Well, I’d like to start off this post by saying I’m sorry to the folks in Razzball nation who picked up Cameron Maybin last week in their weekly leagues. He’ll be out for quite a while with a PCL tear to his knee. In the words of the Guru on Twitter, “This time wasn’t different, Mike…oops”. Maybin promised me the 8 o’clock rez at Dorsia, but then he slipped me an extra lithium and I ended up at Barcadia. Worst of all, in my weekly league, it was too late to swap him when the injury news came out. Next thing I knew it was lunch at Texarkana. Sheesh. Onward and upward, they say, and this week we have some new faces in the mix, including Gregor Blanco, who seems to have found a hot bat since stepping in for the injured Angel Pagan. Check him out and some of the other base stealing threats this week, but you’ll have to excuse me, I have a lunch meeting in 20 minutes with Cliff Huxtable at the Four Seasons.
Please, blog, may I have some more?Jarrod Dyson
How quickly things change. Last week, it was looking like Adam Eaton was close to returning from an elbow injury and A.J. Pollock would be the odd man out in the Arizona outfield. Well, one setback later, Pollock looks good to go as a part of the four-man Arizona outfield and he’s worth watching in deeper formats. He’ll get starts against lefties and maybe more, so he’s a guy that you’ll have to play the matchups with unless he really catches fire. Meanwhile, Adam Eaton is probably not going to do much in the way of baseball for about three weeks and probably won’t be fantasy relevant until the end of June at the earliest. He was so close to returning too. Kind of like crashing your car with one payment left. We’ll take a look at matchups for all the members of the stolen base leaderboard for Week 9. As always, all players listed are owned in less than 50% of ESPN leagues and Sunday’s stats are not included.
Please, blog, may I have some more?I went ahead and picked up Jarrod Dyson this past week only to watch him sprain his ankle before even entering my lineup. ESPN has him listed as 0.0% ownership, so apparently my team doesn’t even count in their world. I was about to get all depressed about it and throw on my Skinny Puppy t-shirt and black eyeliner when I realized that this is a SAGNOF world, and that means when one speedster goes down, we just go to the heap for another. We’re about 1/4 of the way through the season already, and that means it’s time to take a look at some stats for pitchers, catchers, and teams to try to exploit when chasing steals. I’ll also take a look at what Will Venable is up to and how Pedro Florimon may be a possible source of cheap speed in very deep leagues. At the beginning of the season, I posted the 2012 numbers for pitchers and catchers who should be exploited or avoided when it comes to steals, as well as team SB allowed for matchup purposes. Here are those same stats through the first 40 games of the 2013 season.
Please, blog, may I have some more?This is not a drill. Eric Young Jr. should actually see steady starts in right field with Michael Cuddyer hitting the disabled list. After Helton went down we were teased by the occasional EY2 start. I may or may not have seen Grey with a Cuddyer voodoo doll in his hand and next thing I know, EY2 is the Rockies leadoff hitter and starting right fielder. He and a few others who are on page one of the steals’ leaderboards may still be available in your league. Juan Pierre, Michael Saunders, and Kelly Johnson all graduated from this list with over 50% ownership now. Hopefully they are able to contribute to their new fantasy owners instead of doing what I did when I graduated, which was sitting in my parents’ basement eating pizza rolls and hoping that today would be “PLINKO” day on The Price Is Right.
Please, blog, may I have some more?I’ve read a few pieces recently about how stolen bases are down across MLB. As long as steals are a category they will have value, and if steals are indeed down compared to previous years, then they just become that much more valuable. The guy who is currently second in all of baseball in steals, Juan Pierre, is still owned in less than half of the leagues out there. This is kind of confusing to me. If we hit the wire to grab a guy who is in line for saves, or we’ll stream a pitcher hoping for a win, shouldn’t we grab Juan Pierre?
Please, blog, may I have some more?
Josh Vitters and Brett Jackson were called up on Sunday. Here’s what I just said on Friday when I told you to pick Vitters up, “(He) comes with high expectations simply because Cubs fans are like a 104-year-old virgin who would just love to touch the playoffs’ boobies.
Please, blog, may I have some more?
