Ladd McConkey – NFL Draft Sleeper Alert
Jay Felicio
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Further, nothing under the hood strikes me as problematic for Crochet, his velocity as down slightly but not incredibly slow, he got away from the four-seamer and went with two much cutter. Generally he was making some adjustments as guys who are starting for the first time will have to do, and they really, really, did not work. He’ll make more, and he’ll get to do so against a lineup that strikes out seventh most in MLB against LHPs, so he should make the most of it.
With top options like Joe Ryan against the White Sox available (and on the other side of this matchup, no less), in combination with Crochet coming off of a dud, I would expect the ownership to be low and the GPP scores to be high. If I’m right, load up. If others are wise to the same analysis and Crochet ownership starts to balloon, we’ll have to re-evaluate, but from a pure baseball perspective, I love the matchup. Whether we deploy him heavily remains to be seen, but I will probably trend toward that direction absent 20%-plus rostership levels.
Schmidt has been quietly excellent to start the season, pushing his K% up to a previously unseen 26% while also reducing his hard-hit rate to only 18% so far in the 2024 campaign. You aren’t getting any discounts here, and of course, I would expect elevated ownership given that he is facing the A’s, which seems to increase the interest in anyone and everyone with that matchup.
Like Crochet, what Schmidt has going against him with regard to his inflated price should also be working for him with regard to ownership. With plenty of massive hitting spots to pay up for and an obvious SP1 in Joe Ryan as mentioned, I suspect most folks will opt for value with their SP2 and the value just isn’t all that good, so going with either Schmidt or Crochet seems like it will have additional leverage due to roster construction.
If you do want to take your chances with the value that’s available (whether pairing with chalk Ryan or with one of the two less popular guys mentioned above), you could do much worse than Marsh. While it has been a turbulent start to the season for Marsh, his two best games have come against the Oriole behemoth, and so it’s clear he has the talent. The Blue Jays also do not have the most threatening lineup, but you’ll want to temper strikeout expectations a bit as the Blue Jays have a K% of less than 20%, a tough pill for Marsh who himself is not a major strikeout arm. This will be a matchup about managing contact and hopefully mixing in a few strikeouts as you go and taking advantage of the salary savings, as opposed to massive upside in the matchup itself.
I included a lot of exclamation points in that header, but my editor decided that was a bit overkill, so here is where I say I wanted a lot of exclamation points there. If you were to ask me “Hey Jake, what pitching matchup and overall game context can you come up with that would generate the highest run total you could imagine” I would probably say something like every pitcher on both teams got hurt, so position players had to pitch for both teams and also the game was played on the literal moon.
If you were to ask me what a slightly more realistic version of that scenario would be, it would probably be something along the lines of a knuckleballer against a soft-tossing lefty who really should be pitching in AAA, and lo and behold, that is exactly what we have here in Matt Waldron vs. Ty Blach. To unpack that a little bit, let’s get a quick reminder about the physics of a knuckleball. First, and I probably don’t need to say this, but it is not thrown with your knuckles. You can’t grip a ball with your knuckles, you see. Nay, it is gripped with your fingernails and the lack of spin is what is supposed to make it unpredictable. The fingernail release is only one part of the unpredictability though, you also need the weather and humidity to cooperate. Mainly, you want lots of wind and lots of humidity as a pitcher throwing a knuckleball, and you want the opposite as a hitter.
In Coors Field, where we sometimes get strong winds but are not likely to Wednesday, and we will almost certainly get low humidity given the altitude. A knuckleball without wind and at low altitude makes already elite hitting conditions even better. And it’s not as though Waldron can just decide to throw 4-seamers because his knuckler isn’t working, he’s topping out at 90 MPH this season. Allowing Matt Waldron to throw in a Coors game is honestly malpractice and should be investigated. I’m not sure as of this writing what the Rockies implied team total will be, but whatever it is, bet the over.
As for Blach, I don’t need 3 paragraphs. He just stinks.
Overall, even though rostership will be through the roof, this is a scenario where I’ll likely be eating chalk and looking for as much correlation as possible, as well as trying to pick less obvious hitters within both lineups to help mitigate the inflated rostership.
We’re due for a Braves explosion, and the Marlins are turning to a not-stretched-out (although ballooned) Sixto Sanchez in all likelihood as an opener, although it is unclear as of this writing how deep they expect him to go. The bullpen arms that follow will likely not be particularly high quality, as not many in the Marlins bullpen are high quality to begin with and I would expect this one to be a lost cause sooner than later. Is this the game that finally wakes up Matt Olson and Ronald Acuña Jr.? Very well could be, and they should have reduced rostership due to the obvious Coors stack spot.
