Miller Genuine Draft Bargain

I was going to say Shelby Miller looks sensational, but then I Googled sensational to see its definition, even though I know it already.  (Al Gore did originally invent the internet as a tool of procrastination.)  So, the Oxford Dictionary defines sensational as:  causing great public interest and excitement, example “a sensational murder trial.”   Wow, even the Oxford Dictionary is trying to get in on the tabloid journalism of our day.  Hey, Oxford, why not, “Kim Kardashian’s booty was sensational when she broke the internet that Al Gore had created and now needed to fix.”  That gives me a great idea, a mash up of the Urban and Oxford Dictionary!  Definition of a flake:  A crazy or eccentric person.  “Yo, that flake is three crumbs short of a Peek Frean.”  Any the hoo!  Shelby Miller did look sensational, murdering bats like The Riddler.  Yesterday, he went 9 IP, 0 ER, 3 baserunners, 4 Ks to lower his ERA to 1.33.  Is he this good?  Oh, c’mon.  But how bad is he?  His K/9 is 7.2, BB/9 is 2.7 and xFIP is 3.79.  His BABIP is .203, LOB% is 88.8% and his ground ball rate is 50.4%.  Essentially, Miller’s a 3.25-3.60 ERA pitcher with decent, but not great Ks, solid but not terrific control, and one great pitch that he’s figured out how to use, the cutter.  He could easily have a month-long spasm of a 5.00 ERA just as easily as he’s done six weeks of a 1.33 ERA.  Would I sell him high?  Yes, indeed.  Or as the Urban-Oxford Dictionary would say, “Does a corgi crap under the Queen’s bed and she calls it a soon-to-be truffle?”   Anyway, here’s what else I saw this weekend in fantasy baseball:

Alex Wood – 7 IP, 1 ER, 4 baserunners, 1 K, ERA down to 3.83.  Yes, the Ks were still not there, but I bet that’s the next step to him being back to where he was prior to this year.  It’s a process, like hiring an Asian man to walk on your back.

Jace Peterson – 2-for-4, 1 run, 2 RBIs and his 1st home run on Saturday, a grand slam.  He was in this past Buy column, and the one before that and the one before–Actually, I don’t remember two weeks ago.  Was that BBG?  Before-Bruce Gender’s interview?

Todd Cunningham – 2-for-4, run and hitting .667 in three games since he was called up.  In Triple-A, he had 8 HRs and 19 SBs and a .287 average last year.  Is Cunningham good?  I wouldn’t say exactamundo.  Is Cunnigham terrible?  Hey, sit on it, Potsie!  In NL-Only leagues, I’d grab him for a chance that he could be unknown to pitchers and have a hot few weeks.  *cough* Devon Travis * cough*

Henderson Alvarez – 5 1/3 IP, 6 ER as he was activated from the DL.  If you think I like Hendo, you must be smoking indo, and sippin’ on gin and juice.

Justin Morneau – Hit the concussion DL.  The Concusstador!  It had been almost a full year since he experienced concussion problems, but he’s feeling lightheadedness, and says it has nothing to do with sucking on a helium balloon to make a funny voice.  Rosario is ready, Wilin and able to play first base for the Rockies, so I’d give him a whirl while the Rockies are in Coors this week.

Troy Tulowitzki – Sat out yesterday with a tweaked quad.  If you had May 20th in your office pool for Tulo hitting the DL, I’d hope he holds on for another two days, but also fly to Colorado to be nearby him, in case you have to Jeff Gillooly him on the 20th.  Unless the office pool isn’t that high.  Or if it’s an inexpensive office pool, but you’re competitive, then you need to weigh your options.

Corey Dickerson – Didn’t start yesterday, due to his plantar fasciitis, and might hit the DL today.  You can hit .350 with power, but extended play in high elevation causes injuries.  Coors:  the O. Henry of ballparks.

Mike Bolsinger – 6 IP, 0 ER, 5 baserunners, 6 Ks, ERA at 1.04.  Obviously you have to own him in NL-Only leagues, but, even in mixed leagues, the Stream-o-Nator loves his next start, and I think you have to grab him at this point.

Masahiro Tanaka – Nearing a rehab assignment.  When reporters asked him about it, he gave a thumbs up while the Yanks trainer held Tanaka’s arm up.  Sounds fine to me!

Edinson Volquez – 7 IP, 0 ER, 3 baserunners, 5 Ks, ERA down to 2.74.  Some days he’s electric and some days he’s Edinson.  He usually makes it pretty risky to find out which he’s going to be on any given Sunday, Al Pacino.  Speaking of which (not really), my moms was in town this weekend and we were at dinner on Friday night and sitting two tables away was Robert De Niro.  So, my mom jokingly says to the waiter, “Can I go take a selfie with Bob?”  And the waiter not-so-politely explains that they’d have to ask us to leave if we were to do that.  My mom rolls her eyes and when De Niro walks out, past us, my mom yells out, “Hey, Bob, you were terrific in Goodfellows!”  Yes, she said ‘Goodfellows.’  Overenunciating incorrectly.  The Albright apple doesn’t fall far from the tree!

