Fantasy Baseball Advice

It’s good to be past the trading deadline.  The closers that kept their job feel woobie-safe.  Pull down the Murphy bed, Qualls is here to stay! You might be right, random italicized voice.  Don’t forget, closers still find a way to lose their job.  In the past week, Downs is down, Jenks looks jenky, Frank-Frank is a baby sneeze away from another stint on the DL, I fully expect Lindstrom to get back in the closer picture within two weeks and Nathan seems about as safe as they come and yet, he’s still just a closer.  Look at the ground with your forward facing eyes and put some drops in the eyes in the back of your head.  In other words, don’t settle in.  Sleep is the cousin of death.  Anyway, here’s all of the closers for your fantasy baseball team, as of right now:

$12 Salads

You know that restaurant your girlfriend/wife/what-have-you likes to go to that charges, like, $12 for a salad? Every time you go there, you have a thoroughly solid meal. No complaints, except you just paid $12 for a salad when you could’ve went to McDonald’s and stuffed you and your woman for ten schmools and had $2 in quarters left over to make the hotel bed vibrate. These closers are $12 salads.

1. Joe Nathan (+1) (Matt Guerrier, Jose Mijares)
2. Jonathan Papelbon (+2) (Takashi Saito, Hideki Okajima, Manny Delcarmen)
3. Francisco Rodriguez (-1) (Pedro Feliciano, Bobby Parnell)
4. Mariano Rivera (+2) (Phil Hughes)
5. Jonathan Broxton (-4) (Ramon Troncoso, George Sherrill)

Donkey-corns

Imagine you’re following a donkey, who’s wearing a wool cap, through a desert for 1700 miles. Why are you following a donkey? Because he promises you something wonderful and you just need to trust him. Does the donkey talk? Yes. Yes, he does talk. So when you and the donkey in the wool cap arrive at his destination, he removes his the wool cap to reveal a horn. The donkey is a unicorn and his gift to you for your trust is saves. These closers are Donkey-corns.

6. Heath Bell (-1) (Luke Gregerson, Mike Adams)
7. Joakim Soria (+14) (Juan Cruz, Jamey Wright)
8. Francisco Cordero (David Weathers, Arthur Rhodes, Nick Masset)
9. Jose Valverde (+11) (Chris Sampson, Alberto Arias, LaTroy Hawkins)
10. Ryan Franklin (Jason Motte, Kyle McClellan, Dennys Reyes)
11. Huston Street (+2) (Rafael Betancourt, Matt Daley)
12. David Aardsma (Sean White, Mark Lowe)
13. Brian Wilson (Jeremy Affeldt, Bob Howry)
14. Trevor Hoffman (+9) (Todd Coffey, Mitch Stetter)
15. Kevin Gregg (Carlos Marmol)
16. Fernando Rodney (Bobby Seay, Brandon Lyon)
17. Rafael Soriano (+2) (Mike Gonzalez, Peter Moylan)
18. J.P. Howell (+4) (Dan Wheeler, Grant Balfour, Joe Nelson)
19. Brian Fuentes (-10) (Jason Bulger, Darren Oliver, Justin Speier)
20. Chad Qualls (+8) (Jon Rauch)
21. Brad Lidge (-3) (Ryan Madson)

Brain Freeze

I’m going on a picnic and I’m bringing apples, bananas and Troy Percival– Wait, he just gave up 12 earned runs and hit Pena in the head with a pickoff throw. Brain freeze! Make it stop! Use the following closers at your own risk.

