DFS PLAYBOOK PRO – An exciting new offering from the Alarm is here! It’s the DFS Playbook Pro. I will be doing a daily breakdown of the hitters –Hitting Coach – while Howard Bender looks into the Pitchers (Pitching Coach). You can find the link to the Hitting and Pitching articles under the DFS Playbook pro tab at the top right of the screen.
OTHER LINKS TO BOOKMARK
EDUARDO RODRIGUEZ – THE RED SOX NEW HOPE?
Clay Buchholz 4.33 ERA, 1.29 WHIP
Rick Porcello 5.37 ERA, 1.35 WHIP
Wade Miley 4.47 ERA, 1.31 WHIP
Joe Kelly 6.24 ERA, 1.45 WHIP
Justin Masterson 6.37 ERA, 1.67 WHIP
The Red Sox Starting rotation has an ERA of 5.02, the worst in the AL, while their WHIP is 1.36. An average starting pitcher in baseball this season has a 4.09 ERA and 1.30 WHIP. The Red Sox starting rotation is pitiful and could certainly use a jolt. Is Eduardo Rodriguez the man to fix things for the Sox?
Eduardo Rodriguez is a 22 year old lefty who stands 6’2” and weighs 200 lbs. Most sources have him as the #2 lefty prospect in the Sox minor leagues behind Henry Owens but it’s not like he’s a slouch as he was ranked the 59th best prospect in 2015 according to Baseball America, 65th by Baseball Prospectus and 89th by MLB.com.
Dude had a great start to his big league career with 7.2 shutout innings against the Rangers. “The best start of my life,” Rodriguez said. Will he remain up for now? Seems that he has to, doesn’t it? “There’s no decision at this point whether he make his next start with us. I certainly would hope he would,” manager John Farrell said.
Rodriguez is looked at as a # 3/4 big league starter when he’s fully developed (likely a #4). He’s got a strong build, a rather smooth delivery that would seem to be repeatable and he throws a solid 92-94 mph with his heater. His fastball can flatten out and lack movement at times though and sometimes he leaves the ball up in the zone where it can be hit hard. There’s also the fact that his off-speed stuff isn’t what most would call impressive, so on the nights when he struggles with control, or the fastball does lose some movement, he’s nothing other than an average type of arm (read that again). Despite how good he looked last night his secondary offerings aren’t crisp, he can elevate his fastball (in a bad way), and on the nights his fastball isn’t popping he can struggle to get outs.
Let us not forget that he has but 48.1 innings above Double-A in the minors and that a groin injury limited him to just 120 innings last season, a season after he threw 145. There’s likely a pitch and innings count here so even if he does manage to stick with the Sox pitching deep into September, without some rotation tinkering over the next few months, is far from certain. Finally, for his career, he owns solid but not dominating minor league numbers over 101 games which include a 7.8 K/9, 2.73 K/BB and 8.1 hits per nine (he does do an excellent job limiting the homers – 0.4 per nine).
Add Rodriguez in all AL-only leagues. I’m fine with that. I can even see taking a chance on him if you’re in a mixed league and your staff is injured or just not getting it done. At the same time this guy is far from certain to be someone who will make 15-20 starts the rest of the way. Yes, the Red Sox have a need. Yes, Rodriguez looked great in his first outing. Those are positives. The negatives, if you reread the above paragraphs, are also evident. I would hesitatingly add Rodriguez in a 12 team league and certainly wouldn’t drop a solid arm to do so.
NOTE: The Sox announced that Rodriguez will remain in the rotation for the time being, with his next outing scheduled for Wednesday at Fenway against Minnesota. The Sox will stay with a six-man rotation for one more turn through. "After that, we've got plenty of time to evaluate, because our goal is to get back to a full complement of 13 position players,'' said manager John Farrell.
CARLOS CARRASCO IS JUST FINE
Carlos Carrasco is 6-4 with a 4.24 ERA and 1.19 WHIP. Folks are disappointed with that. Why? Because as we’ve seen with so many others, expectations 
were simply too high coming off the season that Carrasco had in 2015. I warned about those expectations in his Player Profile. At the same time, I have to admit that there is an awful lot to like here, and by that I mean I’m rather impressed. I still worry about the fact that in a decade of pithing he’s only thrown 180-innings one time, but the skills he’s tossing out there right now impress. Point by point.