Hey, I’m Higgins and I’m going to be posting updates about our Fantasy Razzball leagues. If you are not familiar with Fantasy Razzball, it is a league format where us truly masochistic fantasy baseballers try to build the worst fantasy baseball team possible.
Please, blog, may I have some more?The Closer Look was only six days ago and we’ve already lost a $12 Salad (Mo), a Donkeycorn (Huston Street) and three Brain Freezes (Santiago/Thornton, Bell, Downs). If you think the Closepocalypse is something created by the media (me) to sell newspapers (no one buys newspapers), then continue to disbelieve. I’m just back from Costco with a keg of chicken broth, 400 count box of Mallomars and a 17 pound box of Wheat Thins to stock my Closepocalypse shelter. When the major leagues have run out of all pitchers to close and have exhausted all other athletes in all other sports trying to convert them to closers and they come knocking on my door, I’m going into my Closepocalypse shelter and you won’t see me again. Street is always a good nose blow away from getting hurt, so it’s no huge shocker. The Padres don’t think he’ll be back when his DL stint is up, and I’ll go as far to say he won’t be back for about a month and he’s a setback away from missing three months. For further reading on that see: His career. I grabbed Andrew Cashner in one league. I would’ve grabbed Luke Gregerson too if I had room, but, alas, I did not. Who could fit anything with this keg of broth?! And, because as soon as anyone becomes a closer, they get hot in the way a Dutch oven is hot, so Cashner followed every other closer this year and gave up a bunch of runs. Anyway, here’s what else I saw this weekend in fantasy baseball:
Cory Luebke – Probably needs Tommy John surgery. He said his symptoms point to it. Now the only thing between him and Tommy John surgery is a visit to Dr.
Please, blog, may I have some more?Evan Longoria is out for 6 to 8 weeks. Let’s look on the bright side. According to our Fantasy Baseball Player Rater, Longoria has been less valuable than Encarnacion and Aviles at 3rd base. On the less bright side, those guys have been really, really good. Okay, that bright side argument didn’t play out so well. Let’s try again. On the bright side, I told everyone to draft Longoria and drafted him myself, so you can point at me and say how screwed I am. On the less bright side, if you’re reading this, there’s a chance you listened to me and drafted Longoria too. Okay, last try. In the 6 weeks he will miss, Longoria would’ve gave you around 8 homers and 30 RBIs with a .300 average. You can get that off waivers from Pedro Alvarez or Chris Davis (if all those coins I just dumped into a wishing well mean anything). Did I just try to convince myself that Pedro Alvarez was going to give me the same stats as Longoria? Wow, glad I haven’t convinced myself anything dangerous like I can fly or I can heal Longoria’s torn hammy by kidnapping him and taking him to St.
Please, blog, may I have some more?Mark Trumbo is done for the year with a stress fracture in his foot. What an inauspicious end to his rookie season, if I’m using the word inauspicious correctly, or even spelling it right. Year line was 65/29/87/.254/9. Trumbo’s OBP was tizzerrible at .291, but his minor league rates suggest he can grow into someone that can take a walk here and there. He’ll never be a .400 OBP guy. The power and the light speed is for real. His most impressive number for this year? 539. As in the number at-bats Scioscia gave him. Sure, he was a bit hogtied with Kendrys adding an S for “sidelined.” In 2012 when Kendrys returns (or is the verb singular there?), we’ll see if Scioscia learned his lesson that every player doesn’t need to be a variation of a light-hitting middle infielder. I have my doubts. There’s talk Trumbo could see action at third base next year, but he fields about as well as Dalton Trumbo avoided commie accusations. Anyway, here’s what else I saw yesterday for fantasy baseball:
Yovani Gallardo – Scratched from his last start so he’s ready for the postseason. Um, I have fantasy championships on the line? Hello, priorities. On a real baseball note, I hope the Brewers go all the way in the playoffs. That is who I’m rooting for. Or is it whom? Anyhoo! (Anywhom?) Not just because I want to see Selig’s toupee get all bent out of shape when he hands the World Series trophy to the owner that replaced him or because I picked them in the preseason. I want the Sausage Race on a national stage. The kielbasa has toiled in obscurity long enough.
Please, blog, may I have some more?