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Over the past few weeks, I’ve briefly mentioned Santiago Casilla here and once more here. The Oakland A’s reliever is having a fantastic year as he’s got a 0.00 ERA and a 0.69 WHIP in 17.1 innings of work. His strikeout to walk ratio is good at 7.00 (21:3) and he’s got one win and, last night, recorded his first save.

He’s not going to be taking Huston Street’s job, just yet. But now, you have to take notice to Casilla’s fantasy baseball value, as his role has been upgraded to set-up guy and first to fill in for Street when Street needs a breather. This also may give Billy Beane ammunition to pull off one of his favorite moves; trading an established closer for talent and replacing the closer with someone cheaper from within the organization.

Keep an eye on Casilla and the state of the A’s bullpen. I’ve already recommended that you can sign Casilla for help with your ERA and WHIP. Now that he’s getting spot wins and saves he is signable in just about every fantasy format.

Update [5/7/2008 11:12 AM]: Unsung Setup Guy [Fangraphs]

Dave Cameron over at FanGraphs posted a few days back about the heroes of April; the top offensive guys for the first month of MLB. He used WPA/LI to determine offensive production. Very cool!

Let me just go ahead and define WPA/LI right now. [from FanGraphs]

WPA/LI (context neutral wins / game state linear weights): How many wins a player contributes to his team with the Leverage Index aspect removed, invented by Tom Tango.

Calculating WPA/LI: WPA is divided by LI for each individual play attributed to a specific player and then the WPA/LI for the individual plays is then added up to create WPA/LI for an entire season. This is considerably different then taking a player’s WPA and dividing it by pLI.

Why you should care: Unlike standard linear weights, WPA/LI does take into account the situation. So at times when a walk would be just as valuable as a home run, WPA/LI accurately weights the walk and the home run, where linear weights would still give .13 wins to the home run and the walk .03 wins.

If not for one Boston pitcher, the National League would have swept these fantasy baseball MVP awards this week. Nice job NL!

Catcher: Geovany Soto | Chicago Cubs - Soto batted .391/.481/.870 while scoring six times. He also hit two home runs with 9 RBI. Russell Martin also had a good week going .304/.448/.435 with six runs, a home run, four RBI and a stolen base, but his performance was clearly a second place performance.

First Base: Adrian Gonzalez | San Diego Padres - Gonzalez narrowly edged out Lance Berkman (who won in week 4) for this week’s prize scoring seven times and knocking in six RBI with four home runs. Gonzalez averaged .385/.385/.885 last week.

Second Base: Chase Utley | Philadelphia Phillies - Utley becomes the first three time winner of this award as scored five times, knocked three home runs, had five RBI, and even stole a base. His slash stats last week were .348/.423./783. He narrowly edged out Placido Polanco while Dan Uggla also garnered consideration.

Third Base: Jose Bautista | Pittsburgh Pirates - Bautista hit three home runs last week while scoring six times and driving in seven runs. He averaged .333/.370/.750 on the road to win this award .

Shortstop: Rafael Furcal | Los Angeles Dodgers - Furcal finished just ahead of Jose Reyes for this award largely on his 11 runs scored. He also hit a home run, drove in four and stole two bases. His slash stats were .393/.452/.571.

Outfield: Matt Kemp | Los Angeles Dodgers - Kemp was the clear-cut winner this week and the second straight Dodger on the list this week. Kemp hit .407/.433/.556 with seven runs scored, 11 RBI, and six stolen bases.

Starting Pitcher: Tim Hudson | Atlanta Braves - It usually takes a two-start pitcher to win this award, but Hudson was special last Friday night (and I was lucky enough to see this in person). Hudson faced off against Edison Volquez in a fantastic pitchers duel. Hudson pitched a complete game shutout, allowing only three hits while striking out 10 and walking zero.

Relief Pitcher: Jonathan Papelbon | Boston Red Sox - Papelbon had only one save last week, but he also got two wins. In 4.1 innings of work he struck out three, walked zero, and gave up two hits on his way to a 0.00 ERA and a 0.46 WHIP.

Although Reds starting pitcher, Bronson Arroyo, says he feels great, Dusty Baker says the Reds are going to get him checked out.

“We’re kind of lost right now,” he said. “We’re going to get him checked out, maybe something is wrong with him. His pitches aren’t sharp. His breaking ball isn’t crisp. He’s kind of gotten a little bit predictable as far as throwing the 3-2 breaking ball. Ordinarily, that ball (Tom) Glavine hit doesn’t stay up in the zone.

“We’ll get him examined. You don’t want to find anything. But, hopefully, we can come up with some kind of solution. I know he’s going crazy, too.”