Doug Fister – Diagnosed with a flexor strain in his elbow.  Fister injured himself after a long rain delay.  Weird, you’d think Fister would appreciate some wetness.

Archie Bradley – 2 IP, 4 ER as he returned from the DL.  Kevin from ESPN’s “Get Him In Your Lineup” Department said, “Get him in your lineup…if the matchup is decent and you don’t have anyone better.”  That does appear to be a hedge you’d find in Bristol.

Yasmany Tomas – 2-for-4 and homered on Saturday, hitting .309.  Also hitting 309 on the scale.  Symmetry!

Maikel Franco – 2-for-4, 2 runs, 2 RBIs and his 1st career homer.  In the King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, they celebrated Franco’s arrival with German döner, Beck’s and carpet bombing Francoeur’s locker.  Yes, you should own Franco.  Yes, now.

Darin Ruf – 2-for-3, 2 runs and his 3rd homer.  Who let the dogs out?  Ruf, Ruf, Ruf!

Ben Revere – 3-for-4, 1 RBI and his 7th steal, hitting .255.  The SAGNOF is coming!  The SAGNOF is coming!

Mat Latos – 3 IP, 5 ER, ERA up to 5.54.  At this point, I think Latos is even Latos intolerant.  Like when a horse gets hay fever.

Jon Lester – 7 IP, 1 ER, 10 baserunners, 7 Ks, ERA down to 3.70.  It’s feeling stuffy in here.  Oh, because someone shut the buy window.

Alex Colome – 3 1/3 IP, 3 ER, ERA up to 6.05.  His peripherals still look good, and here’s a dark crimson lipstick to put on Puig, a bottle of Drakkar to spray in a public restroom and get Colome the hell off my teams!

Chris Archer – 6 IP, 1 ER, 5 baserunners, 4 Ks, ERA down to 2.47.  He’s real and he’s beautiful.

James Loney – 4-for-5, 3 RBIs, hitting .273.  Hard for a guy to get four hits in a game and not start a hot streak.  Or at least my confirmation bias tells me that.  I love my confirmation bias, it also tells me I’m handsome, smart, handsome… Have I mentioned smart and handsome?

Nick Franklin – 2-for-5, 2 runs as he returns from the DL, which could be an issue for Logan Forsythe (2-for-5, 2 runs, hitting .300), but it should be an issue for Asdrubal Cabrera (0-for-4).  We’ll see if Kevin Cash has the Forsythe to do what’s right.

Wil Myers – Hit in a batting cage yesterday.  Then won a stuffed animal and went for ice cream.  What a lovely day!

Stephen Strasburg – 5 IP, 3 ER, 6 baserunners, 7 Ks.  Okay, technically, Tanner Roark (3 IP, 1 ER) in relief looked better than Strasburg, but Strasburg looked better in this start than in any of his previous besides one, and that one start was vs. the Phils and this was against the Padres, so it has to be considered a positive.  At least that’s what I keep telling myself as I delay swallowing the cyanide pill.

Justin Upton – 3-for-3 and two homers, hitting .293.  Might’ve been inspired in this game to go deep twice because Bryce Harper (3-for-3, 3 runs, 4 RBIs and his 14th homer) was in the opposite dugout and he’s the King of the Multi-Homer Game.  Or King Mu-Ho Ga as it’s called in Hawaii and the District of Columbia.

Danny Espinosa – 1-for-3, 3 RBIs and his 5th homer, hitting .275.  I feel dirty, but I want Danny Espinosa over Devon Travis.

Ben Zobrist – Could return on May 25th.  A claymation Sylvester Stallone made this announcement by saying, “That’s ‘Brist, baby!”

Ike Davis – Hit the DL with a Grade 2 strain of his left quad.  Davos might’ve caught something from that little girl with the stone face.

Jesse Chavez – 6 IP, 2 ER, 10 baserunners, 3 Ks, ERA at 2.63.  Not only did I grab him for this start, but I held him for his next start, which the Stream-o-Nator also likes.

Jeff Samardzija – 8 IP, 3 ER, 11 baserunners, 5 Ks, ERA down to 4.58.  My mind cuts to Angel Pagan playing a harp and all I hear is hallelujah being sung.  Now give me 15 more straight games like this Alphabet Soup.

Avisail Garcia – 3-for-5, 2 runs, 2 RBIs and his 4th homer, hitting .346.  Yeah, you should totally be dropping him.  More like Avi#fail!  Amiright?!

