Stream Of The Day 8/16/12

South Carolina- The dog days of summer are dragging right along and some fantasy teams could use an extra punch to improve their playoff standing. Whether it be a roto league, where it makes all the sense in the world to add a pitcher and hope to grab wins and K's to add to your yearly total, or you're a Matchup guy like me and you're looking to get over the weekly hump. Every day we will add a pitcher available in the majority of fantasy baseball leagues.* Be it a strong matchup, a favorable venue or a unique scenario that I'll describe, you need to pick up the guy featured here and start him, pretty simple folks. At the closure of every article we will show the results weekly and yearly to show how we're helping both our roto and matchup readers.

First a word on yesterdays pick. Mike Leake, My God. let me preface this by saying, even I couldn't have predicted that. 9 IP, 1 ER, just 4 Hits allowed and 0 walks and 4 K's. I knew the Mets were impatient, but not a single walk?!? Unbelievable. Whats more unbelievable Blanton produced less swings and misses than innings pitched with 6 to 9 respectively. Just great defense, fantastic pitching economy and enough run support to gut punch the already reeling Mets. I hope you guys scooped up the man who was available in 89% of Yahoo Leagues, I know I did and I ain't mad at it. Enough of previous glory, onto the SOTD for August 16th.

JOE BLANTON

Ownership: 24%

Stats

Year: 144.1 IP, 8 W's, 123 K's, 4.61 ERA, 1.20 WHIP

Last 30: 34 IP, 1 W, 28 K's, 3.44 ERA, 0.97 WHIP

Last 14: 11 IP, 0 W, 8 K, 4.91 ERA, 1.27 WHIP

Yeah I know those numbers do look way more palatable than Leake's. Look at his K numbers hes ranked just outside the top 30 this year in that category. Blanton by the numbers is almost a must have guy as your 5th  or 6h best starter. The biggest problem with Blanton, the long ball. Blanton is your poster boy for the  Fly Ball Pitcher Alert! Blanton has let up a National League leading 23 Home Runs this year. Yes that is less than greater than 1 every 6.1 innings aka 1 per start. Huge ERA and WHIP that long ball no doubt, but are you ready for the good news? Hello Pittsburgh. 

PNC Bank Park is one of the 10 worst parks in the majors for Home Runs. No one hits homers there. The entire team only has 51 homers in 58 games at home versus 79 in as many games on the road. Only NL MVP front runner Andrew McCutchen has double digit homeruns at PNC. Speaking of Andrew, hes currently the biggest baddest threat in Pittsburgh's lineup and for good reason, but against Blanton hes hitting just .154 with twice as many K's as he has hits. Its safe to say, Blanton has his number. 

Speaking of having someones number, The Dodgers OWN The Pirates. After last nights 9-3 smack down the Pirates have now dropped 9 count em 9 in a row to the Dodgers. I'm getting flashbacks of Pedros "They are my daddy" speech right now as this is just laughable. Dodgers have been firing on all cylinders from the moment they touched down in Pittsburgh and there's no reason for them to stop now. Dodgers should be able to give the thing Blantons been lacking all year in Philly in the form of Run Support. I love a huge game from Blanton today, thinking 6+ K's with less than 3 runs allowed.  Scoop him up now!

Streaming stats on the year: 9 IP,  1 W, 1.00 ERA, 0.44 WHIP




*Full disclosure I use Yahoo for all my FBB leagues so I'll be going off the availability on there.