Fantasy Felony: Harang Should Come Cheap - FanHouse - AOL Sports Blog

Fantasy Felony tells you how to melt other owners' faces via swindling them in trades.

Aaron Harang is a bonafide upper-echelon fantasy pitcher, and when owners get through the first week of May with a 1-5 pitcher whom they landed in the early rounds ... well, they start to get angry and impatient. A desperate, disillusioned owner is a vulnerable owner in the trade market, so it's time to swoop in. Pull all your usual smooth-talking tricks. You don't have to pull a George Costanza ("do that thing you do, where you lie to everybody," says Jerry), but you can allow emphasis on cons while conveniently forgetting about the pros if the owner is complaining.

As I said, he's 1-5. His team sucks, and the run support he's receiving is embarrassing. After Tuesday night's eighth outing, Harang had surrendered 19 earned runs, while his team had only scored 23 (five of which were in one game which happened to be his only bad outing, so you can see there's bad luck at play as well).

Bet on the luck changing -- thus altering his record positively -- and everything else to remain the same.

All Harang's numbers are in line outside of the W-L column (which we know is not a quality indicator of the value of a starting pitcher in the long run) are very solid. He's punched out 48 in eight starts, while sporting a 3.09 ERA and a WHIP of 1.10; yet he's being overshadowed in fantasy circles by Edinson Volquez and Johnny Cueto. For the rest of this season, Harang is a much more reliable option. It ain't close. With the young guys you'll get inconsistency and the possibility of hitting a wall late in the season when the innings count gets up there into unprecedented territory. Harang is a thoroughbred ... going 210+ innings in each of the last three years and 230+ in the last two. That's why he's among the league leaders in Ks each year and will continue to be.

Look, the Reds offense hasn't been good by any stretch, but with good hitters throughout the order (Junior, Dunn, Votto, Phillips, Encarnacion, Keppinger, and hopefully Jay Bruce eventually) there is no reason to believe Harang's run of poor fortune will continue.

Harang's doing his job, and the Reds' offense should start doing theirs.

You need to do yours and trade for him at this record low price.