From fear that MLB would crack down on Performance-Enhancing Goggles, [player]Francisco Rodriguez[/player] was traded to the Orioles. Or was something else at work besides the Orioles wanting Dor-K to pitch the 8th, setting up [player]Jim Johnson[/player]? Here, try this. Put your arm down, now pick it up, now put it down, now move your furry eyebrows up and down. [player]Jim Henderson[/player], The Muppet Master, pulls all strings. He orchestrates all. He forces Beaker to say, "Me me me me me me me." Bit of a control freak if you ask me, but it worked out for him this time, since Henderson will be taking over the ninth inning now in Milwaukee. For those holding John Axford for saves, it could happen since he's been solid for the last two months. The Brewers could still trade Henderson or Axford. Or the Brew Crew could send out 2014 season ticket offers reading, "Braun's Back Without the Acne!" Only time will tell. As for K-Rod, in most redraft leagues that don't use middle relievers, you can lose him. This did come across the wire in Baltimore, when you trade for K-Rod, then you better watch your back. Anyway, here's what else I saw yesterday in fantasy baseball:
See all of today’s starting lineups
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ARI | ATH | ATL | BAL | BOS | CHC | CHW | CIN | CLE | COL | DET | HOU | KC | LAA | LAD | MIA | MIL | MIN | NYM | NYY | PHI | PIT | SD | SEA | SF | STL | TB | TEX | TOR | WSH | OAK |
No worries, fantasy owners: [player]Alejandro De Aza[/player] may not speak Swahili*, but this past month his numbers have been music to fantasy owners’ ears. With a .350/.418/.567 line in July, a strikeout rate that has decreased every month of this season, and already reaching a career high in home runs, there are many reasons for optimism. Yes, he struggled early on this season, but he seems to be rounding into form with an approach that attempts to hit for more power. And why not? After all, he plays in a park where [player]Adam Dunn[/player] bunted for a home run** last year. I, for one (unless I can speak for more than one?), am embracing the slightly more homer-friendly De Aza. If he continues to steal bases, then he will add to the scarcity of players who steal bases, but don’t destroy your OPS (you know who you are). For the rest of the season, I believe that he will be able to maintain his current .278/.336/.444 line, which represents a slight dip in OBP with a nice bump in slugging. Anyway, here are some other guys I’m dreaming about in OPS leagues:
And I had no part in it. I'm not a morning person...or afternoon, really. Shoot, there's some nights where I pretend I'm a morning person at night so people don't think I'm not a night person either. Eye-thurr way! Nick had to go to a funeral, so he needed to tape the podcast about four hours before I wake up on the West Coast and about three hours before Rudy rises in Austin, so he went it alone and with some fellow Razzball East Coasters, JB and JayWrong. I don't know why Nick doesn't just record my high-pitched laugh and sprinkle it throughout the podcast and it would be like I'm there anyway. "Hey, Grey, what do you think of
[player]Henry Urrutia[/player]?" *high-pitched cackle* And that's it. So, JB went in-depth on the top 5 starters he's buying for the rest of the season. One guy is
[player]Rick Porcello[/player]? Oh, JB, I've polluted your mind with my Porcello love. At one point, JB got deep into advanced stats and Nick had to remind him that "radio" doesn't cover math. Those are calculators, JB. Geez! JayWrong joined the hulla-on-the-blue and went over his
top 100 2013 fantasy baseball keeper list.
[player]Matt Kemp[/player] at 9?
[player]Josh Donaldson[/player] at 43?
[player]Kyle Seager[/player] at 54? Who made this list? Oh, wait, JayWrong did. (BTW, hulla-on-the-blue is my trademarked phrase, but I encourage you to use it. Just send me a nickel when you do.) Anyway, here's the Razzball podcast (now with some extra morning yawns):
It was a short week, but A Hill O'Beans (My Mustache Has a Mustache - Greys a Biter, says Garner) used those three days to take over first place, dropping That's a Shame (Bold Predictions) down to second. Baseball Cougar (Night of the Living Zombinos) moved up 10 spots to third.
My Mustache has been moving up steadily since June 24th, when they were in 22nd place. They were fortunate to get
[player]Miguel Cabrera[/player] with the second overall pick (Braun went first). Their 4th round choice,
[player]Allen Craig[/player] has combined with Miggy for 173 RBI. They did have to overcome sub-par seasons from their #2
[player]Josh Hamilton[/player] and #5
[player]R.A. Dickey[/player]. Before the season, they traded their #3
[player]Jason Heyward[/player], along with
[player]Alex Cobb[/player] for
[player]Giancarlo Stanton[/player]. Monday, they completed their sixth trade, sending Hamilton and
[player]Joaquin Benoit[/player] for
[player]Stephen Strasburg[/player]. Other deals have brought
[player]Albert Pujols[/player], [player]Aaron Hill[/player], [player]Desmond Jennings[/player] (11 HR/15 SB) and
[player]Starling Marte[/player] (13 SB). Key pickups include
[player]Manny Machado[/player] and
[player]Yasiel Puig[/player].
