Burps for five minutes, then sloppily places a lei on a waitress. Unable to resist the primal urges of being drunk and a man, he leans in to kiss the waitress, but, before landing the smackeroo, two bouncers drag him out of the tropical-theme bar and grill. As he’s dragged by the elbows, he screams, “Your burgers at Islands suck!” A very somber Eric McCormack enters, and we see it’s a PSA. Eric addresses the camera, “This is what happens when you have too Manny Pina’s.” Yesterday, Manny Pina went 3-for-6, 3 runs, 6 RBIs and his 8th and 9th homer. I’m really starting to come around on the idea presented by a commenter that said instead of drafting a catcher, you draft a team and get that team’s catchers. Like drafting a defense in fantasy football. Also, in this game, that was Kyle Hendricks’s worst nightmare (4 IP, 9 ER,, ERA at 4.15), Jace Peterson (5-for-5, 3 runs, 4 RBIs) came a triple short of the cycle. Hendricks’s previous worst nightmare was getting caught in an elevator with a hungry Daniel Vogelbach. That’s every player’s worst nightmare. Moving on! The other big star yesterday was Luis Urias (5-for-6, 5 runs, 5 RBIs) hit his 15th and 16th homer, and I just added him to the Buy column coming later today. Pretty goofy that he’s only rostered in 30% of leagues. On the Player Rater, Christian Yelich is over two hundred spots lower in value than Luis Urias. Take me to the top of a 100-foot wave in Nazaré, Portugal and throw me into a barrel. Anyway, here’s what else I saw yesterday in fantasy baseball:
Brandon Woodruff – 3 IP, 0 ER, ERA at 2.18. Pulled after 74 pitches with a four-run lead because Counsell wanted to rest him. Nolan Ryan is howling like a loon while noogie’ing random people at an autograph show.
Jake Arrieta – Was released by the Cubs. Seeing people back-patting the Cubs for releasing obvious dead weight from their team. Um, yeah, okay, but y’all remembering that the Cubs were the ones dumb enough to sign Arrieta, like, six months ago, right?
Willson Contreras – Hit the IL with a knee sprain. That leaves the Cubs with…Uh-oh, Chirinos!
Patrick Wisdom – 1-for-5 and his 18th homer, and his 2nd homer in as many games, hitting .265. Wisdom has the same number of homers as Giancarlo in roughly 140 fewer at-bats.
Tanner Houck – 5 IP, 3 ER, 6 baserunners, 8 Ks, ERA at 2.93, as he was recalled from Worcester. In some ways, the Red Sox are just Worcester’s higher! When in Boston, get sauced! Right?! High five me! Right now! No? Okay. Houck is a Worcester-hire! Right?! Still no? Okay. Any hoo! I like Houck, but he’s going to be limited to a 4 to 5 inning pitcher, and I know he got optioned down, but that’s a clerical move and he’ll be back for his next start. Also, here’s Jay’s Tanner Houck fantasy.
Wander Franco – 1-for-5, 2 RBIs and his 5th homer. Know what’s funny in an unfunny way? Wander’s going to get to my predicted projections of 10/10 and be super boring doing it. Meh, chance for upside is still there, so I’d hold tight.
Jed Lowrie – Didn’t play as the A’s scored 17 runs. Holy sit!
Chris Bassitt – 6 IP, 0 ER, 5 baserunners, 6 Ks, ERA at 3.06. At 32 years of age, he has a career ERA under 3.50. There’s only 22 starters under 3.50 for just this year! Yet — again with some stank — YET! Bassitt is still underrated. Someone asked yesterday if they should start him. Look at the Player Rater for starters — he’s so crazy under-appreciated — he’s around a top 10 starter on the year! I also wrote a sleeper post for him this past offseason, so this ain’t new. Finally, I bet he’s under-drafted again in 2022.
Matt Chapman – 0-for-1, 3 runs, 5 walks. That’s a line for all the nerds.
Mitch Moreland – 2-for-5, 3 runs and his 8th and 9th homer, hitting .230. I was Mitching for a batty call, and Mitch, don’t kill my vibe!
Marco Gonzales – 9 IP, 1 ER, 3 baserunners, 9 Ks, ERA at 4.35. I’m tempted to say Marco….*pops head out of the water*…Gonzo is an August/September pitcher because of how well he pitched last year, and maybe he is. I don’t know, but this matchup was extremely favorable per the Streamonator.
