Zach Britton has a mild lat strain. He hopes to return soon as he’s complained that the loneliness of not pitching is killing him. Britton went on to say, “Bollocks!” Maybe that’s a Briton. Any hoo! Or as a Briton would say, “Tally hoo!” The Orioles haven’t said Britton is shut down, but I highly doubt he closes another game in the next week. Or as a Briton would say, “My Full Monty is knackered. Let’s scallywag over a fag, you donkey arse.” The Irish have fought for independence for the better part of a century, and yesterday they exacted some revenge as Britton went down to an O’Day. Darren O’Day said, “Blarney stone something something potato something something Guinness.” It was hard to understand. I would grab O’Day in every league if you need saves as he’s now converted two in two like Chuck Woolery, and, holy crap, Woolery got old! Have you seen The Voice? His son was on there and Woolery looked like he was gonna turn to dust. Anyway, here’s what else I saw yesterday in fantasy baseball:
Adam Jones – Out again with back spasms. I liked Adam Jones better when he was a young player who looked like he hotboxed the room where his player page photo was taken.
Steve Pearce – 2-for-4, 2 RBIs and his 14th homer, now with five homers in his last eleven games. He was straight doodie that sticks to the bowl for most of the year, but he is hot now and I would grab him.
Manny Machado – 1-for-4, 2 RBIs and his 30th homer. C’mon, let’s get an updated remake about Machado called, “Who’s the Manny?” with Ed Lover and Doctor Dre!
Max Scherzer – 6 2/3 IP, 4 ER, 9 baserunners, 12 Ks, ERA at 2.98. Now has 249 Ks on the year. That would’ve led the league in 2005, 2006 and 2007. Scherzer’s third in the majors this year with likely two starts to go.
Ryan Zimmerman – Still has discomfort in his side. In other news, Taco Bell causes diarrhea. By the by, my autocorrect wanted to change diarrhea to Die Hard. If iPhones were around 20 years ago, Bruce Willis might’ve been the star of Diarrhea with a Vengeance.
Miguel Cabrera – Out with a sore back. The news said, “Tigers hope he’s ready by Friday.” I say, “Um, yeah!”
Neftali Feliz – 1 IP, 0 ER and his 8th save and 2nd save opportunity in two days. Apparently, his effort level is up to Ausmus’s standards. Not entirely sure what happened to Alex Wilson, but he hasn’t been used in days. This is the time of the year when a guy disappears for days, then suddenly there’s an update that he has an injury. I’m still holding Wilson where I need saves, but Feliz looks to be in the lead for the closer job.
Justin Verlander – 7 IP, 3 ER, 8 baserunners, 8 Ks, ERA at 3.49. Not a bad year ratio-wise. Guess his win-loss record. I’ll give you a hint, it’s also Altuve’s height. If you guessed 4-8, you’re right. Well played.
Victor Martinez – 1-for-3, 2 runs, 2 RBIs and his 11th homer, hitting .242. Here’s my overrated guys I gave you in March: Cano, V-Mart, Holliday, Wainwright and Freeman. Damn, it feels good to be a gangsta.
Melky Cabrera – 3-for-4, 2 runs, 3 RBIs and his 12th homer. Melky has three homers in his past nine games, though he is hitting around .250 in September, after hitting .266 in August. Could be hot or at least game, Mmmmm elky.
Zack Greinke – Scratched from his start with a sore calf. Teams headed to the playoffs + Starters who need rest = Will be skupped. Damn, that math was so close!
Yasiel Puig – Ran the bases yesterday. Was he with all the other under-ten year olds?
Corey Seager – 1-for-4, 2 RBIs and his 3rd homer, hitting .353. Let the hype begin.
Paul Goldschmidt – 1-for-4 and his 31st homer. Au Shizz! More like Gold Medal, because he’s finishing with a flour-ish!
Chase Anderson – 6 IP, 1 ER, 3 baserunners, 10 Ks. He was awful in his last start, so you can stream him, but there’s no rhyme or reason when he pitches well or grim. Okay, there was a rhyme.
Jeurys Familia – 1 IP, 3 ER as he gave up a ninth inning, three-run blast to Freddie Freeman, who entered the game as a pinch hitter. What does this mean for fantasy? It means you likely benched Freeman when you saw he was out of the lineup and sonavabench!
Daniel Murphy – 1-for-4 and his 13th homer, hitting near-.500 in the last week with three homers in his last eight games. He’s owned just about everywhere, but not everywhere everywhere if you know what I mean mean.
