Buy or Sell: Neither, really.

Projected Value: Medium

Coming into the season there was a fairly good shot that Bashore would end up drafted ahead of Arnett — That didn’t happen.  Bashore slide to the 46th overall spot and ended up signing for about 750K.

Bashore’s definitely going to have a hard time building up steam, but there’s still a chance.  If you can swing an unbelievable deal on his cards or just pull one, you’ve gotta keep it.  It’s not going to fetch enough money on the secondary market to warrant selling it unless you’re able to list it incredibly early.

With that in mind, Bashore’s still has size and pitching-hand going for him.  It’s not exactly easy to find big lefthanded starters, so the Twinkies will definitely invest time into the kid.

There’s definitely room to grow, and Bashore appears to have the right mindset but he’s a true prospect.

Bashore definitely leaves you wanting more.  He’s definitely capable of growth, but doesn’t quite have the flash or the polish on the breaking pitches that you’d like to see.

Other than his 4W in 5GS, Slowey has been average across the roto-board: 5.17 ERA, 1.47 WHIP, and 23 strike-outs. However, Slowey’s advanced statistics make him an intriguing trade-target at this juncture.

Of the pitchers that have pitched at least 20 Innings, Slowey leads the pack with an 11.50 K/BB rate.  The next guys on the list? Halladay (7.6) , Haren (7.2), Greinke (5.5), Johnson (5.33), Bedard (5.33) and Vazquez (5.25) — Good Company.

Unlike the majority of the pitchers in the top-15 in K:BB, Slowey doesn’t achieve his gaudy number as a result of a high K-Rate.  Slowey has great control and he knows how to use the defense behind him.

In 31.1 Innings, Slowey’s walked two batters which is good for a 0.57 BB/9.   Slowey won’t keep this up, but he relies on control and should at least be able to maintain a BB/9 of around 1.50.  Slowey’s currently striking out just over six and a half batters per nine, which is right in line with league average. If Slowey ever notched his K/9 over 7ish, he’d be treading the fine-line between fantasy-steal and top of the rotation stud.

So long as you don’t have to watch Carlos Gomez and Denard Span chase down those deep fly-balls, finding a way to trade for Kevin Slowey is probably a safe bet. If you’re a Twins fan, I’d recommend drinking Peptobismol prior to watching Slowey record some of the longest outs in baseball.

If Kevin Slowey ever started walking people, it’d be almost impossible to recommend a career 0.71 GB/FB pitcher in the AL Central. Thankfully, Slowey tends to keep the damage to a minimum when hitters do take him yard.

With all of these caveats in mind, now’s the time to acquire Kevin Slowey.  Slowey’s BABIP is currently sitting at .374 and should eventually drop to league average or below.  This has lead to a hit-heavy 1.44-WHIP and .332 BAA and hopefully opened up a trade-window in your league.

Slowey’s inducing more swings outside of the zone and less contact on those swings.  Slowey’s achieved this by getting more horizontal movement on both of his off-speed offerings this year, and I’d expect these numbers to continue which could lead to that magic-mark of  7+ K/9.

Kevin Slowey is always going to be hittable, but batters are currently making contact with 93% of pitches they’ve swung at inside of the strike zone.  I would expect this to trend towards the Major League average of 87% with the possibility of Slowey matching or bettering his 2008 number of 85.7%.  I get the feeling that this is a result of Slowey throwing more strikes ( Zone percentage up 2 percent,) and making mistakes in early April.

With all of that said, Kevin Slowey is a much better pitcher than his 5.17 ERA would indicate. Slowey’s Fielder Independent Pitching ERA tends to agree as it sits at a cozy 3.99.

I’d go out of my way to acquire him, and a 3.60ish ERA, with 6.90-7.00 K per 9, and a great WHIP (1.12-1.15 range) should be in store for Slowey.

Liriano did however look anything but a fantasy ace today against the Chicago White Sox giving up 5 ER in 4.2 IP.  Liriano allowed 4 walks, 6 hits to go with 3 strike-outs.

This comes after he lead off the season with a 7 IP, 4 H, 4ER, 3K performance against the lowly Seattle Mariners.

Undergoing Tommy John surgery, nearly two and a half years ago, in the fall of 2006, Liriano should be good to go by now — he’s not.

Unfortunately, MLB’s GameDay data magically dissappeared for today’s outing against the White Sox, so we’ll have to rely on the miniscule sample size of the Seattle game.

Liriano’s base-line for awesomeness:

1. Throw Hard: 95mph average fastball in 2005-2006
2. Throw Slider: 37% of the time, at 87.7mph

Unfortunately, these are the qualities that caused Liriano to undergo Tommy John surgery, and these are the qualities he’s shying away from.

In 2008,  a year and a half after undergoing Tommy John surgery, it was clear that Liriano was protecting his elbow.  His fastball averaged out at 91mph, and his slider at 83.7mph. Liriano also shyed away from his slider, throwing it 10% less than previous years.

There was optimism though; Over the course of the season Liriano slowly began adding velocity to his fastball and slider, eventually raising their velocities to 91.2mph and 84.9mph.

The movement was still there, but it’s far easier to achieve the same movement at lesser speeds.

Francisco Liriano in 2009

Fastball 91.9mph, Slider 85.4mph. Liriano also threw his slider about 30 percent, which we can’t gather too much from, considering it’s only one game.

Liriano’s velocity is up from the previous fall, but it’s still nowhere close to where it was when he dominated.