Jake Fraley – 1-for-3 and his 8th homer. Not sure why, but I want to like Fraley way more than I should. Something to discuss with the shrink, I suppose. Any hoo! He’s done little to nothing recently.
J.P. Crawford – 2-for-4 and his 6th homer, hitting .271. Keep looking at Mariners’ player pages hoping to see something the least bit interesting recently and, “Have they ever scored more than three runs?”
LaMonte Wade Jr. – 1-for-4, 3 RBIs and his 15th homer, and 2nd homer in the last two games. Not only is he hot, he’s gonna pass Giancarlo in homers too, isn’t he? Is that my baseline for everyone? Yes, yes it is.
Logan Webb – 6 IP, 0 ER, 5 baserunners, 8 Ks, ERA at 2.96. His ERA is what?! I’m over here with a ding-dangnabbit Zach Plesac and Yu Darvish making my fantasy teams into garbage disposals and Webb’s throwing–Oh, wait, it’s the Giants. Of course, he’s good. Everyone on their team is good. Streamonator did love Webb yesterday, for what it’s Cronenworth.
Kyle Muller – 2 1/3 IP, 6 ER, ERA at 4.17, and demoted. The Muller Report shows this wasn’t even a perfect phone call to the bullpen to get him the heck out of the game.
Jesse Winker – 3-for-4, 2 runs, 4 RBIs and his 24th homer, hitting .309. Winker ends the year with 30 ding-dongs like 15 male conjoined twins and a .300 average and it’s gonna be hard for me to rank him much lower than 25 overall next year. Since he has no speed, could see him being a Pitfall Harry that I might want to avoid. Honestly, not sure yet on Winker for 2022.
Jonathan India – 2-for-4, 2 runs and his 14th homer. Getting a lot of, “Grey, first off, super handsome with your very masculine mustache. Second off, is India for real?” He was a top five draft pick three years ago. Yes, he’s real.
Tyler Naquin – 2-for-5, 2 runs, 3 RBIs and his 14th homer. What if instead of rostering Naquin and Aquino, you just rostered Naquino and got a half homer for each one. Would you do it? And why do I sound like I’m on a super nerdy Twilight Zone?
Kyle Farmer – 1-for-4, 2 RBIs and his 11th homer. The Reds hit for big-time power because of their park even when they’re not at home. That shizz is implanted in their melons! Farmer growing them.
Tyler Stephenson – 3-for-5, 2 runs and his 7th homer. Wow, hopefully you didn’t have any pitchers going yesterday, huh? What an absolute massacre of pitching stats, except…
Shohei Ohtani – 6 IP, 2 ER, 6 baserunners, 6 Ks, ERA at 2.93, 1-for-3, 1 run. We need to take a step back and look at the forest for a second. He’s a pitcher with a sub-3 ERA; he threw 99 pitches (more than 75% of pitchers); he is approaching 40 homers and 20 steals; he hit leadoff; holy f**king sh*t. I mean, speechless.
Lourdes Gurriel Jr. – 1-for-2 and his 14th homer, and 2nd homer in as many games. Why did Lu-Gu-Ju start hitting homers, you ask with your doe-eyes and soft features? Because I dropped him two games ago.
Jacob deGrom – Will have a follow-up MRI in the next few days. Yeah, haha, what’s the rush, amiright, Mets?
Marcus Stroman – 5 1/3 IP, 1 ER, 5 baserunners, 8 Ks, ERA at 2.79. Same deal as Bassitt. Stroman is good over his entire career for ERA, and people are like, “Well, whatever, ERA is just a category in my league, so who cares?”
Pete Alonso – 3-for-7 and a slam (25) and legs (3), hitting .253. Albombso!
Bryce Harper – 1-for-2, 2 runs and his 21st homer, hitting .298. Bryce Harper’s gonna win the NL MVP and everyone’s gonna say it was a bad year for hitting. Then everyone’s gonna look at the Cy Youngs and say it was a bad year for pitchers too. It was a great year for utility players! Darin Ruf is owning right now!
Colin Moran – 2-for-4, 4 RBIs and his 5th and 6th homer. Always knew Joanie loved Chachi, but now I see why Chachi loved Joanie! Moran is hot! (Maybe, it’s Colin Moran and he has six homers on the year in 172 ABs, so, yeah, that’s super sad, sorry I had to put that in front of your innocent eyes.)
Lars Nootbaar – 1-for-1, 2 RBIs and his 1st homer, a pinch-hit one. Lars Nootbaar is such a snack.
