Tag: Jesse Chavez

Jesse Chavez has allowed 9 earned runs over his last two starts. Many fantasy owners are bailing on the thirty year old but now is not the time.

Analysis: Jesse Chavez is the 56th best fantasy starter this season despite the two bad starts recently. He’s ahead of guys like Cole Hamels, James Shields, Gerrit Cole and Hiroki Kuroda. Chavez has a 3.23 ERA, 3.62 xFIP, 1.27 WHIP and an 8.04 K/9 rate this season. He ranks 34th in ERA among major league starters, 59th in BB/9, 58th in WHIP, 31st in K/9 and 33rd in strikeouts. It is fair to say he has been producing and has been quite consistent this season.

It is understandable that many fantasy owners are dropping Chavez. His last two starts have not gone well but there aren’t many options of his caliber available on the wire. Tim Lincecum and Matt Cain have both been on fire lately but aside from them there are a lot of risk/reward guys left on the wire.

Jesse Chavez is available in 15-30% of fantasy leagues. His next start is July 7th at home against the Giants.

The Oakland A’s are off to another solid start and a big reason why has been the play of Jesse Chavez.

Analysis: Jesse Chavez is thirty years old and has never pitched more than seventy innings in one season in the bigs. Through three starts this year Chavez is sporting a 1.35 ERA, 0.85 WHIP and 22 strikeouts in 20.0 innings. He also has a 2.30 xFIP and an 11.0 K/BB ratio.

Who knows how well he will hold up as he goes deeper into the season but we cannot ignore his effectiveness early on. Chavez pitched 57.1 innings for the A’s last year in a relief role and had a 3.93 ERA and 3.83 xFIP to show for it. His cutter has been an absolute revelation since joining the A’s and he now has his one plus pitch to go along with his great command of the other three.

Currently, Jesse Chavez is available in 30-75% of fantasy leagues. He isn’t going to get the “wire hype” like teammate Scott Kazmir or even Tim Hudson(SF) but Chavez has been unhittable through 20 innings thus far this season.