Fantasy Baseball: Should you be worried about Shane Bieber?
Dalton Del Don takes a quick-hitter approach at running down Tuesday's fantasy baseball action.
Pitching, hitting and everything in between — what we learned from Tuesday
• Despite taking a no-hitter into the sixth inning, Tuesday was another worrisome start for Shane Bieber, whose velocity remained way down. He’s been plenty effective anyway with a 0.70 WHIP but realize both of his starts have come against offenses that rank in the bottom-five in wRC+.
Bieber can remain a solid pitcher working with lesser velocity, but he’s highly unlikely to be worth his ADP without some mph returning. Bieber insisted he felt healthier than ever this spring, but this is a real cause for concern given his shoulder woes last season.
• Matt Brash impressed during his MLB debut when he made a strong White Sox offense that entered with an MLB-low 12.0 K percentage look silly. The exciting rookie is still available in nearly 50% of Yahoo leagues.
• There were 100 home runs hit this season before the Royals had just their second on Tuesday (Andrew Benintendi hit the team's first on Monday), thanks to Salvador Perez (who hit two on the night; Michael A. Taylor also hit one).
• Opposing starters Andrew Heaney and Chris Archer had strong debuts for their new teams, combining for 8.1 innings of no earned runs with an 8:0 K:BB ratio in the Dodgers/Twins game. Both should benefit from their new situations and have extremely intriguing underlying stats, so they are worth adding in deeper fantasy leagues.
• Cody Bellinger is batting .143 and still searching for his first extra-base hit, but at least he stole two bases Tuesday night. He’s one away from matching last year’s SB total, but Bellinger continues to look completely lost at the plate. Hopefully, he’ll continue to try to compensate by running more.
• Bobby Dalbec is batting .143/.294/.357 with a 41.2 K%. Meanwhile, Triston Casas just hit a baseball that may not have landed yet. It’s obviously been a tiny sample, but Boston’s first base situation remains well worth monitoring.
• Imagine not welcoming robot umps. Today is going to look comically dated in the not-so-distant future.
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• Seiya Suzuki swatted two more homers Tuesday and sports a 1.696 OPS to start his MLB career. Suzuki somehow has more home runs (three) than swings and misses (two) while learning a new league (and culture). Not bad.
• Lou Trivino blew a save in the 10th inning Tuesday and took the loss. Those in super-deep leagues desperate for saves can stash A.J. Puk, with whom the A’s have decided to try to take the Josh Hader path.
• Zack Wheeler made his season debut after a delay thanks to shoulder issues and was effective, but he’ll remain someone to monitor closely moving forward. Wheeler’s average fastball velocity was 2.2 mph lower than last season.
• Luis Robert is on pace to finish the year batting .375 with 41 homers, 203 runs scored and 162 stolen bases.
• They all count the same, but both Ozzie Albies and Joc Pederson homered off position players Tuesday, while Travis d’Arnaud somehow survived being drilled by a 52-mph fastball from Dee Strange-Gordon.
• While Yu Darvish was tagged for a whopping nine earned runs over just 1.2 innings Tuesday night in San Francisco, Alex Cobb shined during his Giants debut, fanning 10 batters over five innings (becoming the rare starter to go deep enough into a game to record a win this season).
Cobb was a late ADP riser thanks in part to reports of increased velocity this spring, and he carried that over into Tuesday’s start. Cobb and other velocity risers look like the biggest early winners (in a very long season).