Check out the
Master Standings (you can also access them via the Leagues menu up top) to see where your team ranks in comparison to the other 767 teams through Sunday. The page now includes sortable stats.
Wow. Dot, dot, dot. I mean, WOW. Dot, dot, dot. Pause for reaction. WOW. Wow. WOW. Stunned silence. I mean, we all knew the suspension was coming, but everyone also figured he'd appeal it like Papa Smurf, you know, until he was blue in the face. The only explanation is the MLB had him dead to rights, which isn't the same as an epitaph for a pigeon you feed instant rice; that's dead to rice. [player]Ryan Braun [/player] probably realized that 1) The Brewers aren't going anywhere this year. 2) He's injured. 3) There's no three. With the suspension of the Jewish Braun by the Jewish Selig, Selig becomes the 1st Jew ever sanctioned by the Jewish Anti-Defamation League, but Selig received high marks from the Jewish Self-Deprecation League. "As Selig was suspending Braun, Bud also pointed out how he had to bring out his media-friendly toupee," said Jewish Self-Deprecation League president, Yitz Steinberg. Mr. Steinberg added, "That kind of self-deprecation is hard to pull off." Obviously, Braun is droppable in all redraft leagues, and, if you're holding onto an expensive Braun in keepers, I'd look to drop him there too, if I needed the room. The good news is you can find off of waivers what Braun has been giving you thus far this year. The bad news, now they have to add an asterisk to the Famous Jewish Athlete pamphlet. Anyway, here's what else I saw yesterday in fantasy baseball:
Do you remember those Will Smith albums? Yikes - hard to believe he actually does serious movies. As in, "seriously?" Like Seven Pounds. "Oh I want to donate my heart to some chick with a heart problem that somehow got affected by my texting and driving accident. So why don't I hop into a bathtub with an extremely toxic jellyfish - that'll make my heart just fine for a transplant, right?" Seriously this got greenlit! Oh - spoiler alert! Wait, isn't that supposed to be before you say what happened? Work on your timing!
Well the Fresh Prince of Milwaukee (wait strike that, you can't call another Brewer "Prince"...) [player]Wily Peralta[/player] burst onto the scene last year with huge power stuff, then Sky went out and wrote a sleeper piece on the big guy before the season started, and it looked like Sky would be the butt of our jokes early this season. And my, besides writing on [player]Bartolo Colon[/player], tough to get more butt. Ok I kid - as a Brewers fan I can tell you Peralta is just an overall big dude - he's not sporting a David Wells gut.
When I went hunting for players to write about this week, I had trouble finding somebody for the lede. Most of the tried and true speedsters are owned everywhere, and I wasn't liking the match-ups I saw for the borderline guys. Then, as the fantasy writer gods often do, they dropped a pair of rookies in my lap. A couple of fresh faces have arrived on the scene in
[player]Junior Lake[/player] and
[player]Jonathan Villar[/player]. Lake, a speedy infielder turned outfielder, was called up by the Cubs. While I was mildly interested in his solid debut performance Friday night, I became even more interested when I started to look into his minor league numbers. Like "
cyclops with a monocle" interested as they say here in Razzball land. Even more exciting was the Villar call-up that was announced yesterday. The young Houston shortstop also showed above average speed in the minor leagues. We'll take a closer look at both and set the mood for a little 'rookie nookie'. Meanwhile, at the adult table,
[player]Eric Young[/player] continues to rack up the steals and should do some major damage against the Nationals later this week.