Arroyo was clear that he doesn’t think anything is physically wrong with him.

“There ain’t nothing to check out,” he said. “They said they want to check me out? That’s probably the best I felt in years on a day game. I’ve got no excuses. They just beat my (butt). I had a good fastball, decent command, everything felt good.”

At 1-4 with an 8.63 ERA, if Arroyo is still in your fantasy lineup, you might need a trip to the doctor too.

One of the first statistics that I look for when deciding on a trade or a free agent acquisition that involves a relief pitcher is strikeout to walk ratio (K:BB). The ratio is easy to calculate as it’s just K/BB, but it goes a long way in showing how dominant a pitcher is over the batters he faces. When considering a relief pitcher, you’d like to see more strikeouts than innings pitched, and a pretty high K:BB ratio (hopefully above 10). I’m going to share three relief pitchers with you who meet both said criteria (one might even be available in your fantasy league) and then also the other two remaining relievers who have a K:BB above 10.

Relievers with 10.00+ K:BB and More K’s than IP.

• Jonathan Papelbon | Boston Red Sox -  He has 21 strikeouts with only 1 walk. His K:BB ratio of 21.00 is the highest of any reliever in baseball with at least 10 innings pitched. He’s pitched 15.1 innings of relief.
• Joakim Soria | Kansas City Royals - He has 15 strikeouts with only 1 walk. His K:BB ratio of 15.00 ranks #2 and he’s pitched in 13.0 innings.
• Santiago Casilla | Oakland Athletics - Casilla is the one relief pitcher in this list of three that may be available in your fantasy league. He has 20 strikeouts and only two walks in 16.1 innings of work. His K:B ratio is 10.00.

Relievers with 10.00+ K:BB but fewer K’s than IP.

• Aquilino Lopez | Detroit Tigers - Lopez is an all-purpose reliever in the Tigers bullpen, but not their closer. He has 14 strikeouts and one walk in 18.2 innings. He has a K:BB ratio of 14.00.
• Mariano Rivera | New York Yankees - Rivera, mathematically speaking, has a K:BB ratio of infinity since he hasn’t walked anyone all year. But, fo our purposes, lets give him a 12.00 K:BB ratio since he has 12 strikeouts and zero walks in 13 innings of work.

Last week, just about fantasy baseball GM checked his waiver priority status to see if they held the #1 spot. If you did, you were able to sign Arizona rookie pitcher Max Scherzer.

Scherzer, who was the Diamondbacks first round draft choice in 2006, gets his first big league start tonight against Philadelphia. On April 29th, he made his Major League debut, pitching 4.1 innings of perfect baseball in relief with 7 strikeouts to boot. The big question on the minds of many is how the Diamondbacks plan to use Scherzer to keep his innings pitched at a manageable lever since he only threw 90.2 innings last season.

Rookie Max Scherzer will make his first major-league start Monday night and perhaps two or three more after that before left-hander Doug Davis figures to be ready to come off the disabled list.

Barring other developments, that likely would mean Scherzer’s time in the rotation would be up. As far as his development goes, that might not be such a bad thing.

“I think potentially a good byproduct of that is keeping Max’s innings in check as we get him through the season,” General Manager Josh Byrnes said.

That is to say, when Davis returns, Scherzer could end up pitching in the Diamondbacks bullpen and perhaps remain there the rest of the season.

Clubs try to incrementally increase the workload they put on their young starting pitchers, adding a certain number of innings per season - roughly 20 to 30 - until they build toward the 200-inning mark.

This could be great news to Scherzer owners in keeper leagues.

Seattle Mariners prospect Wladimir Balentien was called up from Triple-A Tacoma and got his first at-bat’s of the 2008 season last night in an 8-3 loss to Cleveland. Balentien had an impressive start going 2-4 with 3 RBI and a run scored, with one of those hits being a 7th inning three-run home run off of Cliff Lee.

Balentien was called up after 63 Triple-A at bats where he batted .254/.329/.619 with 6 home runs, 20 RBI, and a stolen base. The 23-year-old rookie has played three solid years in the minor leagues hitting more than 20 home runs in each of the three seasons. In 2007, Balentien made a huge stride in his plate discipline reducing his strikeouts from 140 in 2006 to 105 in 544 plate appearances in 2007.

Balentien is also a stolen base threat. He stole 15 bases in 19 attempts last season, and had 14 and 9 stolen bases in 2006 and 2005 respectively.

Since Balentien should be the every day right fielder for the Mariners, he’s a must add in AL-only leagues. He also should be added in deep mixed-leagues and keeper leagues. If you’re in a shallow mixed-league you may want to wait and see if Balentien’s strikeouts continue to drop. If not, his batting average may hurt you more than his home runs will help.