Triple Slamien & Legs

To try to appeal more to teenage boys, the Rangers should install a giant lotion bottle in center field, and each time Marcus Semien homers, it explodes with lotion onto the fans in the bleachers. Yesterday, there would be a lot of facials from Semien, as he went 7-for-8, 4 runs, 3 RBIs and a triple slam (4, 5, 6) and double legs (9, 10). Halleberrylujah. That might actually be the single greatest day ever. Could Semien be coming out of his early-season funk like Jason Biggs once came out of a tube sock? Okay, those other words were likely avoidable. Is Semien about to explode? Again, avoidable! Is Semien about to explode in a good way in all his glory, whole and pulsating. Okay, more very avoidable words! Here’s what I thought on our Youtube channel. Click that and click subscribe so I can feed my children (Ted, a dog).

Before you say, this rooster, Grey, is caca-cuckoo crazy. Entering yesterday’s games, he had an expected batting average of .201, and one of the worst exit velocities in the major. Everything across the board on his page is saying he really was this bad. Not unlucky. Could he turn it all around? Does Marcus Semien sound like a bath towel that you tell your mom you got paste on? Yes and yes! Anyway, here’s what else I saw yesterday in fantasy baseball:

Jonah Heim – 2-for-5, and a slam (7) and legs (2), hitting .260. Just picked up Jonah Heim in currently my best league, because when it rains it pours! Am I still thinking about that giant lotion bottle in Globe Life? Yeah, prolly.

Cal Quantrill – 7 IP, 3 ER, 9 baserunners, 3 Ks, ERA at 3.56. My natural inclination is to turn to the Streamonator for Quantrill. Or really any fantasy three or later, and, when I do that with Quantrill, it says his next one is even better than this.

Stephen Strasburg – Will make his season debut on Thursday. Over under at…50 IP? Too generous?

Luis Garcia – 2-for-4 and his 1st homer. Aw sookie, daddy likes the rookie nookie!

Jazz Chisholm – 2-for-5, 6 RBIs and his 9th and 10th homer. Prolly my biggest miss this year was not trusting Jazz. I blame Ken Burns.

Jorge Soler – 2-for-4, 2 RBIs and his 12th homer. When the heat gets hot, it relies on Soler. What does that tell you? (Nothing?)

Edward Cabrera – 6 IP, 1 ER, 4 baserunners, 4 Ks, ERA at 0.75. I would absolutely pick him up, but absolutely absolutely absolutely he’s risky, and will blow up at some point.

Austin Meadows – 0-for-4 as he was activated from the IL. Not sure if this is good or bad news. Before the injury, he was hitting like his mother, Audrey, and not like Jackie Gleason “pretend hitting her.”

Jeimer Candelario – Hit the IL with “if you were relying on Jeimer I feel sorry for you, bro.”

Tarik Skubal – 7 IP, 3 ER, 6 baserunners, 9 Ks, ERA at 2.33. Skubal was briefly scratched from his start, when it looked like it might rain. Oh my God, Tarik Skubal is the Wicked Witch of the West!

Cal Mitchell – 2-for-4, 2 runs, 2 RBIs and his 2nd homer, and 2nd homer in two games, and all right we got ourselves a hot schmotato! Don’t let the stillness of Calm Itchell fool ya!

Jurickson Profar – 1-for-2, 2 runs, and his 7th homer. He hits leadoff, so that’s valuable. He’s hitting near .325 in the last week, so that’s hot. And every time someone asks me who to drop, and Profar is on the list, I almost always say Profar.

Yu Darvish – 7 IP, 0 ER, 2 hits, zero walks, 6 Ks, ERA at 3.61. As a person who was watching this game, I honestly thought I might need to start making adjustments to the lede, because I thought Yu might have the perfect game. He looked pretty perfect for six innings, then he looked merely solid.

Starling Marte – Headed for an MRI on his quad. Little birdie told me Starling’s prolly gonna need an IL stint.

Pete Alonso – Was hit on the hand, and preliminary x-rays are saying he’s fine, and when have the Mets doctors ever been wrong? *sobs unnaturally*

Brandon Drury – 1-for-2, 2 RBIs and his 11th homer, and 2nd homer in as many games. Brandon Rural-Juror has been a hot schmotato so many times this year, he’s kinda just a potato.

