DFS PLAYBOOK PRO – An exciting offering from the Alarm is 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
HOLLAND OUT FOR 2015 and 2016?
Royals’ manager Ned Yost confirmed the worst fears, that Greg Holland has a “significant” tear in his UCL and that almost surely means that Tommy John surgery is on the horizon. Holland’s 2015 season is over. If he does indeed need the surgery, he will be fully examined next week, his 2016 season could be completely lost. Sometimes relievers make it back before the generally accepted time frame of about 10-12 months, but if he has the surgery in October, and makes it back in 11 months, we would still be looking at merely a handful of outings very late in ’16. Basically, if he has the surgery he’s done, in terms of fantasy value, for 2015. He may not throw a pitch that matters in 2016.
Here are Holland’s ERA and WHIP marks from 2013-2015. It’s been clear for a long while that his arm wasn’t right.
2013: 1.21 ERA, 0.87 WHIP
2014: 1.44 ERA, 0.91 WHIP
2015: 3.88 ERA, 1.46 WHIP
How his strikeout and walk rates.
2013: 13.84 K/9, 2.42 BB/9
2014: 12.99 K/9, 2.89 BB/9
2015: 9.87 K/9, 5.24 BB/9
And then the velocity news…
His average fastball in the month of September was 90.7 mph. His average fastball in 2015, before September, was 93.8. His career mark on the heater is 95.5.
He just wasn’t right in 2015. In fact, according to Royals’ trainer Nick Kenney, Holland new his ligament was damaged in August of last season. Here are some tweets from Andy McCullough.
The Royals asked Greg Holland, on multiple occasions this year, to get his elbow checked out. Holland always said no, until last month.
In explaining why Greg Holland continued to pitch with damaged UCL, trainer Nick Kenney mentioned Masahiro Tanaka, who is doing the same.
Kenney said the trainers informed Holland last August his ligament was damaged. Everyone knew the score. He wanted to pitch.
Full marks to Holland for being a badass. Don’t know how good I feel about the Royals letting Holland pitch when they knew his arm was hurt though…
As for what the team does the rest of the way and into next season, it seems certain they will just turn the 9th over to the best reliever in baseball since the start of last season – Wade Davis. The righty, under contract for $8 million (club option) in 2016 and then a $10 million option in 2017 ($2.5 million buyout). Davis has been astounding the last two years, and I don’t use that word lightly. The numbers (minimum 125 innings pitched).
1st in baseball – 7.70 base runners per nine innings
1st in baseball – 0.83 WHIP
1st in baseball – 1.00 ERA
4th in baseball – 12.01 K/9
Check those numbers again. Over the course of 135.2 innings Davis has a 1.00 ERA, 0.83 WHIP, 181 strikeouts, 51 holds and 16 saves. Not many have pitched better than that over a two year span – ever.
TWO RED SOX DONE FOR THE YEAR
Hanley Ramirez is done for the season as his shoulder just isn’t right as the team has decided to shut him down after 401 rather blah at-bats his first season in Beantown. HanRam had 19 
homers and at times displayed solid power, but he was beat up all year and just couldn’t maintain any type of consistent stroke from week to week. His average tumbled too, down to .249, which is pretty surprising given that the man is a .296 career batter who was taking his hacks at Fenway, a great place to take your hacks. That .257 BABIP really stands, only once in the previous nine seasons had the mark been under .290 (and only twice under .323), but that clearly doesn’t explain all his struggles. He stopped walking – his walk rate was half his career level – and oddly he hit 50 percent of his batted balls into the dirt (well above his 45 percent career mark). That’s likely the result of dragging the bat through the zone a bit cause of his shoulder woes.
Ramirez will be 32 next year and coming off 3-straight seasons in which he has failed to appear in 130 games. He’s also hit 32 big flies the past two seasons (his career best is 33 homers in a season). Questions abound.
He will apparently add first base to his ledger next season as the plan is for him to give up playing the outfield after just one season, so at least he will have dual position eligibility again.
Pablo Sandoval missed a 4th straight game Thursday and it turns out he’s dealing with pneumonia. It’s unclear if he will play again this season so the title to this section might not be accurate, but if you’re the Red Sox why wouldn’t you shut him down?
Sandoval hit 25 homers with 90 RBIs his first full season in the bigs back in 2009. He also happened to hit .330 that year. Toss in his .345 mark as a rookie in 2008 and the guy was batting .333 through 194 big league games. He dipped to .268 in 2010 before returning to hit .315 with 23 homers and 70 RBIs in just 117 games for the Giants. In 2012 he was limited to 108 games as he suffered a hamate bone injury for the second season in a row. Since then, he’s never gotten back to previous levels. From 2012-15 Pablo has hit .271 with a .325 OBP and .410 SLG. The league average player in that time is .257/.321/.402. That’s right, he’s basically been an average player with the bat in his hands (when it’s not the playoffs). At this point, given his on the field woes and his inability to reign in his offseason eating habits, I don’t know if I will be able to recommend drafting Sandoval in 2016, even if you’re in a 15 team league.
HOW GOOD IS ERASMO?
I’ll simply put it. Since getting blasted in his first two starts this season Erasmo Ramirez has a 2.89 ERA over nearly 160 innings. Read that again. There are only four men in the AL who can better that mark at the moment: David Price (2.34), Dallas Keuchel (2.51), Sonny Gray (2.72) and Scott Kazmir (2.73). During those 25 starts his WHIP is 1.00. There isn’t an AL arm that has a better mark than that (Dallas Keuchel leads the way at 1.02).
NOT GREAT, BUT BETTER THAN YOU THINK
Even Longoria is batting .272, one point better than his career norm. He has 20 homers, 71 RBIs and 68 runs scored. Those numbers are well below expectations. Still, there is this. Longo is just the fourth third baseman in major league history to have 20 homers in seven of the players first eight seasons. The others: Eddie Mathews (eight), Chipper Jones (seven) and Scott Rolen (seven). Longoria will never be the star we once hoped, but he’s mighty solid.
Ray Flowers can be heard Monday through Thursday at 8 PM EDT and Friday at 9 PM EDT on SiriusXM Fantasy Sports Radio (Sirius 210, XM 87). You can also hear Ray Sunday nights at 9 PM on the channel talking fantasy sports. Follow Ray’s work at Fantasy Alarm and on Twitter (@baseballguys).