Sleeper Watch

It’s that time of year again. Many owners find themselves scrambling to find fill-ins for pitchers who have gone down with injuries. Others are discovering that they’re on pace to use up their innings pitched limit by early August, and that their lofty strikeout totals don’t look quite so good when converted to k/ip. Still others need to add an arm, but only have a buck or two left in their free agent acquisition budgets.

For a variety of reasons, middle relievers start looking pretty good to many owners at this point of the season. Unlike closers, there are usually any number available, even in deep leagues, and they’ll give you tremendous production on a per-inning basis.

But which one to take? With perennial standouts such as Octavio Dotel and closers-in-waiting such as Francisco Cordero most likely unavailable, why not pick up Tom Gordon?

Like the girl in the Stephen King novel, we love Tom Gordon. It’s absolutely fantastic to see him not only make a successful comeback, but to again warrant serious fantasy consideration. While the White Sox reliever’s season stats (4 wins, 3.67 era, 1.31 whip) may not catch your eye, his era over the last month is a paltry 2.70, to go along with a whip of 1.20. Even better, Gordon has notched 19 k’s in just 11 innings of work over that span. Owners in tight strikeout races in leagues with low ip limits know just how valuable that ratio can be.

Odds are, Gordon is still available in your league, and while he obviously isn’t a fantasy star, he’d make a very nice fill-in. As an added bonus, Gordon is almost guaranteed to pick up another save soon; with his current career total at 99, the White Sox will definitely give him the opportunity to pick up number 100.