- Carrasco had a 9.40 K/9 mark last season. This year the mark is up to 10.36. His swinging strike rate is down from 13.4 to 12.0 percent but it’s still a mightily impressive number.
- Last season he walked 1.95 batters per nine innings. This season the mark is 2.04. It’s the same as last year.
- Last year he had an elite 4.83 mark in the K/BB ratio. This year it’s even better at 5.08.
- Last year Carrasco had a 52.8 percent ground ball rate. He owns a career 50.8 percent mark. It’s down a bit this year at 48.3 percent, but that’s well within the realm of normal.
- Last year his xFIP was 2.66. This year the mark is 2.67.
There really isn’t that much different last year to this year. A little bit in the opposite direction for a few things, but overall he’s not that far off from last year. That means he’s someone to hold, or try to buy low on. There’s improvement coming.
WHO IS PHIL HUGHES?
Last year Phil Hughes went 16-10 last season with a 3.52 ERA and 1.13 WHIP, not to mention an 11.63 K/BB ratio that set an all-time major league record. Previous to that Hughes was just a guy who had a couple of nice seasons, but in total really did little to stand out. In fact, here are some quotes from his preseason Player Profile where I note some concerns.
(1) Can merely throwing more fastballs and cutters make this much of a difference? If it was that easy...
(2) I simply can't explain how a guy who had walked 2.82 batters per nine for seven years suddenly walks 0.69 per nine. Pitch style change or not, that's not a rate he will be able to sustain. Bank on that. The issue is does his new pitching repertoire allow him to post a mark of 1.50, 2.00 or does he revert back to an even higher number?
(3) Can he maintain a 7.98 K/9 mark? Not only is that above his career mark that was 7.56 before '14, but it's also a rate he last saw back in 2009.
(4) Can his new approach, and new ballpark, literally lead to him being able to cut his homer rate in half and sustain that?
(5) Will he be able to maintain career best marks in grounders and fly balls, even as he allows more line drive than ever before?
Some thoughts.
- He’s throwing his fastball even more this year at 70 percent. In 2014 he had a .285/.299/.411 slash line on the pitch. The batting average this year is .286 and the OBP .293, exactly the same as last year. However, the SLG has gone through the roof to .555 this season. The Isolated Power mark (SLG-AVG) has doubled from .126 to .269. The pitch is getting crushed when he makes a mistake.
- Shockingly his walk rate has barely gone up. It’s 0.84 per nine. He’s walked 22 batters in his last 42 starts. That’s simply flabbergasting.
- His K/9 rate has caved, and this is a huge issue. After 3-straight years over 7.45 per nine the number is all the way down at 5.71 per nine. I would expect the number to come back up, but losing more than two batters off his 7.98 mark from last season is extremely concerning.
- What do you know… the homers are back. Shocking. OK, not so much. Hughes allowed 16 homers last season and he’s already allowed 12 this season. Remember, in 2012-13 his HR/9 mark was over 1.50 making his current 1.67 mark way more in link with his career rather than the 0.69 mark he posted last year.
- Gulp. Hughes has a 24.4 percent line drive mark right now, even worse than last year (23.2). His GB/FB ratio this year is down a bit from 0.91 to 0.82 as well.
Honestly, I can’t say I’m at all surprised he is 4-4 with a 4.59 ERA and 1.25 WHIP. Are you?
ANYONE PAYING ATTENTION TO ME?
Ryan Vogelsong moved to 4-2 Wednesday with a victory over the Brewers. The effort improved his ERA to 4.24 and his WHIP to 1.35. Those are well below average numbers as you might know. So why am I bothering mentioning him? No it’s not because he’s a Giant, its because he’s hit his stride the last month. Check out his May numbers: 4-0, 1.14 ERA and a 0.95 WHIP. That dominance comes on the heels of a hideous April in which it seemed like his career might be over (9.31 ERA, 2.02 WHIP). Which guy is Vogelsong? Neither. Honestly, he’s about the guy we’ve seen overall. That means he’s blahtastic in mixed leagues. You can’t go against Voggy right now, he is rolling so start away, but realize his overall production is pretty much where it was last season and where it will be moving forward (most likely).
Ray Flowers can be heard Monday through Friday at 7 PM EDT on SiriusXM Fantasy Sports Radio (Sirius 210, XM 87). You can also hear Ray Sunday nights at 7 PM on the channel talking fantasy sports. Follow Ray’s work at Fantasy Alarm and on Twitter (@baseballguys).