Dylan Carlson – Left yesterday’s game with wrist soreness. *makes jerkoff motion* “Ow! Trainers, I need you to look at my wrist.” The preceding was an injury recreation.
Paul DeJong – 1-for-5, 2 RBIs and his 16th homer, and 2nd homer in three games. Colonel Mustard in a Madame Tussauds with Tom Hanks’s wax fist!
Yu Darvish – 2 2/3 IP, 5 ER, ERA at 3.70, and left with back tightness. This was against the Dbags, who even Blake Snell handled, and Darvish himself handled last time out. Darvish hasn’t been right since he hit the IL with hip inflammation in July, and it’s been brutal rostering him. He had a 7.36 ERA in July and August just waved like Forrest Gump as the ship went into the pier.
Josh Rojas – 4-for-5, 2 runs, 2 RBIs, hitting .271. Welcome back, Josh Rojas! He actually came back two games prior from the IL, but now he’s back back. Two backs, baby!
Robbie Grossman – 2-for-5 and his 18th homer, hitting .240. Gonna give you old heads a comparison: Grossman’s seeing 20/20 and the vision chart is spelling out Mike Cameron.
Renato Nunez – 2-for-4, 2 RBIs and his 3rd homer, hitting .194. If you need power, why not Nato again? Ya know, Renato.
DJ Stewart – 2-for-4, and his 9th and 10th homer, and 3rd homer in two games. Hot schmotato alert!
John Means – 4 1/3 IP, 6 ER, ERA at 3.21. Hasn’t been right since he came back from the injury. There’s no harm in moving on from a guy who’s injured, or just pitching poorly. There’s more harm in holding onto a guy just because he used to be good. Nah’Means?
Jorge Mateo – 1-for-4 and his 8th steal. Kinda like this guy for steals, and he has such huge upside — 19/24/.289 in Triple-A. Feels like he’d win Ms. Can’t Miss’s Can’t Mister pageant. But the only thing against him is also the scariest thing: The Yanks, Padres and A’s gave up on him.
Chris Davis – Announced his retirement from baseball. At a press conference, Chris Davis started by saying he considered himself the luckiest man alive, then listed all the stuff he was able to buy with all the millions he was paid for providing a negative value to the Orioles for the last four years. Not a billionaire in sight with a dry eye.
Aaron Judge – 2-for-4, 5 RBIs and his 24th and 25th homer, as MLB went to Iowa, and Judge showed himself to be quite the cornpoke.
Giancarlo Stanton – 1-for-5, 2 RBIs and his 18th homer. All Giancarlo needs is to play all his games in Iowa!
Tyler Wade – 2-for-4, 1 run and his 11th steal. Now hitting .500 with 5 steals in the last 15 days. You know things have gone sideways when your hottest hitter in the lineup is Tyler Wade, who John Smoltz described last night as, “Tyler Wade reminds me of a baseball player.” That John Smoltz comment reminds me of a compliment.
Zack Britton – 1/3 IP, 2 ER, ERA at 6.32. Wow, he’s looking a lot more like Aroldis than anyone expected.
Lance Lynn – 5 IP, 4 ER, ERA at 2.26. Lance Lynn doesn’t look the least bit athletic and looks exactly like a prototypical baseball player.
Jose Abreu – 1-for-2, 2 runs, and his 23rd homer, as he hit the first home run of the night in Iowa. As he rounded the bases, the TV mics picked up Abreu saying, “I am Cornholio!”
Eloy Jimenez – 2-for-4, 3 RBIs and his 6th homer, and five homers in the last five games. Eloy or Cody Bellinger? Who finishes with more homers? Is it even close? Eloy’s gonna pass Cody before August is done.
Tim Anderson – 2-for-5, 2 runs, 3 RBIs and his 13th homer, hitting .300. Anderson mentioned in the pre-game that he doesn’t like the movie, Field of Dreams, and I like Tim Anderson even more now. That’s not even Costner’s best baseball movie. MLB seemed to pull off the impossible yesterday — actually doing an event that worked, even if the whole thing was corny. Pun noted, and unavoidable. It wasn’t flawless, because for some unforeseeable reason they scheduled other games during the event. If you’re doing an event, you don’t put Shohei pitching and hitting on against it. Anyway, an 8 out of 10 and that’s from someone who thinks that movie’s pretty whatever. After the success of the Field of Dreams game, MLB announces they will be playing next year’s Kevin Costner game in the spirit of Waterworld.
