I logged on to a wonderful website last night. I think you may have heard of it before. It’s called twitter.com. Wonderful. Anyway, so I logged on to this website, and people were having fights about #HarveyDay and Mookie Betts and how some baseball players get too much love and hype in the Twitterverse. Baseball Twitter really is the best Twitter. I think I need to start a #MortonDay following for my boy, Ground Chuck. I saw he was called that and I sent a text to my mother, who is somehow a huge Pirates fan, and so now I’m pretty sure she’s going to send me a text every five days or so saying “Happy Ground Chuck Day!” I’m not complaining, I’m just saying. Chuck’s line was pretty strong last night, with 7.1 IP, 3 H, 3 BB, 6 K and no earned runs. That’s what I’m talking about! He gets the White Sox at home, so that means bat White Sox, plus no DH, plus no Cell. You might want to keep a spot on your roster warm for the next #GroundChuckDay. Now, on to tomorrow’s streaming pitchers!
Streaming Pitchers: 6/12/2015
Jeff Locke LHP PIT (vs. PHI)
Another day, another Pirate starter at home, and another chance to pick on the terrible, horrible, no good Phillies offense. Lather, rinse, repeat. I’ve already talked about Jeff’s strong suits before, but in case you don’t remember, let’s do a quick refresher. He’s improved his strikeout rate from 6.10 K/9 to 7.11 K/9, and his groundball rate remains above 50%. This season’s walk rate of 3.63 is right around his career rate of 3.73. He has an inflated ERA, but that seems to be due to bad luck in the BABIP and LOB% as well as the HR/FB rate. His 4.25 FIP and 4.03 xFIP show that he’s a better pitcher than the 5.37 ERA suggests. But he allowed four runs off of nine base runners against an okay Atlanta offense at Turner Field. Perhaps pitching in the familiar confines of PNC Park will help him against this subpar Phillies team, who only hit a 76 wRC+ on the road. I like Jeff in this one.
Alex Colome RHP TB (vs. CWS)
Just like with Jeff, I’ve been over Alex here before. He had fantastic looking stuff in his first few starts, with 7.03 K/9, 1.11 BB/9, and an unlucky 16.0% HR/FB rate that was sure to come down and bring that 4.81 ERA down to the 3.48 xFIP, especially pitching at home for Tampa. Well, in his last three starts, he’s flipped the script on me, posting 5.19 K/9 and 4.15 BB/9 and keeping that 16% HR/FB rate, having a bad 4.15 ERA looking worse with a 4.80 xFIP. So why am I suggesting him? Well, in those last three starts, he’s had a 9.5% swinging strike rate that suggests he might have been unlucky with the small strikeout rate. If he can exchange a few of those walks for strikeouts, he’ll still be a decent guy to use for streaming opportunities. He gets a solid opportunity here, as the White Sox have been miserable outside of the Cell, with an 84 wRC+ on the road and an 88 wRC+ against righties.
Good luck and happy streaming!