Ketel Marte – 3-for-5, 1 run, 2 RBIs, hitting near-.450 in the last week. Hot schmotato alert!
Wily Peralta – Was shut down yesterday. If only the Brewers had done that in April.
Zach Davies – 6 IP, 0 ER, 3 baserunners, 4 Ks. Somebody hire a tailor, JB needs his inseam taken out!
Jorge Soler – 2-for-3 and his 10th homer, and 2nd homer in his last seven at-bats, but that’s over four games because Maddon’s playing matchups, which is like saying Maddon’s breathing.
Kyle Hendricks – 6 IP, 3 ER, 4 baserunners, 8 Ks in 78 pitches. You can look at the Stream-o-Nator for him, but SON doesn’t know that Hendricks is essentially a long man reliever.
Matt Holliday – 1-for-3, 1 RBI as he returned to the starting lineup for the first time since July 29th. He could’ve taught summer school this year to make some extra bucks. You’re gonna be inclined to add Holliday to your team and I say go for it…if you’re in a hella deep league and there’s no one else available worth anything. Likely, Holliday will continue to get days off here and there, and be no better than a bunch of other players off of waivers.
Randal Grichuk – 1-for-2, 2 runs and his 17th homer as he returned to the starting lineup. I love me some Grichuk, but, to get the ball in to the infield, he needs three cutoff men like Johnny Damon, so I doubt he plays every day.
Adam Wainwright – Threw 25 pitches to hitters yesterday, Matt Adams homered off of him, Grichuk hit a hard liner to center and, watching the highlights on SportsCenter, Beltran’s knees buckled.
Matt Carpenter – 2-for-3, 4 RBIs and his 25th and 26th homers. Damn. He used to be a 12-homer guy. I’m gonna have to take some serious monocles and find me some no-joke cyclopses to look at him this offseason.
Lance Lynn – 6 IP, 0 ER, 3 baserunners, 4 Ks, ERA at 3.16. I wasn’t expecting him to rebound from his last stinker until the playoffs, but I’ll take that with a box of dollars! Is that a saying? It should be.
Joey Votto – 2-for-3 and his 29th homer. Well, he’s not going to win the NL MVP as I predicted, but ishkabibble to that, he still did well.
Aramis Ramirez – Missed starting yesterday due to his groin. Thankfully, that wasn’t reversed with him starting yesterday missing his groin.
Neil Walker – 4-for-5, 2 runs, 6 RBIs and his 15th homer. A player could be in an 0-for-50 slump and I’d start him in Coors. So, does that make Coors a very large female?
Jon Gray – Was shut down yesterday for the year. Here’s an exact quote of his, “I’ve pitched fine on the road. I just can’t find that — whatever it is — to make an adjustment to pitch in this place.” I will point to that quote any time anyone asks if they should pick him up. Oh, and his home ERA was 8.27; his away ERA was 2.70. Good luck trying to get traded to another team!
Nolan Arenado – Didn’t start yesterday after bouncing his melon on the ground. He said he saw stars after it happened and is scheduled for more tests. Can we test to make sure he wasn’t wearing telescopic goggles? I want to rule out everything!
Tom Murphy – 2-for-4, 3 RBIs and his 3rd homer in his third game in a row. Damn, I almost streamed him, but Walt Weiss isn’t playing him every day so I went with James McCann and he McCan’t! Where is this power coming from for Murphy? It’s Coors, doode.
Corey Dickerson – 3-for-5, 2 RBIs and his 7th homer. Fun stuff, Cousin Stinkshorts, but he’s just as likely to be out of the lineup in the Rockies next game.
Adam Conley – 6 IP, 1 ER, 4 baserunners, 8 Ks. The moral of this story is stream hard and fast against the Phillies. Lame story, but true.
Justin Bour – 1-for-5 and his 19th homer. If I would’ve told you in March that Bour would’ve had ten more homers than Ozuna, you would’ve said, “Are you misspelling Michael Bourn?”
Marcus Stroman – 7 IP, 0 ER, 6 baserunners, 5 Ks, ERA at 1.89. Yes, it’s only through three starts. His three starts came against the Red Sox and Yankees twice. *ties red string around wrist to remind myself to draft Stroman next year* “Are you in Kabbalah?” No, Madonna, leave me alone!
Russell Martin – 1-for-3, 2 runs, 3 RBIs and his 21st homer. Over the course of a whole season, the Blue Jays could make Ben Revere into a ten-homer hitter.
Kevin Pillar – 1-for-4, 1 RBI and his 23rd steal, and now has four steals in his last four games. No idea if he’s trying to up his arbitration value or what, but if you need SAGNOF, grab him.
