If you are in a fantasy league, I recommend that you pick up Max Scherzer. If you remember, he started out the season in the minors with some completely dominant performances, and was subsequently brought up to Arizona when Doug Davis went on the DL. Scherzer was very, very good, but after about a month he seemed to be tiring and Davis had returned, so the diamondbacks sent him down and then shut him down for about a month. Recently, he has begun pitching again, and gradually building his arm strngth. It hasn't been getting any attention, but he has been very dominant recently as his pitch count has increased. Tonight, he pitched six innings and hit 85 pitches for the first time since his return. In his last four outings, he has thrown 3, 4, 5, and now 6 innings. During those four performances, over a total of 18 innings, he has given up two runs on eight hits and eight walks--and struck out 26. Tonight, he gave up one hit and walked four, while striking out six. The other thing to note is that the far majority of his outs that have not come via strikeout have come via ground ball. Today he had something like 10 ground ball outs to 2 flyball outs, and if I remember correctly (because I've been tracking him) the ratio was something like 7-1 in his previous start. Strikeout pitchers that induce a lot of groundballs are typically very successful--and much more likely to be successful in Arizona than fly-ball pitchers. Now that he has hit 85 pitches--which has gone up roughly 10-15 each outing--I believe that the Diamondbacks will consider bringing him back up within the next week or so and plugging him back into the starting rotation. They have some holes right now--not only has Doug Davis been terrible recently, but Owings was demoted to the minors a few weeks ago and his rotation spot taken by Petit, who is not nearly the prospect that Scherzer is. If you have the space on your fantasy league teams, and a bench, I recommend picking him up IMMEDIATELY. He could have six or seven starts during the rest of the season and could easily have an ERA below 3.00 with tons of strikeouts.