Miguel Alfredo Gonzalez, the latest Cuban raftee, is set to sign with the Dodgers. Hey, I'm no Quicken magician, but with the money the Dodgers spent on [player]Yasiel Puig[/player] and Gonzalez, couldn't they just have bought the island nation of Cuba and had all of their baseball players? Shoot, for an extra million in designer green camo fatigues, they could have Castro too. "I like the green camo fatigues that Heidi Klum wears in Munich. But no fur hood! If it has fur hood, you Marxist down the price." That's Castro consulting with his fashion police. Gonzalez's repertoire consists of a mid-90's fastball, changeup, curveball and forkball. Anyone that's seen him believes he's major-league ready now, but M.A.G.'s will probably be sent to the minors for at least a few weeks, so it's doubtful he makes any real impact this year for fantasy. Maybe we'll see him start two, three or six times in September, depending on how bad the Dodgers need a starter. If nothing else, this signing will give Puig someone to commiserate with on why there's so much Gulden's on Cuban sandwiches made here. Anyway, here's what else I saw this weekend in fantasy baseball:
Phew! The fantasy baseball DT’s have finally subsided. It was touch-and-go for a while with many Trainspotting-like moments. Choose life. Choose a job. Choose Razzball. We are 90 games in and while I’m not so good with the math (look I spelled “boobs” on my calculator) me thinks that’s more than half-way through this fantasy season. If you were one of the lucky ones that drafted [player]Miguel Cabrera[/player], [player]Chris Davis [/player]or [player]Carlos Gonzalez [/player]good for you. If you happen to own all three, I tip my turban in your general direction. But for the rest of us that drafted [player]Jason Heyward[/player], [player]Matt Kemp [/player]and [player]Brett Lawrie[/player], we have some ground to make up. Hurry, everybody in the El Camino and let’s cruise over to the waiver wire flea market. While sifting through Mexican blankets, Blue Oyster Cult 8-tracks and old Playboys (Jaywrong, put that down! Oohh, Suzanne Somers), we might just find the player that catches fire in the second half and sends us to a fake baseball championship. Choose a career. Choose a family. Choose to jam it or cram it.
Thanks for the welcome back all from my All-Star Weekend excursion. I talked with Grey and he said 'why the heck didn't you write one?' to which I responded 'but please, sir, you promised me some time off around the break while I worked on the Razzball
Fantasy Football side of things. You also said you'd bump my pay from 2 bits to 3 for the year. Does that still apply?' From that point on there was much caning and agony until I reminded him of my
[player]Luke Scott[/player] call from the week prior to calm him along with refilling his vape. But of course, none of this matters to you really, you're here for this week's creeper. So without much more pomp, let me type with the 4 remaining fingers that work why
[player]Justin Smoak[/player] is a good pickup for week 16 of the 2013 fantasy baseball season.
We haven't spent much time discussing [player]Henry Urrutia[/player] in these parts, and that's a factor of two items: (1) I really don't know that much about the guy. The Cuban-born prospect signed with Baltimore way back in 2009, but defection issues followed by visa troubles delayed his stateside debut until this season. (2) What I do know about Urrutia -- or at least what I've seen reported most consistently about the 26-year-old -- is that he's a defensive liability, a well below-average outfielder with game instincts that probably mirror yours and mine. Those reports, I thought, didn't bode well for a hasty arrival in the bigs. Don't get me wrong, I knew the O's had planned to use him in a DH/PH capacity this season, but I was thinking that'd be more of a September thing. In any case, Nolan Reimold's injury has sped up the timetable, and beginning yesterday, Henry Urrutia is Baltimore's DH. The fantasy implications of this arrival are tough to gauge. Urrutia hit .365/.427/.531 with 28 XBH (7 HR) through 288 PA between Double- and Triple-A, which is a nice line, reflective of an advanced approach and modest power. That skill set should help him adapt quickly to big league pitching, but there's little upside here outside of OBP and AVG. Still, Urrutia is a guy to keep an eye on, and he's maybe even worth a speculative grab now if you have room. He's certainly not another Puig, but his stick is probably advanced enough to provide some help to those in need.
[player]Chad Gaudin[/player] shut down the Diamondbacks last night, pitching seven innings, surrendering no runs while giving up just three hits, walking none and striking out eight for his fourth win. Throwing just 92 pitches, he could have easily come out for the eighth but Manager Bruce Bochy opted to go with four relievers instead, because, well that's the most Bruce Bochy thing ever. Anyway, hello there, Gaudin. Have we met? You say you shook my hand while I was unconscious? Strange, but I'll allow it. Poor Chad seems like an easy target ever since the news broke that he was arrested for lewdness in Vegas after groping an unconscious woman on a stretcher. That doesn't sound that...bad....right? Errr. I don't know the whole story, but perhaps he was trying to resuscitate her? Besides, we all get a case of "the honks" every now and again, amiright, fellas? Despite his inability to keep his hands to his sides, Chad Gaudin has been able to pitch incredibly effectively since stepping into the rotation. Since June 2, Chad has allowed two runs or fewer in six of his seven starts, with a 2.16 ERA and 35/9 K/BB ratio in that span. Gaudin is still under 20% owned in RCL leagues and he gets a good test versus the Reds next week at home. With a 0.55 ERA and 31 strikeouts in 33.0 innings at AT&T Park, Chad Gaudin is definitely worth a pick up in all leagues where you need help with starting pitching, at least until he gets suspended for groping [player]Pablo Sandoval[/player] in the locker room.That's sexual harassment, Panda!
Here's what else happened last night in fantasy baseball:
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