Shelby Miller is living the high life. Major league success, fame, fortune… and twins! Everything’s coming up Shelby. He was masterful last night, tapping the Rockies in a complete game, 1-hit shutout with 13 strikeouts. The 13 Ks was a career high and Miller time is now. It’s been an amazing start for the rookie, but this was easily his best performance so far. He gave up a hit to Eric Young Jr. to start the game and then proceeded to retire the next, oh I don’t know…27 batters! Sweet sassy molassy! That’s called dominance, folks. That’s not just a “Shelbyville” idea either, that’s what aces do, and Miller may well have proven himself last night as a legit fantasy ace. He was painting the corners with his fastball yesterday, showing pin point control and throwing serious cheese between 94-96 mph, dude was untouchable. Shelbs grabbed his fifth win and now has a 1.58 ERA with a 0.88 WHIP. The player rater has him as a top five overall pitcher. Yeah, he’s been that good, and it’s the 51/11 K/BB ratio that keeps me up at night thinking about him. He’s the champagne of pitchers and looks like the early favorite for rookie of the year honors. I had my own Shelby Miller fantasy last week and here’s what I said about him, “I believe the best is yet to come for Shelby Miller and have made some substantial offers for him in redraft leagues. I’m buying Miller if I can, even though I prefer Budweiser.” There may be some regression coming, but I expect Miller to continue his success going forward. No matter what beer you prefer to drink, or whether its Miller’s great taste, or the fact that he’s less filling that makes him so good, either way fantasy owners can agree that Shelby Miller has arrived and he’s here to stay.

Here’s what else happened in fantasy baseball Friday night:

Please, blog, may I have some more?

First off, Rudy is safe. We have him in a padded room with only marshmallows to eat. He’s a bit overcome by the absence of color, but it will be a good distraction while Bryce Harper is touch and go. Before we put Rudy where he wouldn’t hurt himself, Rudy said to me, “If Bryce Harper is hurt, will they cancel the rest of the season?” That’s a frown question, bro. Lie down, Rudy. It’ll be okay. Actually, could you lie down with your head hanging off the couch? You’re gonna leave a Soul Glo stain. I’m sure Rudy isn’t the only one feeling a bit woozy hearing Harper hurt himself last night. The entire eye black industry hangs in the balance. He left yesterday’s game with an apparent injury and that turned into an apparent diagnosis of an apparent bad bruise in his apparent side. Thanks for the apparency. This sounds like a day-to-day thing rather than a 15-day DL thing. So the worst thing that may come of this is for the next few days you won’t get as drunk if you take a tequila shot every time someone on Baseball Tonight mentions Harper. Anyway, here’s what else I saw yesterday in fantasy baseball:

Please, blog, may I have some more?

As the old adage goes, ‘Spare the rod, spoil the child’. Hrm, I was going to make a reference to ‘caning’ and ‘Singapore’ here but it seems I’ve fumbled it worse than Mark Sanchez did with his slide into the backside of Moore. Yes, that was a football reference. Deal with it. You’re reading the works of none other than the main editor/writer for Razzball fantasy football so some pigskin is gonna leak over no matter what I do. But more to the point, I’ve been bringing the Discount Double Check series to you this pre-season in the hopes we can find some potential sleepers for 2013 fantasy baseball and what better way to do that then to revisit a former Grey love in Lorenzo Cain. Grey really wouldn’t leave this man alone in 2012. At some point I’m sure he got addicted to Cain…SUGAR! The fact he didn’t land on Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew is a bit surprising as he was snorting lines of confectionery by late March. At least that’s what he told me when I asked about the white powder caking his nose. But back to the point, we’re here today to look at Lorenzo and see if his current ADP of 196 is warranted or if he’s going at a discount for 2013 fantasy baseball…

Please, blog, may I have some more?

Today, we go over the top 40 outfielders for 2013 fantasy baseball. Yesterday, we went over the top 20 outfielders for 2013 fantasy baseball. It will be a date which will live in…Well, it won’t live in infamy, so what’s the opposite of that? Famy? It will live in unfamy? That’s just ridiculous. What are you, the 7-Up guy? By the time you get to these outfielders, I’m sure you’ve drafted at least one outfielder. If you haven’t, wake from your slumber, Rip Van Schmucko, your draft is slipping away from you. There’s a lot of interesting names in this top 40. Alex Rios is one interesting name. It was even more interesting when it was Alexis Rios. All of the 2013 fantasy baseball rankings are there. If you right click that and open it in a new tab, your car will get a free smog check (it won’t). Without further delay (there really wasn’t much delay, I mean, that was a short intro compared to most)… Anyway, here’s the top 40 outfielders for 2013 fantasy baseball:

Please, blog, may I have some more?

I’m not sure what the L stands for, but Josh Hamilton obviously felt LAA was a good fit for him. What I’d like to know is how is California a bankrupt state? The Dodgers and Angels’ salaries combined are equal to the GDP of every country, except China and Switzerland. Mozambique couldn’t afford just Pujols and Hamilton. Forget Greinke, Hanley, Vernon Wells, Matt Kemp and Carl Crawford. Alone, Arte Moreno could sell the Angels and buy Africa. Africa Moreno, that’s what they would call it. Burundi would become Aybarundi, Djibouti would become Dbootyhole and Chad would stay the same name, because that’s a badass name for a country, but Arte would put a country-wide golf course there, because anything named Chad and golf go hand-in-hand. The Angels now have Trout, Aybar, Pujols and Hamilton at the top of their lineup. October 1st called and said Aybar just scored his 197th run. Batting fifth, Kendrys could hit .220 and drive in 100 RBIs. Howie Kendrick… Well, he’ll still disappoint, but this is slightly bizzonkers to have three of the top hitters in baseball all in the same lineup. Trout, Hamilton and Pujols alone hit 103 homers last year. The Astros whole team only hit 146. Specifically about Hamilton, I could throw a lot numbers at you about about how his June through September were well short of his April/May. How his BABIP in April/May buoyed his season average. How not quoting these exact numbers but saying how I could quote them is a lot easier. Honestly, none of these numbers matter. I’d take six months straight of 5 homers/month and a .280 average. I don’t need a .380 average month with 12 homers. The bigger issue for me is you have no idea what you’re going to get from Hamilton year-to-year. One year, he hits 10 homers; one year, he misses 30 games; one year, he misses 55 games. Last year, his K-rate wasn’t good and his homer/fly ball rate was obscene. His swinging strike rate was the worst in the majors. This wasn’t just bad for this year. He had the worst rate since 2002. Mark Reynolds set a strikeout record one year and had a better swinging strike rate. Oh, and he’s 32 years old as of May 21st. He could be in for a huge year, but he’ll probably be drafted before I’m willing to look at him. For 2013, I’ll give him the line of 92/29/109/.277/7. You think adding a top hitter to an already stacked lineup will make it exponentially better, but for fantasy it just spreads out the wealth, as the Angels and Dodgers should do. Anyway, here’s some more offseason moves for 2013 fantasy baseball:

Please, blog, may I have some more?