Chris Davis (1-for-4, 3 RBIs, hitting .268) hit his 5th homer, and the announcers said that it was all Davis since there was no breeze in the stadium. Could there have been no breeze because there were no one in attendance? Is that why they’re called fans? Is the world devoid of wind without people? I feel like Mike Seaver on the Growing Pains episode when he figured out there was TV shows even if he was at school. This is mind blowing! I need to take a schvitz and clear my mind. Maybe Manny Machado (3-for-4, 3 runs and his 4th homer) plays better without a crowd, not taking after his uncle, Randy “Machado Manny” Savage. RIP, you raspy voiced lunatic! But, really, all of this offense was thanks largely to Jeff Samardzija (5 IP, 7 ER, 11 baserunners, 5 Ks, ERA up to 4.78). When I type Samardzija in my iPhone, it autocorrects to, “Inseam Arduous.” No truer words were ever autocorrected. If Devon Travis and Arenado were sitting on either of my legs and I had Samardzija pitching for my team, it would still be arduous in my inseam. Way to kill my buzz, you impossible-to-spell, mullet-haired freak! Alphabet Soup’s ERA is worse than his xFIP, that’s the good news. The bad news is everything else. His xFIP is still 4.13 and his K/9 is 6.2. He’s throwing next to no walks, but maybe he should throw some if it means not letting people single you to death. I wouldn’t sell Samardzija low, but I’m also more concerned now than I was in the preseason. Anyway, here’s what else I saw yesterday in fantasy baseball:
Ubaldo Jimenez – 7 IP, 0 ER, 4 baserunners, 6 Ks, ERA down to 1.59. He’s shaved more than two walks off his walk rate from last year. Get it, Ubaldo shaved! *high fives self* Ow, carpal tunnel! His walk rate is down to 3.2, and his xFIP 2.97. His velocity is more or less where it’s been, but he’s throwing more fastballs and less sliders. Perhaps that’s why he’s locating better. Last time he threw so few sliders it also coincided with his last remotely passable walk rate. This is a convoluted way of saying I picked up Ubaldo in one 15-team league, dropping Edinson due to the latter’s next matchup.
Archie Bradley – Hit the DL, but has no concussions or fractures from the liner off his melon. “Lucky I didn’t get involved.” That’s Gallagher.
Josh Collmenter – 8 IP, 0 ER, 5 baserunners, 6 Ks, ERA down to 2.76. Usually his Ks make Fister look like Nolan Ryan. Why did you flinch, Robin Ventura?
Yasmany Tomas – 2-for-4, 1 run, 3 RBIs, hitting .333. Next thing that happens is he hits a couple of homers, and then people start scrambling to pick him up. Keep that in mind as you look at him on waivers.
Justin Verlander – Yesterday, he played light catch. Him and Matt Cain should start their own league. The CBL, the Catch Baseball League. Like jai alai, but soft toss.
Shane Greene – 4 1/3 IP, 7 ER, 9 baserunners (0 BBs), 8 Ks, ERA up to 4.60. When you sold your soul for Greene to strike out guys, you should’ve read the fine print. Okay, so now when you say SuperGreene it still works if you say it sarcastically. No one really says super as a positive unless they’re a 60-year-old woman in church. Depends who else is available, but I’d look elsewhere from Greene in most shallower mixed leagues.
Miguel Cabrera – 3-for-5, 4 RBIs and his 4th and 5th homers, hitting .370. Sometimes you can see Miggy squinting at Martinez’s uniform back and you can only assume that he’s trying to get it to read, “J.D. Martini.”
J.D. Martinez – 1-for-5 and his 6th homer, hitting .273. “Please get that bottle cap opener away from my ear.” That’s J.D. talking to Miggy.
Andrew Romine – 4-for-4, 1 RBI and his 3rd steal as he started at short. So, it’s not Iglesias at all, but the shortstop position that makes hitters. Then how do we explain Danny Santana?
James McCann – 3-for-4, 3 RBIs and his 1st homer. Was just getting the start in place of Alex Avila. Might also explain Miggy’s big game, he didn’t have the constant thoughts of AA haunting him.
Phil Hughes – 5 IP, 3 ER, 7 baserunners, 4 Ks, but left the game with a strained hip flexor. I strain my hip every time I say hella and holla. Hughes’s velocity has been a little off this year, so I wonder if his hip has been bothering him for longer than they’re letting on. He says he should avoid the DL, but holla at ya boy if you know more!
