[brid video=”216311″ player=”10951″ title=”Mailbag Week 2″]
Yesterday, it was a good day (freaking brothers every way like M.J.) to be an ace. Corey Kluber went 8 IP, 0 ER, 2 hits, 1 walk, 13 Ks, ERA at 1.57, pitching against the Tigers. One of the best, if not the best, pitchers goes against one of the worst, if not the worst, hitting teams, and you have a masterpiece by the pitcher. Just be clause. Qualifying, that is. To not be outdone, Max Scherzer went 9 IP, 0 ER, 2 hits, 0 walks, 10 Ks, ERA at 0.90, and stole his first base. Take that, Ohtani! Scherzer has 80 grade speed if he’s in a DeLorean and wants to go back to 1955. Anyway, here’s what else I saw yesterday in fantasy baseball:
Bradley Zimmer – 1-for-2, 2 RBIs and his 1st homer. Hopefully, he stayed after the game and worked with Jo-Ram and Lindor.
Francisco Liriano – 6 IP, 2 ER, 6 baserunners, 4 Ks, ERA at 2.13. Right now, I might be able to pitch against the Indians, and throw a Quality Start. And I throw like 50 Cent.
Nick Delmonico – 2-for-4, 2 RBIs and his 1st homer. Dying for a White Sox announcer to say, “Delmonico’s steak’d the White Sox to an early lead! That’s A-1!”
Chris Archer – 5 2/3 IP, 3 ER, 9 baserunners, 8 Ks, ERA at 5.94. Man (or five ladies), I think I’m dropping Archer down to a number two fantasy starter next year. I know, it’s early, but he is so “high Ks, iffy everything else.” The Ks were blinding me, yo!
Mallex Smith – 4-for-4, 1 run, 1 RBI and two steals (1, 2). *wraps phone cord around pinkie, talks seductively* What are you doing, Mallex? Wanna come over for a batty call? Aw, c’mon, you know my parents are in Hawaii touring caves with Vincent Price.
Alex Colome – 1 IP, 0 ER and the save. I got a chance to watch Colome yesterday, and, as I imagine Samuel L. Jackson would say, what the f**k is this motherf**ker doing right here? Yeah, he closed it, but didn’t look great doing it. I grabbed Sergio Romo, but I could see dropping Romo in a game or two. The Rays have a vested interest in Colome getting saves, and I think they do everything to allow that to happen, as much as Colome tries to stop them.
Miles Mikolas – 6 1/3 IP, 4 ER, 8 baserunners, 5 Ks, ERA at 6.00. Hey, at least he didn’t walk anyone! What? Where are you going? I wasn’t making excuses…entirely. It’s a good sign! Come back! Sigh. I don’t think the Mikolas late-round gamble is paying off.
Noah Syndergaard – 6 IP, 1 ER, 7 baserunners, 5 Ks, ERA at 3.94. I didn’t see this game, but, since it was vs. the Marlins, I’m going to assume there were five four-base errors for the Marlins to score one run vs. Syndergaard.
Jon Gray – 5 IP, 7 ER. Pitchslapped by Clayton Richard?! It was the Padres! He is one-half Jon Snow, and one-half Greyjoy. But the Padres turned him into Reek.
Chris Iannetta – 1-for-3, 2 runs, 3 RBIs and his 1st homer, hitting .345. Hey, he now leads my RCL team in homers! I think I might need some power.
Ian Desmond – 1-for-3, 2 runs and his 3rd homer, hitting .237. In Ryan McMahon news, he’s started calling bingo in the dugout via closed circuit TV for a lovely little church in Sloan’s Lake, Colorado.
Carlos Gonzalez – 1-for-4, 2 RBIs and his 2nd homer, hitting .250. I don’t want to own CarGo, but my desire to own all Rockies hitters cancels that out.
Carlos Asuaje – 1-for-5 and his 1st homer, as he hit leadoff, hitting .244. Yup, it’s Coors, but Asuaje is one of those guys I’m watching, because he told reporters he wants to hit all them launch angles. Unless he was misheard and talking about lunch at Bojangles.
Zack Godley – 7 IP, 0 ER, 4 baserunners, 9 Ks, ERA at 0.64. Times like these when you wish you drafted off the preseason rankings in the Bible.
Xander Bogaerts – Will miss 10-14 days with a small fracture of his ankle. That medical report continued, “It was the best of times, it was the blurst?!” You know why? Because instead of 100 monkeys on a 100 typewriters trying to type up a novel, the Red Sox have 100 monkeys on 100 MRI machines. An ankle fracture and he’s only out 10-14 days? What was the exit velocity of Bogaerts traveling through the MRI machine? Because I think it was too fast. I don’t care how small that fracture is that sounds like an underestimate of time missed by about two more weeks.
Rhys Hoskins – 1-for-3, 2 RBIs and his 2nd homer, hitting .429. I gush like a Tide pod on the podcast that’s coming later today about Rhysus. All praise!
Scott Kingery – 1-for-3 and his 1st homer, hitting .259. Since I watched this game, I got to see a whole lot of Kingery. He looks like he could be Yelich’s little brother, and I can see how he can hit homers, but, similarly to Yelich, Kingery does not look like a big-time power threat. Pretty impressive all-around game, though.
