The Cheap Seats: How do you fix your fantasy baseball pitching staff?

I’ve worn many different hats in my time at Yahoo and we’ve produced different types of content. Articles and blogs, podcasts and digital shows, live chats – I think it’s time we try a fantasy baseball mailbag.

The Cheap Seats comes your way every Tuesday through the heart of the baseball season. Baseball and fantasy baseball questions go to the front of the line, but we can talk about all sports, life, music, food, travel, pets, movies and just about anything. Catch me @scott_pianowski on X/Twitterand there we go.

Big question. We’ve spent so much time talking about injured pitchers so far this season, but we also have to consider the other potential pain that comes with investing in pitching: Often they get knocked down, and that’s scary. Are they also secretly injured? Will it turn around?

The good news is you’ve followed a reliable framework for fantasy success: Fix the hit first, figure out the pitching throughout the year. Walks and strikeouts stabilize quickly for both hitters and pitchers, so my pitcher pickups would largely focus on early K/BB leaders, especially if there is a secondary reason that could explain their success. I’m also not afraid to take highly qualified relievers even if they don’t get saves right away; that’s Ron Shandler’s timeless advice, putting skills over roles.

The best I can tell you is that base hitting is always easy to trade, and the waiver wire is generally filled with more speculative pitching rather than useful hitting. While I know you’ll probably be tempted to dive into a repair job, I’d advise just being patient for another two to four weeks and then reassessing the situation.

If your team’s shape is the same at that point, you can certainly still trade for pitching, and at that point you’ll have a much clearer idea of ​​which pitchers to target.

Mason Miller is a useful symbol of today’s pitching environment. Miller’s highlights are almost too good to be true; his save on Sunday against the Nationals was the nastiest pitching clip I saw last week. But Miller also throws well over 100 miles per hour on so many pitches, and you’re not human if that doesn’t make you nervous.

I’m curious to see how the Athletics brings forward Miller. Do they give him another chance as a starter, knowing that a bigger workload would certainly help the team more (even with some efficiency gains), or do they take heart from the fact that he’s excelling in a role that could allow him stay healthier?

Miller’s save upside is limited to the crappy Oakland team, but wipeout innings are always welcome on our rosters. I can’t promise he’ll stay healthy, but he’s one of the top 12 fantasy baseball relievers on my clipboard as we stand right now. And when Miller goes to the mound, I immediately turn to his channel.

We expected the Reds to be a carnival, and so far so good. They rank fifth in runs, eighth in home runs and easily first in both steals and attempts. Must-see television. Elly plays a big role in that, with a .900 OPS, four home runs and six steals.

The stats under the hood of De La Cruz are about what you expect; he’s electric when he makes contact (bat ball sliders to the right), but still struggles to make contact and put the ball in play (plate discipline and contact sliders to the left).

We’re at Choose Your Own Adventure Time with De La Cruz. The league adapted to him last year and he was sub-Mendoza for the second half; There will be inevitable breakdowns here. But he’s part of a fun offense in a hitter-friendly park, and the Reds have everyone running like crazy. If I were to hire Elly right now, I would probably follow a simple rule for future transactions: If the offer presented isn’t a clear yes, just say no. If you want to move it for a premium, I suspect one of your rivals will come calling soon enough with a FOMO offer.

I’m happy to see that so many of our readers have added Cowser in the last seven to 10 days, a player with a high pedigree who always looked ready to steal time from Austin Hays. But cutting Bellinger and adding Cowser is too reactionary a move. Bellinger’s up-and-down career has been difficult to explain in recent seasons, but he still has too much upside and recent production history to consider putting him in any format, even very shallow leagues.

My friend Scott Jenstad had the right approach to this question: yes, you want to add Cowser; just drop someone other than Bellinger for this.

Spanning the entire world

I don’t know who my second favorite actor of all time is, but Philip Seymour Hoffman has always been number 1. Hoffman was fully capable of carrying a film as a leading actor (Capote the most obvious example), but my favorite Hoffman roles are probably the supporting efforts.

1. Lester enters Almost Famous. It’s a crime. Hoffman wasn’t nominated for the Academy for his perfect embodiment of Bangs, the erratic rock critic from the ’70s. Hoffman has four scenes and just under 10 minutes of screen time. Commit every second to memory; he is at the top of his game. Amazingly, Hoffman had the flu the entire time he took the photo.

2. Scotty J. in Boogie nights. Although Hoffman was grossly underestimated for his ability to play strong characters, he was undeniably brilliant at embracing roles that required humanity and shocking vulnerability. This is a perfect example of that.

3. Enter Sandy Lyle Polly came along. Hoffman’s hilarious role as the washed-up child star with no self-awareness is played perfectly; it validates your 90-minute investment in an otherwise forgettable film. I almost listed Hoffman’s starring role in the quirky film Love Liza for this last spot, but that is a very dark achievement; I wanted to end with something fun.

Another fun Hoffman role (albeit a very small part) is that he plays The Mattress Man in the overlooked role Punch-drunk love.

This could have been a separate article; maybe someday it will be. Hoffman’s oeuvre is a treasure. I’m just sad we won’t get any more of it; I’m still not over his death ten years ago (where does the time go?), a blow on Super Bowl Sunday.

You know how much I loved this question. I could go on and on about great covers; here are a few that first came to mind.

And then there are the timeless cover versions that are so enormous that it’s not widely understood that they weren’t originals to begin with.

If I continue with this list, my editors will put me on a timeout. See you next week, amigos. Keep those questions coming: scott_pianowski on Twitter/X.