You wrote a letter to your leaguemates, but before you sent it to them, you asked me to proofread it but not share it. Too bad, here it is, “Yo, what’s up, snitches?! I have six closers and am sticking it to the rest of the league in their whole bum, then acting that out like Knight from MTV’s The Challenge. I don’t need no one! All I need is Huston Street, Kevin Gregg, Ernesto Frieri, Joaquin Benoit, Brad Ziegler and this chair, I need this chair. I got saves for days! Open up your ‘kitten-playing-with-motherf**king-yarn’ calendar and mark September 28th down for the day when you concede the championship to me. Use your rainbow-colored pencil. Is it okay to use that word? Any the hoo! Rather than recount all of that SAGNOF g’dness, let me take this time to instead ask you if you watched the most recent Top Chef Masters. I’m lonely and looking for friends.” Solid letter, I probably wouldn’t put single quote marks around kitten-playing-with-motherf**king-yarn but it’s fine to send it off as is. The only other problem is you might also lose more than half of your closers in less than a week. This is also the last week when you and your opponents can gain major saves if you’re hurting in that category. On July 31st there could be as many as 10 new closers. At no point from now until October do you have a chance for this much turn over. Guys that could move into the closer role in under a week includes, but is not limited to: Luke Gregerson, Blake Parker, Ryan Webb, James Russell, Antonio Bastardo, Carter Capps, Dale Thayer, John Axford (still even with Henderson taking over the job), Jose Cisnero, Pedro Strop and Antonio Alfonseca, because he has six fingers on each hand and you can’t ever count him out, at least not without removing your pants and a shoe. Granted, guys like Huston Street or Tom Wilhelmsen or Glen Perkins might be traded and stay in the closer role on their new team, but that means someone else would lose their job. Or maybe Huston Street will go to the Yankees and become the 8th inning man and Robertson moves to the 7th. Or maybe Jonathan Papelbon goes to the Tigers and Benoit owners have to call the Ben-wambulance. A lot could happen in the next few days or nothing, but I’d absolutely stash as many middle relievers as I could right now. Anyway, here’s some more players to Buy or Sell this week in fantasy baseball:
BUY
Christian Yelich – The Marlins are like the famous line from Dazed & Confused. The older the Marlins franchise gets, their everyday players stay the same age. If the Marlins organization is around in ten years (which I highly doubt), they’ll still be replacing 23-year-old players with 22-year-old ones. Dietrich and Ozuna got replaced by Yelich and Marisnick this week, and next week Marisnick and Yelich will be replaced by the bat boy and foul line ball girl. Marlins players when they first come up are like, “Oh, man, this is great, I’m with the big league team,” then within a few months they’re like, “The Marlins make me pay for my own laundry and why do they keep massaging olive oil into my skin and sprinkling me with paprika, are they going to eat me?”
Jake Marisnick – The other half of the new-NEW-new look Marlins. 61*nick is also young, dumb and full of power and the ability to run. He’s probably still too raw, but worth the gamble in just about all leagues for upside.
Luke Scott – Moving past the barely-old-enough-to-shave Marlin players and onto a guy that will probably retire in a few years, move into a log cabin in the woods and shoot pheasants while imaging peasants.
Henry Urrutia – Here’s what I said previously about him, “Urrutia pounds balls up the middle, and coincidentally his name translates to urethra. He looks like a solid average guy with some pop and little to no speed. Think 20-23 homers, .300 average and 3 steals over the course of a season. The problem is the O’s want to sit him vs. lefties (even though he is a natural righty!). I like him, but you need to platoon him in and out of your fantasy lineup.” And that’s me quoting me!
Michael Saunders – Took him a long time to get it started, but he’s finally looking more like a poor man’s Michael Brantley than Michael Flatley.
Cody Ross – I’m not even looking at his last week worth of stats for this recommendation. I’m going strictly on the Hitter-Tron. If Ross comes through this weekend, I’m going to buy the Hitter-Tron a 1,000 count box of paper clips and let him roll around in it. No judgements!
Logan Schafer – I passed over Schafer for Khris Davis in a keeper — ma nishtanah — because I like the latter’s upside more, if latter indicates Davis, but Schafer has more immediate value taking over for Braun. Not much, but more.
Jonny Gomes – Gomes gets crazy hot for about two weeks at a time, then falls into oblivion. If God were Ty Wigginton, he made Gomes in his image.