Max Muncy – 1-for-4, 2 RBIs and his 1st homer.  Wasn’t Max Muncy a sitcom character from the 50’s?  Didn’t he sleep in separate beds from his nosy wife on The Dick Van Dyke Show?

Scott Kazmir – 4 1/3 IP, 3 ER.  But you have twelve (now eleven) more starts until I’m supposed to sell you!

Billy Burns – 3-for-4, 1 run and his 3rd steal, hitting .321 and leadoff.  I’m actually surprised he doesn’t have more steals.  And I just totally jinxed myself and now Burns is about to steal ten bags this week.  Thanks, Grey!  (By the by, I read that hearing voices is a sign of mental illness.  What if the voice is saying, “You are not crazy.  Everyone else is.”  Is that still crazy?)

Matt Garza – 3 1/3 IP, 10 ER.  That’s uglier than what his bikini waxer calls ‘The Garza Strip.’

Carlos Gomez – Left yesterday’s game after taking a pitch by Syndergaard off his head, which reminds me of the seven-month stretch in 1997 when there was a constant onslaught on my ears of Springsteen’s Secret Garden remix with dialogue by Jerry Maguire and Renee Zellweger, which reminds me that Zellweger looks like she got hit in the melon by a Syndergaard pitch.  Gomez says he’ll be fine.  He just has a contusion, but luckily no concussion confusion.

David Wright – Will resume baseball activities on Monday.  I wonder if he’ll wait to get out of bed to spit and scratch himself.

Wilmer Flores – 1-for-4 and his 6th homer on Saturday, a grand slam, as he batted ninth.  Made sense, he only leads the club in homers.  Good to have Plawecki or Eric Campbell or even the pitcher batting in front of him.  It feels like if the Mets could get rid of Flores, they would.  Why is the real question.  Did Wilmer sleep with Terry Collins’s daughter?

Juan Lagares – 2-for-4, 1 run and his 3rd steal as he batted ninth on Sunday while Eric Campbell hit 2nd.  Did Flores tag out to Lagares?

Noah Syndergaard – 6 IP, 1 ER, 4 baserunners, 5 Ks.  Ugh, now just the Jerry Maguire dialogue from Secret Garden is stuck again in my head.  Fun fact!  Did you know the human head weighs eight pounds, but nine pounds when it has something stuck in it?

Angel Pagan – Didn’t start yesterday after leaving Saturday’s game with back spasms.  Well, he does have an Angel and a Pagan on each shoulder, which form moral judgment clouds on his back, and those clouds really know how to rain on a good time.

Brandon Belt – 3-for-4, 3 runs and his 3rd homer in as many games.  Hot schmotato alert!

Chris Heston – 2 IP, 5 ER.  I feel like Heston right after he discovered the Statue of Liberty on the beach.

Hunter Pence – 2-for-5, 2 runs, 2 RBIs and his 1st homer as The Gangly Manbird returned this weekend.  Nori Aoki (3-for-6, 3 runs and his 10th steal) had been sitting, but now that Pagan is hurt, Aoki might continue to get playing time.  Hard to say, which stinks for my weekly leagues.  I’m thinking maybe I’ll– Oh, I forgot, I’m not one of the random commenters on the site that gives me the Drunk History of their team.

Brandon Crawford – 2-for-4, 3 runs and a huge day on Saturday (3-for-5, 2 runs, 6th homer), hitting .285.  No, it won’t continue, but why do you care about that?  Are you afraid of immediate success?  That’s what your shrink would say.

Billy Hamilton – 1-for-3, 2 RBIs as he was moved to the 8 hole.  He’s totally Willie Mays Hayes.  As I mentioned in the preseason, Hamilton is like getting a guy who hits 60 homers, but somehow only gets 50 runs, 50 RBIs and a .220 average.  A personification of SAGNOF in its most perverse.

Jay Bruce – 3-for-5, 2 RBIs and his 7th homer, hitting .190.  Great, the Springsteen song is stuck in my head again, and now the Bonnie Hunt part!  Ugh!

Brandon Phillips – 2-for-4, 2 runs, 2 RBIs and his 2nd homer, hitting .310.  Phillips has become a poor man’s Yunel.  I will call him, You Nell Carter.

Mike Leake – 5 IP, 9 ER.  The Regression Fairies spend hours on Pinterest for interior decorating ideas, they still say ‘conscious uncoupling,’ and they will defecate on your pitching ratios.

Anthony DeSclafani – 3 IP, 6 ER.  The Regression Fairies were traveling with the San Fran Giants and just decided to stay the weekend in Ohio.

Ubaldo Jimenez – 7 IP, 2 ER, 7 baserunners, 6 Ks, ERA at 2.43.  I swear to you, unless God’s reading, I owned Ubaldo for one start this year.  His only bad start.  My super power is beating the law of averages.  If that doesn’t get the ladies, I don’t know what does?  Assuming the odds are against me from getting a lady.

