Fantasy Baseball Advice

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@HornyOldGuy Did you get that pic I sent you? I LOL’d really hard. They’ll put anything on cats!

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@EricKarabell I haven’t checked my email today. Trying to get this cellphone to work. Hello? Oh, wait, I was typing that.

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@EricKarabell Please forward. Manny loves to laugh!

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@OldHornyGuy Did you get those preseason rankings I went over?

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Go Sox!

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@EricKarabell Seems like I messed something up when I downloaded the new Aguilera ringtone. Things were much simply when I was writing for Married With Children, Crocodile Dundee II, et al.

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@OldHornyGuy Did you get those rankings?

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@TristanCockcroft There’s proper channels for unsolicited submissions.

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@OldHornyGuy I write for ESPN.

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@EricKarabell How did they get the sombrero on the cat?!

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@I’mMannyYou’reNot Those cats are muy hilarity! Do you think they are safe?

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@BuryingDwarvesOneDwarfAtATime Pedro! Are you going to get traded back to the Sox? We miss you.

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@EricKarabell Can I send my rankings to you?

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@I’mMannyYou’reNot I think they use glue.

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What up, Manny y Pedro?! If there are two things I love, it’s the Red Sox and cats.

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This just in. The Yankees are going to offer Mr Whiskers, that tabby cat, $120 million over 5 years.

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That is a slap a lapper!

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@Dick Vitale Forget about the cats. Let’s talk about the Oakland RAY-DAS. The FROZEN TUNDRA of Lambeau Field. Rumblin’… stumblin’…He COULD…GO…ALL..THE…Hey, you’re with me, leather….

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Uh-oh. Someone forgot to turn off the Bermatron 2000.

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Correction. That was CC Sabathia.

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You people all suck.

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@TristanCockcroft You’re not going to get hired with that attitude.

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@HornyOldGuy Worked for me.

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@SkipBayless Are you David Caruso?

Dear Reader,

On my way back from a charity fundraiser for koalas who are addicted to pot (This is why koalas sleep 23 hours a day!), I started thinking about the ways I could make this a better world — in addition to the koala relief work. Do I open a pet cemetery in the shape of a giant toilet bowl? Do I manufacture yarmulkes with curly locks attached to the side? Or should I just point out ESPN’s top fantasy analyst, Eric Karabell’s misuse of brains?

As always, you need to be an ESPN Hindsighter™ to fully appreciate Karabell’s dumbitude, but I’ll cut and paste the relevant twigs and berries.

McLouth might or might not have hit the proverbial wall, but you don’t hear his name associated with fantasy MVP honors anymore, not after he’s hit .248 with nine home runs since June 1.

Might or might not have hit the proverbial wall. Hmm… Picture you sit down at a fine dining establishment — no, not Denny’s — and you ask the waiter if the Soup of the Day is any good. Now imagine the waiter says, “It might or might not be good.” Mommy, where’s Daddy? Erica, Daddy’s out hedging his bets. Then the next part about Fantasy MVP is pretty easy thing for him to say about McLouth, until you realize he was the one crowning McLouth Fantasy MVP back in May. I like to call this dish, “The Best Pile of Macaroni Salad You Will Ever Taste, Until I Point To Another Pile of Macaroni Salad and Say It’s Better.” It goes really well with “The Most Robust Wine You Will Drink Until You Have This Other One.” Am I the only one who’s stumped by this Jenga building of logic?

The Japanese import (Fukudome) is owned in far too many leagues for the numbers he’s supplying.

He was the one telling everyone to pickup Fukudome. Or did an evil cyborg take over Karabell’s human skin and give that advice? Or is there a tiny alien inside Karabell’s human skin and he hasn’t figured out the controls yet for the brain?

For the final month, (Jay Bruce’s) OK and should, along with Joey Votto, hit some home runs, but neither guy is tearing it up. Votto has hit .320 since the All-Star break, but with only two home runs. Other Reds with two home runs since the break include Corey Patterson, Javier Valentin and recent callup Chris Dickerson. Bruce has hit eight home runs since then, but the .240 batting average negates quite a bit of it.

He told you he was this year’s Ryan Braun. The Ryan Braun of numbers we see hardly never — even if we go back to the days of The Tin Lizzie and when people called their friends, contemporaries? Yeah, that Ryan Braun.

Okay, here’s ESPN’s fantasy coverage. Appetizer — McLouth will be the best hitter of this season, bar none. Entree — McLouth will have some struggles, but this is a horse you wanna ride. Dessert — I just shat into a dirty ashtray and you ate it. Hey, Karabell, go get your shinebox!