Brandon Moss – You clearly know when he’s going to sit and, when he does play, he has power. According to our Player Rater, he has the 7th most value for 1st basemen when isolating for power. More than Fielder, Pujols, Votto, Posey, A-Gon, et al (which isn’t the Israeli airline).
Garrett Jones – If you were platooning Moss and Jones all year, you’d have 27 homers (probably not) and be winning your league (maybe, but wouldn’t necessarily be because of Jones and Moss).
Justin Smoak – On our 30-day Player Rater, Smoak has been more valuable than Votto. Smoak also reminds me of stale feces when he’s doing poorly, so only use when hot.
Yonder Alonso – He’s been at the heart of the Padres offense– Ha! Sorry, I tried to say that with a straight face. Okay, let me try to think of my childhood dog, Lollipops, that was murdered right in front of me, and try to say it again. Yonder’s been at the heart of the– Oh, forget it. I can’t do it.
Brad Miller – In fifty at-bats for Rudy, Miller has a line of 7/2/12/.240. Shoot, was hoping that would make the case for picking Miller up. Well, I’d still grab him.
Adeiny Hechavarria – He’s usually a glove-first guy but he’s been swinging a Hecha-very hot bat lately.
Jonathan Villar – Will strikeout more than you in a lesbian bar trying out your tried-and-true speed dating techniques. Though, he has speed to burn like Michael Madsen cooking a spoon.
Junior Lake – I’ll save the superlatives for what he’s done since he was called up because I don’t really know what a superlative is. With that said, Lake has been the greatest player in the history of mankind and makes Frank Ocean wanna downsize.
Dayan Viciedo – I love him when he gets hot, and I hate him when he gets cold. I’m fickle, y’all!
Evan Gattis – I liked him so much yesterday, I put him in my outfield, then I dropped him for Viciedo. (I did just say I was fickle.) I would grab Gattis again though, if I wasn’t so stupidly staying loyal to Salvador Perez. Freakin’ Perez better attend my funeral one day.
Miguel Montero – Prior to Salvador Perez burying his fantasy value with his grandmother, I never would’ve said this, but Montero will probably be better than him too.
Wei-Yin Chen – He shouldn’t be in every single Buy column for the last month; he should just be owned. Don’t make me come back there!
Brandon Beachy – I just went over my Beachy fantasy. I wrote it while wondering if George Zimmerman rescued off-duty stuntmen from that flipped SUV. Was that the craziest thing? Am I being cynical here or was that more staged than the moon landing?
Randall Delgado – The Stream-o-Nator says Delgado will nom-nom-nom the Padres’ heart out of their chest. Cover your love muscle Yonder!
Edwin Jackson – At the beginning of July, I said something like, Jackson is due to have a major correction to his stats and be much better than he’s been. In July, his ERA is 1.83. And that’s me paraphrasing me and adding proof!
Tommy Milone – His home ERA is at 3.20. Guess where he’s pitching his next two games? You’re smart!
Wily Peralta – Skip today’s start vs. the Rockies in Coors, then he gets a bunch of good matchups for another couple of weeks. Beyond that little nugget to store in your head like you’re a squirrel, Peralta’s been lights out for a while now. Not the bad lights out either, like when your lady asks you to turn the lights out after you take off your pants. “Who’s got a treat for Lady Cougar?!” That’s me hitting the lights at night.
SELL
Nelson Cruz – Can you feed some line of BS to your leaguemate that Cruz says he’s going to appeal his suspension and keep playing? No? Okay, can you hire a hypnotist to put your leaguemate under a trance and have them trade you someone for Cruz? Unethical? How ethical is it that Cruz is shooting ‘roids up before every at-bat?
Bryce Harper – Your emoticon is flipping around in a circle and you hear the Pac-Man dying sound. Whomp-whomp-whomp. (BTW, you know how they have sites with sound bites of famous sounds? There should be a sound library of how to spell sounds phonetically. A Phonetic library. The top header of that site could be a librarian with her finger to her lips and it reads shush. Or not. Whatevs!) So, I’m concerned about Harper’s knees. If he is still dealing with bursitis and needing treatment months later, I think it could be a problem for the entire year. I wouldn’t sell him in keepers, and I wouldn’t sell him in redraft leagues for a cassette single of Mellow Man Ace’s Mentirosa, but I’d look to see what I could get.
