One month down, five to go! Happy Monday, everybody. I hope you're like Adam Aizer and myself as we held on to Corey Kluber despite his early season struggles in the podcast listener league. Kluber wound up with 58.5 Fantasy points in CBS points leagues this past week, but more on him below.
While it was a very eventful weekend, I want to focus on somebody who's just been meh this season: Luis Castillo. We're six starts in and Castillo is currently rocking a 6.07 ERA with a 1.62 WHIP. His swinging strike rate is currently 10.9% after two straight seasons up over 15% in that department. Many people have been asking what is wrong with Castillo. Basically, more balls in play has led to more hits than ever. Castillo is just too good to allow 12.1 hits per nine innings or a .368 BABIP. The good news for his start this weekend was that his fastball averaged 97 mph, his highest all season. As his BABIP regresses towards the rest of his career, better days will come for Castillo, though he likely won't come close to paying off his draft price.
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After a slow start to the season, Yankees SP Corey Kluber has turned it around fast. On Sunday, Kluber had the best start of his young Yankees career and looked a lot like the former dominant ace he once was. Kluber threw a season-high eight shutout innings with a season-high 10 strikeouts. It was his first double-digit strikeout game since 2018. More importantly, the underlying numbers back up his dominance and are even more impressive than the box score. He generated 20 swinging strikes and finished with a 34% CSW (called strikes plus whiffs) rate.
Kluber is missing bats and pitching efficiently (he only need 103 pitches to get through eight innings). He now carries a solid and seemingly improving stat line into the second month of the season: 3.03 ERA, 1.35 WHIP and 29/14 K/BB ratio in 29 innings.
Noting that Kluber is a slow starter, Scott is fully bought back in that Kluber is back. He already liked the way things were trending in his last start and Sunday was even more definitive. His secondary stuff is working really well and he has a deep secondary arsenal with strong movement and location. Scott has moved him in his rankings above the likes of Chris Paddack and into his top 50 overall.
Twins OF Alex Kirilloff entered the season as one of the highest-ranked prospects in baseball, but yet he was largely available in leagues on the waiver wire when he got called up by Minnesota last night. Fantasy sports are a what-have-you-done-for me-now business and Kirilloff had a terrible spring. He was so cold with the bat the Twins ultimately sent him back down. Even after being called up last week, he started off slow, but he has since been on an absolute tear.
On Sunday, he launched another home run and drove in four more runs. The 23-year-old rookie has now launched four home runs in his last three games. Scott is convinced that Kirilloff is here to stay. As he pointed out on Friday's show, the short term could be very good for him as well. The Twins have the most favorable hitters schedule -- specifically facing beatable righties -- and Scott has moved him up to his No. 2 sleeper hitter for the coming week.
Kirilloff's 10 RBI are the most for a Twins player in his first 11 games in the history of the franchise. He is now rostered in 73% of leagues and that should be 100%.