Yours,

Hater

I’m just going to jump right in with this moron, or morron, as he’d spell it. First, a Karabell title, “Euphoric about Eugenio; closers, Bush, mail.” Eugenio who? Velez, the guy who should have one hand tied to the barrel of a bat so all he can do is bunt. He’s cheap speed. But so is chasing down a rock of crack with Red Bull. You wanna see helicopters? I’ll show you helicopters! Razzball pimped Velez too, back in March. Karabell’s pimping him in July. Since Karabell advised you pick him up three weeks ago, Velez has started three games. Sweet! How about giving Eric Chavez a pickup for some pop? Does anyone know why Luis Polonia’s not in Yahoo? He played baseball as hard as he pedophile’d!

Then Karabell pokes his finger around in Bush to see if it moves. There’s some life there, but how many people can you put in this schmohawk while Jeremy Guthrie is owned in 32.9% of ESPN leagues? Guthrie has 17 Quality Starts. Haren is tops in all of baseball with 19. Since he pimped out his Bush, ten runs in 19 innings. Sweet! The crux of his argument is that Bush is all right by him, but he should be played home and away by Yost. Yeah, double your trouble — literally.  Moving on before I fall into an idiotic coma.

His next post title was, “Ortiz, Chipper, Liriano, weekend watch.” David Ortiz, his choice for AL MVP (seriously, you can’t make up shizz this stupid), was predicted to absolutely go off as soon as he returned from the DL. 1 HR, 6 RBIs since his return three weeks ago. Okay, that works. Cool. Now if I can figure out how to get Matt Holliday into every other hitting spot on my team, I’ll be all set. Thanks. Then he went on to say Jeff Baker was an absolute add. “(Jeff Baker) is hardly a fluke, and the fact he’s hitting .522 since the break and .400 in the No. 2 spot in the order aren’t things suddenly about to end.” Jeff Baker is in a 3-for-36 slump and has been benched in three of the last six games. Awesome! Maybe I can slot him into my Utility slot when Ortiz isn’t playing.

I’ll leave you with this last piece of Eric Karabell anti-advice, “I would never sit Ryan Sweeney of the A’s, assuming he could stay healthy. He takes walks, hits doubles and steals bases. I’d like to see him get 500 at-bats.” Rather than have you look up his stats, I’ll just give them to you. In 272 at-bats, he is 36/3/36/.294/8. Over 500 at-bats, that makes Randy Winn seem exciting. How do I get into a league with Karabell? I can see it now, “What do you think about Ryan Sweeney for Arod?” “Hater, that sounds like a go picture!”  What an effin’ jackfruit. Until next time… Karabell, go get your shinebox!

Yo, Hater Bell, here. Just returned from Tijuana where I stocked up on thirty cases of Rohypnol and three nights worth of donkey show ideas. The things you can do with Tequila, duct tape and a roll of quarters. Now to hatch my plan to take out ESPN’s top fantasy analyst, Eric Karabell, at the next fantasy baseball summit in Spring ‘09. Until then, I gots to take out his heart with my words. En garde, bizznatch!

Karabaloney decided to play with his Speak and Spell again as the ESPN “experts” went over their top 340 for the 2nd half rankings. There’s so many things here that make me long for a decent feedback form on the ESPN page that sometimes I find myself filling in the random restaurant comment card with Karabell suggestions:

The dash of cinnamon on the lamb was not lost on me. Delicate enough for taste, but not too fragrant. Now if you can only explain ranking Michael Cuddyer at 181!

So Kosuke Fukudome was ranked 112 overall using ESPN’s mathematical ranking system:

Jack Daniels(Radio Shack calculator)²= Top 340 Fantasy Baseball Players.

Karabell in his infinitesimal wisdom ranked Fukudome 102. Here’s the Karalogic:

Whille Fukudome hasn’t been quite what we thought, let’s remember this is his first year in the states. I think he’ll hit for a better average in the second half since he does take walks and has seen what stuff MLB pitchers have. Plus, let’s not underestimate what a .300 average is worth. It’s underrated, especially since I see him ending the year there, which means he hits .320 or so over the final two months. I see him ending up with 15 homers and 15 steals, which, combined with a good batting average, makes him near a top-100 player.

You need a Bachelors in Stupidity to fully understand this, but luckily I have my Masters in Throwing Out the Karabage. Let’s see, underestimate what a .300 average is worth? It’s worth .300, right? So he’s helping you about as much as who? Skip Schumaker? Excuse me while I yawn. That’s assuming Fukudome doesn’t continue to nosedive in average as he’s currently doing.

What if he’s more than his overly optimistic .300 average. Let’s say Fukudome gives you a little bit of everything. That’s more vauable, isn’t it? It sure is. So let’s look at the most comparable player, David Dejesus. (Actually, he’s not completely comparable because he did better than Fukudome in the 1st half, but let’s say he is comparable.) If Karabell said Fukudome should be at 102, where’s Dejesus on the list? Dead last at 340. Well, that makes sense. Yo, Karabell, go get your shinebox!