Oswaldo Arcia – 2-for-4, 2 RBIs and his 2nd homer, hitting .250. I was trying to think of something negative to say about how Arcia can’t hit lefties, but then I saw his name anagrams to Orca AIDS AWOL, and I can’t put down a guy that is trying to eradicate whale AIDS.
Trevor Plouffe – 2-for-5, 3 RBIs and his 3rd homer. Plouffe goes the dynamite!
Alcides Escobar – Left yesterday’s game after being beaned in the head. It was so bad when I looked at the replay it said, “Your browser does not support iFrames.” Damn, even Mozilla is shielding me. I’m no conspiracy nut, but if I were, I’d say people are just trying to get Yordano to go from zero to “Oh, no he dint.” My guess is that Alcides will go to the DL for at least the minimum 15 days, but, if I remember correctly, this happened to Infante last year, and he only missed a few days, so, Alcides, the gauntlet has been thrown.
Yordano Ventura – 5 1/3 IP, 5 ER, 10 baserunners, 1 K and no fights. Yordano showed up at the game with his spiritual advisor, Don King, and before throwing out the first pitch, he knelt to his Mecca, a Wells Fargo where he had a really nice conversation with the teller. Either that or someone slipped Yordano a Mickey. How did he not retaliate for Alcides getting beaned? He retaliated previously for a guy running too hard out of the batter’s box.
Eric Hosmer – 1-for-4, 2 RBIs and his 2nd homer. In the Abbreviations in the Middle of the Word language, the S in Hosmer stands for sans. Yesterday, it sans corrected.
Danny Salazar – 6 IP, 4 ER, 6 baserunners, 7 Ks. He appeared shook up after beaning Alcides, but that could’ve been a ploy to avoid Yordano from driving a car into his living room and beating him senseless.
Jason Kipnis – 1-for-4, 4 RBIs and his 1st homer, hitting .232. Fantasy value? From Kipnis? What do we owe this honor?
Roberto Perez – 3-for-3, 3 runs, 2 RBIs and his 3rd homer. Or basically what Yan Gomes would’ve been doing. Catchers: They don’t matter.
Joc Pederson – 1-for-3 and his 4th homer as he hit leadoff. Wishing Mattingly a speedy recovery after someone knocked some common sense into him.
Adrian Gonzalez – 2-for-4 and his 8th homer, hitting .383. A-Gon is carrying teams this month of April, but I’d be careful about trusting him. That could’ve been word for word what I said last year. His April stats last year: 8 HRs, .337. His May stats: 4 HRs, .231. His June stats: 1 HR, .222.
Alex Guerrero – 0-for-1, and didn’t start yesterday because Mattingly taxed his brain moving Joc to the leadoff spot.
Jimmy Rollins – 1-for-4 and his 2nd homer, hitting .185. Too bad he left Philly, he would’ve fit right in.
Jesse Hahn – 5 IP, 3 ER, 5 baserunners, 6 Ks vs. Matt Shoemaker 5 2/3 IP, 3 ER, 7 baserunners, 3 Ks. This matchup was billed as two preseason favorites of Grey’s that he never wants to talk about again.
Albert Pujols – Left yesterday’s game with a hamstring injury. He’s day-to-day for now. Thankfully, not minute-to-minute or month-to-month, hitting the sweet spot of the injury bug.
Rafael Montero – Will have his shoulder examined. So a routine exam for the Mets and their young pitchers.
David Wright – Took live BP. Nah, Wright, you gotta try that robot BP, all the kids have been talking about.
Michael Cuddyer – 2-for-4, 2 RBIs and his 2nd homer. It seems like Cuddyer either is healthy and not hitting, or not healthy and hitting. Right now, he’s more or less healthy.
Marcell Ozuna – 1-for-3, 1 run and his 1st steal. When I heard Ozuna and Rizzo were attending the offseason workshop held in Otis Nixon’s basement titled, “Run You Motherf***ers, ” I should’ve paid attention.
Giancarlo Stanton – 2-for-4, 3 RBIs and his 6th homer. I’m ready for a 20-homer month from Stanton. I imagined saying that while sitting on his lap.
Dee Gordon – 2-for-3, 1 RBI, hitting .409. I’m seriously not cheating, okay? Okay. I’m going to guess his BABIP. .560. Am I close? Damn! About a hundred points off.
Mat Latos – Left yesterday’s game with a hamstring strain. Marlins are listing him as day-to-day, but they also finagled $400 million from the city of Miami for a flying unicorn statue, so not sure we should trust them.