Michael Brantley – Out of the lineup due to his shoulder. You can wait for him to recover, and maybe he returns in the next day or two, but I wouldn’t be shocked to see him only play sparingly the rest of the way. Sorry, don’t shoot the messenger, unless it’s a messenger pigeon and you’re out game hunting.
Carlos Santana – 1-for-4, 2 RBIs and his 17th homer, hitting .234. On a serious tip, what a schmohawk. He’s been about as valuable as Yunel Escobar.
Corey Kluber – 3 2/3 IP, 4 ER, ERA up to 3.55. How’d that drafting early starters thing work out for you?
Phil Hughes – 5 IP, 0 ER, 4 baserunners, 4 Ks, ERA at 4.43. How’d following my advice to draft Hughes work out? Okay, so they’re not all gems!
Brian Dozier – 1-for-4 and his 28th homer. Dozier is French for sleep, which is appropriate since he took a long-ass Dozier during the 2nd half of the season. That’s two years in a row now where his power has fallen off a cliff in the 2nd half like he was yodeling on The Price is Right.
Glen Perkins – 1 IP, 2 ER as he entered the ninth inning with a four-run lead. Not quite time yet to sing, “Jumpin’ Jack Jepsen is a pass.”
Adrian Beltre – 2-for-5, 2 runs, 3 RBIs and his 16th homer. See what I said about Carlos Santana and change the name Santana to Beltre and Carlos to, well, you know.
Rougned Odor – 1-for-4 and his 15th homer. Fun fact! Rougned Odor is also the Cambodian word for what they called the Survivors after 39 days. So excited Survivor’s back! Yes, I think I might be the only one that actually still watches this show.
Elvis Andrus – 2-for-4, 3 RBIs and his 7th homer, hitting near-.350 in the last week. Elvis has entered the building! See, what I did there?
Josh Reddick – 1-for-3 and his 20th homer. The homer didn’t make up for his two errors in the field, which doesn’t include his error not applying sunblock on his lower half.
Drew Smyly – 6 1/3 IP, 0 ER, 8 baserunners, 7 Ks. Since there was no offense yesterday, and it’s now two days in a row where I feel like September is totally devoid of offense, I did a quick and dirty stat grab. In August, there were two teams that didn’t score 100 runs in the month (Braves, Angels). So far this month, there’s twenty teams without 100 runs. Yes, there’s still time, but there’s no way 20 teams get to 100 runs scored. Last year in August the major league average for runs scored was 114. In September, 101. Any interior decorator will tell you there’s a pattern here.
Steven Souza – 4-for-5, 2 runs and his 16th homer. Which is super if I were actually playing him, but because Souza’s day-to-day when he’s not even day-to-day, he’s on my weekly league bench. What’s with that Steven name this year? Effin Souza!
Asdrubal Cabrera – 3-for-5, 2 runs and his 13th homer. Not quite as good as Longoria this year, but close, which is ridiculous.
Rick Porcello – 7 IP, 2 ER, 12 baserunners, 8 Ks. Tied a bit to the WHIPping post, and this was vs. the Rays, so you likely wanted more, but there’s kids starving in Africa so stop wanting so much!
Jake Peavy – 6 IP, 0 ER, 5 baserunners, 4 Ks in Petco. In other words, he could be a Cy Young candidate again if he were traded back to the Padres.
Wil Myers – Out with wrist soreness. Here we go again, Whitesnake!
Jedd Gyorko – 4-for-5, 2 runs, 1 RBI. Gyorko? More like Tease-o! Amiright?!
Kole Calhoun – 2-for-5, 2 runs and his 24th homer. On the backend of the site, I’m starting my year-end recaps that will be posted after the season concludes, and I was looking at Calhoun’s preseason ranking vs. where he’s at now. I ranked him 27th for outfielders; right now, he’s ranked 28th for outfielders on the Player Rater. I should be a migrant worker with this cherrypicking.
Mike Fiers – 6 2/3 IP, 3 ER, 7 baserunners, 3 Ks, ERA at 3.66. Fiers is another one with Hendricks and Hammel, where I think there’s some funny business with their ERA. If Fiers has a 3.66 ERA, I have a chance with Jessica Alba. Any hoo! The Stream-o-Nator likes his next start, and I could see streaming him, though it’s riskier than SON’s purporting.
Carlos Gomez – Doesn’t appear close to returning. If your season hangs in the balance on whether Gomez returns or not, like a grandmother, I’d try to find a new balance.