Joey Votto – 2-for-4, 3 RBIs and his 5th homer. I’ve been monocle’ing Votto so much this year I practically have two monocles on with frames and you can call them glasses. The reason the monocles are so abundant is because Votto’s mid-summer heat last year. When he comes out of this early-season malaise, he could be huge.

Tyler Stephenson – 2-for-5, 3 RBIs and his 5th homer, hitting .309. Quietly having a great year. Right now, easily the third best catcher on the Player Rater, and strong chance of number two, if not first.

Graham Ashcraft – 6 IP, 0 ER, 3 hits, zero walks, 4 Ks, ERA at 1.14. Bizarre small sample on his numbers — 5 K/9, 1.9 BB/9. He’s at least a 7.2 K/9 guy, and prolly closer to a 3 BB/9. The ground ball rate is superb, and that could remain, and help him in Cincy. Definitely more of a NL-Only or deep league guy, but I could start to see it in shallower leagues.

Matt Reynolds – 2-for-5, 4 RBIs and his 2nd homer, and 2nd homer in a week. Hot schmotato? Maybe a light one, but if the league is deep enough, they’re all schmotatoes worth schmotatoing.

Ketel Marte – 2-for-4 and his 4th homer, hitting .263. And you guys told me he retired! He’s just boring, not gone!

Keegan Thompson – 3 IP, 7 ER, ERA at 3.17. I said last week something like when the Regression Fairies come for Keegan, they’re gonna be wearing some serious shizzkickers, and they kicked in his shizz.

Christopher Morel – 2-for-5, 2 RBIs and his 3rd homer, hitting .298. I’ve been telling you that you need to make mushroom for Morel.

Willson Contreras – 1-for-3 and his 10th homer, hitting .277. Contreras rounded the bases yesterday on the phone with his agent, telling him to make sure the Yankees are watching.

Jorge Mateo – 1-for-3, 3 RBIs and his 4th homer, hitting .210. His last name reminded me of Captain EO, and that sent me on a 4-hour trip around the internet I won’t soon recover. The funniest shizz I heard recently, on the Sheryl Crow doc — Shut up, she’s a smoking cougar! — she talks about how Michael Jackson used to stab Bubbles, the chimp, with a pen to get him to do stuff.

Trey Mancini – 1-for-4 and his 6th homer, hitting .303. On pace for 18 homers and 75 RBIs, i.e., I took Trey and multiplied him by Trey.

Cedric Mullins – 1-for-4 and his 6th homer, hitting .237. Buy low? I’m Mullins’ing it!

Austin Hays – 2-for-4, 2 runs, 2 RBIs and his 7th homer, hitting .292. Ya know what kind of year Hays is having? The type you love in deep leagues, and don’t really want to hold in shallower.

Ramon Urias – 1-for-3, 2 runs and his 6th homer. Had cooled off recently, but was also one of the biggest schmotatoes of the last two weeks, so maybe the fire is re-lit.

Yordan Alvarez – 1-for-3, 2 runs, 2 RBIs and his 17th homer. BDon and I did some heavy fawning over Captain Woo Cubano on this week’s podcast.

Jorge Polanco – 4-for-5, 2 RBIs and his 7th homer. Every time someone asks to drop Polanco, another Polanco owner gets a home run.

Aaron Judge – 2-for-5, 2 runs, 3 RBIs and his 22nd homer. Judge’s having such a crazy year that Giancarlo Stanton (1-for-5) homered yesterday, and has been solid, and only has 12 homers.

Anthony Rizzo – 1-for-6, 3 RBIs and his 14th homer. HR to the Izzo!

Jameson Taillon – 4 IP, 4 ER, ERA at 2.73. Meh, just didn’t have his best stuff. Nothing changed my mind on him from my last Jameson Taillon fantasy.

Michael Kopech – 6 IP, 0 ER, 1 hit, 1 walk, 8 Ks, ERA at 1.94. I promise you he’s not this good. Good? Yes, good. But not this good. Don’t get me wrong, I’m loving it in the leagues where I have him, but I also feel like a hammer is gonna drop on him at some point. Zubaz pants and all.