The question becomes whether or not he’ll ever return to that point, and the answer is, probably not.

What made Liriano ridiculously unhittable was the amount of movement he achieved on a slider thrown so hard.  Batters would flail at pitches, and just look silly — this is how Liriano managed to post almost 11 strike outs per 9, in his first full major league season.

There is a glimmer of hope, which I’ve omitted purposely up until now, and that’s Liriano’s change-up.  The pitch has ridiculous potential, and he’s going to have to use it to be successful.

Liriano still may add another mile per hour onto all of his pitches, but I’m pretty certain the Twins will limit him.  They already screwed up once allowing him to pitch a full 200 innings between levels in 2008.

It’s a shame that the PFX cameras were down in Chicago, as I’ve been planning on watching this start for a week.  Alas, with an improved change-up, Liriano can still be a high-sevens strike-outs per 9 pitcher –  It’s not the end of the world.

Unfortunately, batters will continue to swing less and make more contact against Liriano, which’ll drastically decrease his fantasy value. With batters swinging less at pitches Liriano throws outside of the zone, Liriano will have to improve his control to succeed.

The things Liriano got away with in the past, are indeed, the past.

I’m not saying dump Liriano, but I am saying monitor his average velocity and pitch distribution very carefully over the coming weeks.

Photo Courtesy of Jon McNab

Young is a young guy who is a good athlete and a scout favorite—and has breakout potential on this basis—but improved numbers in 2009 will have to come from legitimate skill growth or good fortune.

In case you’re unsure of the Delmon Young story, here’s a quick recap.  Young was drafted first overall by the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, way back in the year 2003, as  a standout highschooler.

Young smash-killed the ball in the low-minors as an 18 and 19 year old. During his time in the minors, Young ranked no lower than 3rd overall on the Baseball America Top-100 Prospects list.

Then the Devil Rays rushed him through Triple-A and called him up to the bigs as a 20-year old and thus began Delmon Young’s power outage.

Young’s always been young for his level, and at this point in his career people are actually starting to give up on him with good reason.  The Minnesota Twins outfield is pretty jam-packed, and Delmon Young isn’t even guaranteed a starting spot.

Gomez and Span can both play center or left, possibly even right field.  Cuddyer’s got a great arm,  and is a solid corner outfielder who should be playing in RF.  These leaves Young, and Pirdie as the 4th and 5th outfielders vying for one of the starting spots.

It looks like Kubel, who could still play outfield in an emergency, will be manning the DH spot. Right now it looks like it’s really going to come down Delmon Young and Denard Span battling for the LF job. Cuddyer isn’t the epitome of health; so Young will nab RF at-bats even if he ends up starting the season as the 4th outfielder.

With that said, there’s absolutely no statistical data that says Delmon Young’s heading for improvement.  He’s not getting unlucky, he’s not being effected by a poor park.  When things look this bad for a former top-prospect / man-child, you’ve gotta assume that their pride is going to be taking a huge hit.

Athletes, even when they’re getting paid insanely massive-jumbo-jumbo amounts of money, are still competitive as all hell.  This is why I’m predicting one of those breakouts that two-months from now everyone will say they called it.

Delmon Young is still a very young 23 years old. Absolutely nothing points to him getting better, other than the fact he’s 23 years old.

With a late round pick, why not pick someone with all of the talent in the world?  Delmon Young lacks focus, he definitely makes up for in bat-throwing ability.

As the case with all of the sleepers that I recommend based on nothing more than a gut feeling, don’t draft them too high.  You can just cut bait with Delmon Young a month into the season if he still hasn’t displayed focus and better strike-zone judgment. Even if Young remains a free-swinging enigma, he still has the possibility of succeeding by ensuring he uses those quick wrists of his.

Here’s some of that off-season MLB.com fodder that says every players in better shape and ready for a breakout season:

“I feel really good right now,” he said. “At one point my body composition had changed a lot, but my weight stayed the same. Now, since we’ve been doing more power lifting the last month, the weight has been coming off. I just feel good.”

Photos Courtesy of Keith Allison and Trev Stair, Flickr

Joe Mauer - Dan H - Flickr

While Mauer realistically has only 15-17 HR pop in his bat, his batting average and on-base percentage more than make up for it.

Only Brian McCann can rival Mauer for OPS at the catcher position.  Geovany Soto’s ability to post another .500 SLG season is at least somewhat questionable, in my humble opinion.

Mauer had surgery over the off-season, almost 3 full months ago now, to eliminate a kidney obstruction.

Unfortunately, Mauer’s still got a sore back and his status for opening day is in major question. Mauer will be underoing an MR anthrogram in the next couple days, reports MLB.com.

I originally ranked Mauer as the top available catcher, assuming full health.  As the top-tier of catchers is so tightly packed, it’s time for a Mauer Free-Fall.

Brian McCann takes over the number one catcher spot, even if the Braves line-up is a snooze.  Russell Martin maintains solid value despite a projected decline in steals. Having Ramirez entrenched in that Dodgers line-up will help Martin’s counting stats substantially. Soto and Mauer now sit as 3A and 3B on my list.

Mauer’s game relies on his extroidinary hand-eye coordination which leads to an amazing batting average.  Power and speed are relatively easy to turn on, but hitting for average takes time.

A bad back for a catcher is bad news. Whether or not Mauer brings value will depend largely on the knowledge of your league.