Tucker Barnhart – 1-for-4, 2 RBIs and his 1st homer. Tucker “The Anvil” Barnhart!
Anthony Rizzo – Hit the DL with back issues. Specifically, they were back issues of Men’s Health.
Jose Martinez – Left yesterday’s game with an Achilles contusion. So, we finally know his weakness.
Greg Holland – 1/3 IP, 1 ER, 4 walks as he was activated. Holland needs to recalibrate his windmill.
Matt Albers – 2 IP, 1 ER, and the blown save, but the win. I’d say Matt Albers only lost the lead and not the game by the skin of his teeth, but we both know that anything that comes close to Albers’ mouth is getting eaten. I contend (for the featherweight title) that Jacob Barnes is still the Brewers’ best bet for saves. Maybe yesterday will convince Craig Counsell, as well. (Image below provided by our points writer, Malamoney.)
Hey, hey, hey, it’s Matt Albers! pic.twitter.com/OeCphZE7ZV
— Razzball (@Razzball) April 10, 2018
Kendrys Morales – Suffered a hamstring strain. The Morales of the story is Kendrys should be swinging a bat while parked in a folding chair.
Jakob Junis – 7 IP, 0 ER, 3 baserunners, 3 Ks, ERA at 0.00. Or is it Jake? Jacob? Junis Christ, can you figure out your name? Any hoo! Royals jumped out to the early lead and Junis cruised into the Ivictory Coast W Hotel for an all-expenses paid trip. I liked Junis so much after his first start, I picked him up. Guess how I’m feeling after this start? Rhymes with mexcellent.
Mike Moustakas – 3-for-5, 2 runs, 3 RBIs and his 1st homer. Moistasskiss!
J.A. Happ – 6 IP, 1 ER, 8 baserunners, 9 Ks, ERA at 3.94. I thought he was pitching better than a 3.94 ERA. Kidding! It’s only through 16 IP!
Steve Pearce – 2-for-4, 2 RBIs and his 3rd homer, hitting .286. Now has three homers in three straight games. Hot schmotato alert!
Josh Donaldson – 1-for-4, 4 RBIs, and his 3rd homer, hitting .238. With two outs in the ninth, he hit a grand slam, which foreclosed the game, and defaulted on the potential save. (Using glossary terms like a baller! By the way, baller and glossary have never appeared in a sentence before, but no balloons dropped from my ceiling.)
Dylan Bundy – 7 IP, 2 ER, 6 baserunners, 10 Ks, ERA at 1.35. Damn, and I was too much of a lily-livered fraidy-cat to draft this AL East pitcher! By the by, has any expression sounded less intimidating than fraidy-cat? “What are you, fraidy-cat?!” “What are you, naming a new cat food?”
Alex Cobb – Set to debut with the O’s on Saturday in Fenway. That should go swimmingly like Natalie Wood.
Mark Trumbo – Will begin a rehab assignment at Double-A Bowie. When it’s early in Bowie, there’s lots of Young Americans chasing Fame, and Trumbo’s gonna feel like The Man Who Fell To Earth.
Justin Verlander – 7 IP, 0 ER, 5 baserunners, 9 Ks in 109 pitches, ERA at 1.45. Don’t wanna be too much of a fanboy, but, I mean, c’mon, dude’s like from another era.
Ken Giles – 1/3 IP, 0 ER and his 1st save. That save was of the “I guess we have a closer, we may as well use him now that we have two outs in the ninth, I mean, how bad can he screw it up,” variety.
Lance Lynn – 5 IP, 0 ER, 7 baserunners, 9 Ks, ERA at 5.00. As I said after his last start, he likely needs more time to get up to speed after signing late, and, sure enough, my cherrypicking is right.
Jaime Barria – To fill-in for injuries to Shoemaker and Jesus Christopher Ramirez, the Angels called up their young righty-slash-female neighborhood (Spanish es bueno!). Here’s what Prospector Ralph said about him, “(Barria is) a control and command righty with a bulldog makeup, and a knack for hiding the ball well. Barria rode his three pitch mix and elite pitchability to the upper levels of the minors, despite entering 2017 as a 20 year old with only 117 innings above rookie ball. You have to like the results from Barria, so it’s tough to knock him…..but, he’s maxed out physically, his fastball velocity is just mediocre without a ton of movement, his changeup is a good pitch, but it should be noted pitchers with control and feel for a changeup tend to over-match hitters at the lower levels. He’s a back end of the rotation profile, and someone who likely will get a few looks at the major league level if he again pitches well at AAA. The kid can pitch, but I don’t see much fantasy upside. And he seems like a jerk, wait, I was thinking of Grey for that last part.” Hey, c’mon!
Albert Pujols – 2-for-5 and his 2nd homer. Yeah, yeah, but Ohtani blew the biggest bubble ever using grape-flavored Big League Chew!
Garrett Richards – 4 1/3 IP, 1 ER, ERA at 4.20. Garrett Richards is named after two of the sexiest working women in sitcom history, Mary Richards and Mrs. Garrett.
Doug Fister – 5 IP, 3 ER, 6 baserunners, 5 Ks vs. the Angels. Well, they were Angels before Fister! You sicko!
Rougned Odor – Hurt his hamstring on the base paths after a walk. He must’ve been so disoriented he walked. Like a shark that can’t stop moving, a Rougned can’t stop hacking.
