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FELIX

His fastball is indeed down a good notch, as any F/X chart could tell you.  If the elbow snaps, I guess we're going with Donn Roach in the 5 slot.  James Paxton has two starts and has been scattering the popcorn vendors behind home plate.  

But until and unless Felix' elbow goes, and he does not look like he is in the least pain, I'll take Felix and his 0.69 ERA.  Is Felix still tough at 90 MPH?  We've discussed that a time or six.  You fret if you like.  I'll sign him to a big contract right now.  One thing is, though, I wouldn't go pressing him past 100 pitches even if the game was on the line.

He is down to #12 ranked starter in baseball, we'll admit, and if he doesn't pick it up he's going to finish the year #15, #20.  I'll still root for him to stick in there over Roach.

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$142M for 6 YEARS

Business Insider noticed that CC Sabathia's fastball velocity was way DOWN, and his effectiveness also way DOWN.  They saw in this something other than coincidence, which is why they're Business Insider and we're just cracking peanut shells in the bleachers.  Here, let's run a graphic on that, so that we can at least try to get our arms around the math:

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Jim Bouton If you throw a fastball with insufficient velocity, somebody will smack it out of the park with a stick Dept.

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Since the writing of that article, however, CC has turned it completely around.  His fastball velo had been 89-91 as a Yankee; this year he's trying a different approach, throwing 86.6 MPH.   So you have to plot the red line down a couple of gridlines and then take a guess at where the green line would go.

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Cynical SSI denizens have pencilled the M's in for a 76ers' like record of 9-51 against left hand pitching this year.  Dr. D will acknowledge a mild concern, but as with many decent ideas, this one has gone much too far.

1 Nelson Cruz is to lefty pitching as Freddy Krueger is to college co-eds.

2 Robinson Cano is a lifetime .287 hitter against LHP's, with walks and power.  2,400 at-bats against lefties.

3 Kyle Seager slugs .409 against lefties for his career, which is not Miguel Cabrera.  But neither is it anything that will get him Adam LaRoche'd out of the clubhouse.

4, 5 Two Full-Blast Platoons live in the coral reef of DiPoto's tranquil lagoon, those in the bat slots of RF and 1B.  In today's bullpen era this is known as the "theoretical maximum" for anti-left platooning.  

'twas just yesterday, it seems, you amigos were telling Dr. D that Gutierrez' SLG was .600 and could only go up from there.  Dae-Ho Lee , or "Mr. 24.5 Man Roster" as PI calls him, exists for no other purpose than to prove that $142M for CC Sabathia was ill-advised.

6 Norichika Aoki has a reverse platoon split.  Let me read that sentence again?  His lifetime OBP is .372 against lefties.  Three seventy two!  His overall OPS vs left hand pitchers is a dead ringer for the overall 2013-15 slash lines of Shin-Soo Choo and Ben Zobrist.

7 Chris Iannetta ... we find little reason to assume that he should be able to hit righties and not hit lefties.  Lo and behold, his lifetime SLG is .480 against lefties.

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With no question even possible on the issue, Kyle Seager is our #6 weapon against lefties.  And that's if you put him above Chris Iannetta.  If you have five or six guys better than Kyle Seager, I'm not going to predict a 76ers' type of won loss record for you.  I don't care if you did lose four games in a row to them.

See you at noon,

Dr D