To tie this into my prior topic and discussion in my last post, I once again showed the importance I place in trading and how my enjoyment to take risks and get players I want. It’s something I never want to lose as part of my strategy since it’s a way to make my team better that it’d never be smart to eliminate. Even if I lose trades and am not guaranteed to always win, it’s something that would make everyone much better if they just got over it and took that risk. In my league everyone is terrified to ever trade their pitching and lose their depth and I just don’t agree with that form of thinking. I’m confident I’ll find more when I do trade it away, and it was no different this time as I traded Julio Rodriguez, Kris Bubic, and Aaron Nola for Fernando Tatis Jr. He’s a player I’ve wanted all year for his upside and it finally worked out here. Like I mentioned you can’t guarantee you win trades when injuries are possible and cause people to win trades by default. Meaning I mostly only do trades where I can get the best player and also give more players than I get back in the process. I love the opportunity to have room to now add two players as much as the trading itself. Getting a trade done should be viewed as an accomplishment, and there’s real skill in being able to come to an agreement. I think Rodriguez is severely overrated in a points league, and I even like Rodriguez as someone who traded for him in the first place and have had him before. The difference is I got Rodriguez without trading an elite player since it was Cody Bellinger, then flipped him for Tatis who is a truly elite player with a ceiling as high as almost any player. I wanted a player on par with Mookie Betts and Jose Ramirez to pair with them and was able to do exactly that. Bubic has been amazing for my team but was a clear sell high candidate, and for Aaron Nola it’s feeling like a lost season at the moment. It could be a mistake, but at this moment I don’t envy anyone having to roster Nola. His ERA is over 6 and he’s currently on the injured list. Bubic has an ERA under 2, and it’s almost impossible to keep that up. As the weather heats up, he will still be effective but is bound to regress back to a more realistic level, like a 3.5 ERA that’s right in line with his current xERA. I only think I lose the trade if all 3 players reach their best-case scenario, and I’d bet against that. I was also concerned with Rodriguez since last season he really didn’t have an elite season or numbers.

To revisit my discussion between Rhys Hoskins and Jordan Beck, I did start the wrong one in the end, as Beck never did have that breakout game this week. Fortunately it didn’t make much of a difference since I still won comfortably. Hoskins ended up with 23.5 points, and Beck with 10.5. I will take this though, as I’ve had things blow up in my face in a much worse way before. Last season I started someone over Brenton Doyle who ended up going on the injured list after my lineup locked and didn’t play at all while Doyle then proceeded to score 50 points on my bench. So since neither one really went off I can live with that pretty easily.

Lastly, I would like to focus on Cade Povich, a starting pitcher I was researching today as I looked for a starting pitcher I could add to replace some of what I gave up in the trade, I didn’t anticipate picking him up, but it became clear to me through my process he was the best option for my team, and I’m gonna walk you through that process. The first thing I noticed was his schedule on roster resource on fangraphs. When I’m looking for a pitcher to add and want some ideas, I start out by going through each team on roster resource and seeing the upcoming schedule for each team. After that I get on the CBS fantasy baseball app to look further into the future of their schedule, and through this process with Povich I found that his next 4 starts come against the Cardinals at home, then the Mariners in Seattle, then lines up for a two start week after those matchups where he faces the Tigers and Angels both in Baltimore. Based on that, Povich is set up for success going forward, and now I’ll talk about the recent results and production from Povich I noticed.  started looking at his game logs and noticing he had improved success in his two most recent starts, as his ERA was much better, and so was his strikeout rate. Looking a little further, as big of a sample size you can get for positive results the bigger deal that it is, and I found over his last 5 starts he had respectable results. I like breaking things down like this into splits because if you just look at his overall stats for the season you’d never see it, so it’s a chance to notice a trend before anyone catches on and before the stats would ever catch up with the production. For the season, Povich has a 4.86 ERA and 1.45 WHIP with 44 k’s in 46.1 innings. Those stats are bad, but they cover up the fact that in his last 5 starts Povich has an improved 3.86 ERA and 1.04 WHIP, with 26 k’s in 28 innings. He also has thrown over 100 pitches this year and the high 90’s a few times, so he’s been given a longer leash as well. All that adds up to a pitcher I’m interested in who should be productive in the next few weeks at least. I’ll have to monitor this situation and see if it keeps up. I hope that Povich continues to show signs of improvement. This doesn’t hint at a dominant pitcher, but definitely has the signs of another productive starter.