Mike Foltynewicz – Could be brought up for Friday’s start. Just as my fingers were starting to recuperate from typing Samardzija, here comes his brother from another Scrabble board. Foltynewicz is interesting mostly because he throws hard. Like hard hard. Like hard hard hard. Last year, he averaged 96.7 MPH on his fastball. That would lead the majors for starters this year. So, yeah, hard, ya heard? Last year that velocity led to a 5.30 ERA. Lowercase yay. So, in deep mixed and NL-Only leagues, he’s worth a flyer, but I’d like to see more in most leagues. Oh, and for those wondering how to pronounce his name, it’s like Voltynewicz but with an F.
Alex Wood – 5 IP, 5 ER, 7 baserunners, 8 Ks. I watched him last night, because he had been weak-sista in the Ks department and I wanted to see what was up. Seems that prior to last night, he hadn’t thrown that many breaking pitches — his strikeout pitches — but last night he looked totally fine, until he got done in by a bunch of untimely hits. After his next start vs. the Phillies, there will be no more opportunities to buy him low.
Jose Valverde – The Nats signed him to a minor league deal. Clarification: the Nats signed him to potentially pitch for their own team. I realize with Valverde you might think MLB changed their rules and the Nats signed him to pitch for another team. How great would that be? Like you wouldn’t love it if every team got to sign one free agent to another team. Heath Bell would love it, he’d still be playing.
Ian Desmond – 0-for-5, hitting .225, as the Nats scored 13 runs. Ticker tease!
Denard Span – 2-for-6, 2 runs, 3 RBIs and his 2nd homer in as many games. Not sure what made me think of this since I don’t watch football, but if Span played football, he’d be D’nard Span, and would have an attempted murder on his rap sheet.
Danny Espinosa – 4-for-5, 2 runs, 2 RBIs. Hadn’t been doing a ton coming into this game, but a four-hit night usually leads to a hot schmotato run, so I’d cyclops him.
Wilson Ramos – 3-for-4, 2 runs, 1 RBI, hitting .279. ¡Aqui, Ramos a cantar! Spanish pun points!
Jordan Zimmermann – 7 IP, 3 ER, 9 baserunners, 7 Ks vs. the Braves. If this were last year, he would’ve thrown a shutout with nine Ks. Cust kayin’.
Andrew McCutchen – 2-for-5, 1 run, 2 RBIs, hitting .194. Member when a two-hit night meant a steal or two? Sigh. Hey, I told you to sell him almost three weeks ago.
Gerrit Cole – 6 IP, 0 ER, 4 baserunners, 8 Ks ERA at 1.76. Is it surprising to hear that the teams where I have Cole, Archer, Carrasco and C-Mart are doing pretty good? C’mon, live with me before the regression hits!
Jung Ho Kang – 3-for-4, 1 run, 2 RBIs and his 1st steal. If Ho Kang can’t, no one Kang.
Dexter Fowler – 2-for-4, and finally over 50% owned! It’s an early (or very late) Christmas miracle!
Miguel Montero – 3-for-4, 1 RBI. I hate that there’s a three catcher rotation going on with the Cubs, but Montero has been hot schmotatoing recently — a homer and six for his last 12.
Kyle Seager – Didn’t start yesterday due to a ‘banged up thumb.’ That reminds me, one time I accidentally sat on an open orange drink mix container and I had a Tang’ed up bum.
Nelson Cruz – 2-for-4, 2 runs and his 10th homer. Nelly’s making it hot in herre. Speaking of which, I saw Nelly is about to release a country album. Apparently, that’s hick-hop, and he’s about to get illbilly!
Logan Morrison – 4-for-5, 2 RBIs. Maybe Logan will take to Twitter now and try to resurrect the hashtag most commonly associated with him: #nobodycares.
Chase Utley – 0-for-3, hitting .114. It’s not easy to get a batting average under .100, but he has a chance. If the Mendoza Line is .200, what’s .100? How about On the Fritz? Fritz Buelow hit .192 for his career, and “on the fritz” has obvious connotations. The Line Buelow Mendoza? Okay, it’s a work in progress. I’m gonna feel lousy if the Phils announce Utley passed away on April 5th and they’ve been Bernie’ing him to 2nd all this time.
Odubel Herrera – 2-for-5, 1 RBI, hitting .308. My waiveredlust is strong with this man.
Ryan Howard – 1-for-4 and his 4th homer, and fourth in the last eight games. Hey, it’s not pretty but if you need power, you know what to do.