Mitch White – 5 IP, 0 ER, 2 baserunners, 5 Ks, ERA at 3.86. Nothing here but a spot start, just wanted to point it out because I looked at him and his ERA and thought of Robbie Ray, and now you have to too.

German Marquez – 6 IP, 3 ER, 8 baserunners, 7 Ks, ERA at 6.49. Something I’m not sure I’ve mentioned once this year is this Nazi in Exile should go back to exile. The German word for German is assmunch.

Connor Joe – 2-for-4, 2 runs, and a slam (5) and legs (3). Connor Joe Joe’s at a crossroads!

Hunter Renfroe – 0-for-4 as he was activated from the IL. Kevin from ESPN’s “Get Him In Your Lineup” Department said, “I’m sorry for screaming, ‘Cooties,’ every time I see someone using the water fountain. It’s a bad habit.”

Jason Alexander – 5 IP, 1 ER, 9 baserunners, 1 K, ERA at 2.25. One K? Geez, must’ve been shrinkage.

Ranger Suarez – 7 IP, 2 ER, 6 baserunners, 5 Ks, ERA at 4.42. Just when you think you’re out, Ranger pulls you back in!

Alec Bohm – 1-for-4, and his 4th homer, hitting .262, and out of the 7-hole. Bohm is way too onomatopoeia bombastic. His name should be Alec Ohm. The B’s too big. Too boisterous. Too bowerful.

Danny Jansen – Out with a fractured pinky. Damn, that’s just sad (because a fractured pinky sounds like a broken screen on a Pac-Man game). In just a little bit related news, Alejandro Kirk went 4-for-5, 1 run, and he’s hitting .322.

Alek Manoah – 6 IP, 0 ER, 9 baserunners, 4 Ks, ERA at 1.81. Is he gonna win the Cy Young or what? Momma Manoah! And now I’m once again talking about his mom and not his pitching.

Shane Baz – Will join the Rays’ rotation this weekend. More like Baz-inga!

Jeffrey Springs – 6 IP, 0 ER, 8 baserunners, 5 Ks, ERA at 1.62. As batshizz crazy as Cash is — and it’s a cornucopia of crazy, a crazucopia, if you will — there’s no way Springs is bounced like a Slinky out of the rotation.

Andrew Kittredge – 1 IP, 1 ER, ERA at 3.15, as he blew the save in the 8th, but that’s a technicality, he wasn’t in to close the game. See above about a crazucopia. The Rays don’t have a closer. I’d guess Poche, tee be aitch, but even him, I wouldn’t count on it.

Tyler O’Neill – as he was activated from the IL. Please let him return good. I need Bro’Neill very badly.

Dakota Hudson – 7 IP, 1 ER, 3 baserunners, 6 Ks, ERA at 2.76. Cardinals make every starter great except for Matz. This is a researchable fact.

Ronald Acuña Jr. – 2-for-4, and his 4th and 5th homer. Tildaddy tells you he’s healthy!

Kyle Wright – 8 IP, 2 ER, 5 baserunners, 7 Ks, ERA at 2.39. Yes, it was vs. the A’s, but how many pitchers do you roster have great matchups to only get lit-up? Pun noted. So, I say, brava, young man, brava!

Garrett Whitlock – 4 IP, 4 ER, ERA at 3.51. Feels almost impossible to hold a guy in shallower leagues that can only throw 70 pitches and actually wakes the offensive of the Los Angels of Anaheim Which Is Nowhere Near Los Angeles And They Might Not Be Able To Stay In Anaheim Soon Either. Streamonator loves Whitlock and I love Whitlock, because he really should be better. If you can hold, might be a league by league situation.

Jo Adell – 1-for-2, 1 run, 1 RBI as he still didn’t start the game with the new manager, Phil Nevin. Oh, yeah, if you hadn’t heard, Maddon got fired. Maddon suggests Mike Trout hit “More like David Fletcher, if David Fletcher were blind,” and, poof, just like that the guy gets fired. Geez, you’d think Maddon had the best two hitters in baseball, and possible two of the top ten hitters of all-time. With Joe Girardi and Joe Maddon both fired, this is the worst blow to Joes since Joe Mama. Sorry, you walked into that one.

Mike Trout – 2-for-2, and his 14th homer, but left with groin tightness. When Maddon was around, Trout’s groin was always loose.