22. Matt Capps (+4) (Jesse Chavez)
23. Kerry Wood (+2) (Chris Perez, Joe Smith)
24. Mike MacDougal (+5) (Sean Burnett, Jason Bergmann)
25. Andrew Bailey (-12) (Michael Wuertz, Brad Ziegler)
26. Frank Francisco/C.J. Wilson (-2) (Darren O’Day)
27. Bobby Jenks (-10) (Matt Thornton, Octavio Dotel, Scott Linebrink)
28. Jason Frasor (-2) (Scott Downs, Brandon League)
29. Leo Nunez (Matt Lindstrom, Kiko Calero, Dan Meyer)
30. Jim Johnson (-11) (Danys Baez, Chris Ray, Billy Ray Valentine)

Francisco Rodriguez went down with an injury. JJ Putz went down with an injury. Eric Gagne went down on his ‘trainer’ and asked for more ‘roids because he’s looked like crap ever since he stopped taking them. Closers come and go but one thing remains the same, you need saves. Now the best thing you can do is let go of what you paid at a draft and try and focus on value. This is even more pronounced with closers because they are really only as good as the saves they are getting you. So my advice is forget where you drafted your closers and begin to trade them away.

TRADE these closers NOW:

Brandon Lyon – I’m not saying trade him for Cristian Guzman, but you should try and get someone that can help your team, because soon Lyon won’t help at all. In his save yesterday, he looked like taco diarrhea. Blake DeWitt nearly hit a home run, Mark Sweeney(!) hit a bullet to Drew and Andruw Jones struckout on a ball three feet outside of the strike zone. Grab Pena, trade Lyon. You’re welcome.

Eric Gagne – He may not have value for too much longer. Get what you can. Riske and Turnbow haven’t looked much better, you say. Yeah, but this will be a headache all season. You should get out now with some value.

Rafael Soriano – He’s already on the DL. See if someone believes he can come back and stay healthy, because I don’t.

Huston Street – He’ll be sitting on your DL in June and you’ll be like, “Grey told me to trade him back in April. Man, I should’ve listened.” Every day you wake up and look at your team, you should expect Street to be on your DL, that’s a problem.

George Sherrill – Probably not a better sell high guy right now. If you trade him today, you might already have a quarter of his season’s saves. Trade this guy before this weekend while he’s still has peak value.

Jose Valverde – Last year he had a great year, before that he was a Croser (crappy closer). He doesn’t really have anyone breathing down his neck to take over but that doesn’t mean he can’t blow a bunch of saves.

Kerry Wood – Trade him while he’s still the closer. For Christmas sake, he gave up a home run to Jason Bay! Either an injury or lack of success is going to get the best (or worse) of him.

Brian Wilson – If you can even get anything for this guy, I’ll be impressed.

Chad Cordero – Trade him before he comes back and reveals that he’s still not healthy.

JJ Putz – He could be this year’s BJ Ryan. News sounds okay coming out about his rehab, so why not trade him before he re-injures himself?

DON’T TRADE any of these questionable closers (unless the deal is just too good to pass up of course).

Joe Borowski, Matt Capps, Brad Lidge, Todd Jones, Trevor Hoffman, Jeremy Accardo, Jason Isringhausen, Joakim Soria, Kevin Gregg, Troy Percival and last, and kinda least, CJ Wilson – If you can, trade Joe Nathan and somebody for Alexis Rios and one of these closers. The Indians don’t care that Borowski is hurting your fantasy team. They’re not replacing him. As I said a few days ago, Hoffman is not going anywhere. Matt Capps is fine. Brad Lidge, while a basket case, is not losing the job to Gordon. Todd Jones sucks dog balls, but he’s the closer. Whatever, you just want saves.

All other closers? They’re all tradable (in fact, everyone is for the right price). Papelbon? Try and get Miguel Cabrera. Francisco Rodriguez? I’m not that worried about this injury, but if someone’s making the right offer, pull the trigger.

Frequent reader, Mike, alerted me that Rafael Soriano is experiencing pain in his throwing arm. This may be nothing, but it could very well be something. Peter Moylan is the backup to Soriano and should be picked up if you have room on your team. Moylan wasn’t going to close last because he had performed a bris two nights in a row, Manny Acosta was going to close. However, Moylan is the backup and man to get the saves if Soriano goes down.