Carlos Martinez – 6 IP, 2 ER, 9 baserunners, 3 Ks. After I said to sell him last week, someone said something like, “You’re handsome but dopey as all get out.” I never said Martinez would collapse immediately, and his last matchup was the Brewers, and yesterday was the Phils. All I’m saying is Martinez is more of a 3.50 ERA, not a 1.73 ERA guy, so this is a sell high, not sell for peanuts (unless you’re an elephant).
Kolten Wong – 2-for-4, 1 run, 1 RBI, hitting .300. Imagine if he was actually getting pitches to hit and not in front of the pitcher!
Michael Pineda – 5 2/3 IP, 2 ER, 6 baserunners, 5 Ks, ERA at 3.73, which is whatevs. His peripherals are 95% butter on Jessica Alba’s backside. Open your minds to this: 9.2 K/9 and a 0.57 BB/9. Excuse me, sir, do you have anything for Grey to poop on? His velocity is a little off where it was last year, but his xFIP is 2.44 and I’m buying.
Krispie Young – 2-for-4 and his 5th homer, hitting .305. On our Player Rater, Krispie is sitting by Duda and Calhoun with $13 in value. Yup.
Drew Smyly – 6 IP, 2 ER, 5 baserunners, 10 Ks, EA at 3.38. I wish I owned Smyly in all my leagues, which is the most succinct I get when I like a guy, except for this qualifying of my succinctness.
Rusney Castillo – Finally activated from the minor league DL. Too bad now Victorino’s on his way back. Castillo has worst timing than… Uh… Hmm… Well… Something with bad timing!
Hanley Ramirez – 1-for-4, 2 RBIs and his 10th homer. Manley Ramirez!
Rick Porcello – 7 IP, 1 ER, 4 baserunners, 6 Ks, ERA down to 5.34. Stream-o-Nator doesn’t show much love for the Sawx pitchers, as it shouldn’t, but it actually liked Porcello’s start yesterday, and his next one.
Dallas Keuchel – 8 IP, 1 ER, 3 baserunners, 4 Ks, ERA at 0.73. Keuchel exercises is the repeated contracting and relaxing of the pelvic muscles while Dallas is pitching. It builds stamina and chases away any potential mates.
Jake Marisnick – 2-for-4, 2 runs, 1 RBI and his 7th and 8th steals, hitting .389 as he single-handedly generated two runs off of Kimbrel and foreclosed on Gregerson. I’d say Marisnick should be hitting 2nd in the Astros lineup, but he’s better than anyone, except Altuve and Springer, so, I guess, hit Marisnick 2nd, 3rd, 4th and/or 5th.
Colby Rasmus – 1-for-4, 2 RBIs and his 4th homer, and 2nd in the last three days. Hot schmotato heating up!
Andrew Cashner – 7 IP, 2 ER, 7 baserunners, 10 Ks. I know facial hair accoutrements as well as any man outside of Rollie Fingers, so let me go on record and say all these beards are ugly. They look like they smell. Will someone please take a stand and ban the beard? Your shizz is the bad kind of funky! No wonder black people don’t want to watch baseball, it looks like a hillbilly convention! Now get off my lawn!
Ryan Braun – 3-for-5, 5 RBIs and his 3rd and 4th homers. In this game, Adam Lind (2-for-5) also hit his 4th homer. The race between Lind and Braun for who will have more fantasy value this year is heating up. Like Randy Jackson would’ve said, we have ourselves a competition! That’s until this weekend and one of them goes down to injury. Two over-the-internet dollars says Braun gets hurt within three days of Gomez returning. C’mon, this is easy fake money!
Khris Davis – 1-for-3 and his 1st homer. Davis usually gets hot and hits them in bunches like Mr. Chiquita Banana, so go and grab him if he was dropped in your league.
Michael Lorenzen – 5 IP, 3 ER, 9 baserunners, 5 Ks. Bryan Price is dropping pitchers into Bailey’s vacated spot like he’s dropping F-bombs, but Cingrani apparently has no chance, cursed. Lorenzen had around a 6 K/9 in the high minors, so he’s avoidable in all mixed leagues.
Jay Bruce – 1-for-3 and his 5th homer, hitting .188. Doesn’t 188 look like Billy Hamilton standing next to Billy Butler and Matt Adams? Hmm, maybe it’s me.
Tucker Barnhart – 1-for-2 and his 1st homer. It’s funny Barnhart is catching for the Reds, because their usual catcher is a Barnface.
