jr, Juan Soto, and Corey Seager. The other trio worth mentioning is Aaron Judge, Francisco Lindor, and Freddie Freeman. Admittedly, that one is pretty hard to top, but mine is a lot closer to being in that range than it was before these moves. I then really tried to use Rodriguez to get Fernando Tatis Jr, but I don’t think that’s happening. So I’m focused on figuring out my pitching at the moment. This is a good example that your teams get better if you are willing to take risks and make real trades where you give up players you want. Anyone can get burned by an injury and easily lose a trade, but I don’t really agree with not trading out of fear. Especially in a shallow league trading is so important. Now that this league has moved from 14 teams back to 10, I’ve had to adjust my process a bit just because having top hitters is even more important, and doing trades where you give up more players and get the best player is usually a good idea.