Delmon Young – 2-for-4, hitting .291.  Having a decent year as a platoon outfielder, but hopefully it doesn’t give him the confidence to self-publish his children’s storybook.

Mike Wright – 7 1/3 IP, 0 ER, 4 baserunners, 6 Ks in his debut start.  Oh.  Whoa.  Let’s see what we know.  *draws blank*  Okay, let’s see what others know!  Wright’s a tall righty, who throws hard.  Can hit 97 MPH with his fastball, but, due to a lack of secondary offerings, didn’t reach the majors for a few years, even though he was in Double-A as long ago as 2012.  These other people are smart!  He seems to me to be a great AL-Only pickup, if he stays in the rotation, but that’s no guarantee as of now.

Garrett Richards – 7 2/3 IP, 2 ER, 6 baserunners, 7 Ks.  The greatest trick the devil ever played was convincing me to draft Shoemaker instead of Richards.  Stupid devil!

Josh Hamilton – Could return on May 25th.  Either a weird coincidence that he’s slated to return on the same day as Zobrist or Hamilton and Zobrist are the same person and they accidentally revealed it in a simply thing like a return date.  The latter scenario seems most likely.

Ross Detwiler – Hit the DL with shoulder inflammation.  This will give the Rangers a chance to flaunt some of their pitching depth.  Of course, I’m being sarcastic.  The Rangers are the one team that has better pitchers at their Old Timer’s Day.

Neftali Feliz – There’s speculation that he’s hurt or he’s simply headed for a Disgraceful List trip.  Shawn Tolleson would be the add for saves, and he’s also been playing fine middle infield for the Blue Jays.  Tolleson seems like a case of the grass being greener, except in Los Angeles, where there is a major water storage.  I had to listen to someone in line at Whole Foods about how Beverly Hills had only cut back on 35% of water consumption compared to 65% in Westwood.  Leave me alone to enjoy my $9 Kombucha tonic!  Tolleson started this month with a 5.40 ERA and looked worse than Felix about six appearances ago, but Rangers manager, Jeff Banister, don’t take no lip or schmohawks in the pen.  (Schmohawk on the Pen was the working title for my autobiography.)  So, grab Tolleson.  If you want to stretch your imagination for who could get saves, go with Keone Kela next.

Mitch Moreland – 2-for-4, 2 RBIs and his 2nd homer, hitting .288.  Mitch, don’t kill my vibe!

Nick Martinez – 5 IP, 1 ER, 10 baserunners (5 BBs), 6 Ks, ERA at 1.88.  Someone please dump some corrective fluid on this guy’s stats already.

Carlos Carrasco – 8 IP, 5 ER, 9 baserunners, 9 Ks, ERA a 4.98, 114 pitches.  One of the runs was tagged on in the 8th inning with two outs because Terry Francona is saving his bullpen for October, apparently.  My fantasy teams thank you for the extra run.

Danny Salazar – 4 2/3 IP, 6 ER.  Someone didn’t get the memo that the Starterpocalypse ended last week.  I blame Charlie, the carrier pigeon.  *intern whispers in my ear*  That was a fast food mascot from Cluck University?   *intern whispers again*  Pigeons don’t talk?  Then how do they carry messages?

Jaime Garcia – The Cardinals are leaning towards using Garcia for Thursday’s start.  Cards’ GM said, “Garcia would go on Thursday, then, when that turn comes up again and Garcia is inevitably on the DL, we’ll figure out the next starter.”

Kolten Wong – 1-for-3 and his 5th homer, hitting .311 and in the 7-hole.  I can imagine so many better holes for Wong.

Jason Vargas – Threw off a mound on Sunday.  It was a mound of tissues from my Cougar after watching the Mad Men finale.  She gets caught up in the emotion!

James Paxton – 8 IP, 0 ER, 7 baserunners, 2 Ks vs. the Red Sox.  Sonavabench!

Brad Miller – 1-for-4 and his 5th homer, and two home runs on Saturday.  Must…fight…urge– Oh, screw it, it’s only a middle infidel slot.  I’d pick him up if you’re hurting at MI.

Kyle Seager – 2-for-4, 2 runs, 2 RBIs and his 5th homer.  Seager hit this homer…Against the wind.

Devon Travis – Didn’t start yesterday after hurting his shoulder on Saturday.  My fantasy team also hurts shouldering memories of Devon’s April.

Lance McCullers – Who’s Ice T’s favorite pitching prospect?  McCullers, McCullers-Cullers-McCullers, McCullers-Cullers.  Prospector Mike just went over his Lance McCullers fantasy, and I agree with him.  Worth a shot in most leagues for some sweet, sweet upside.

Luis Valbuena – 1-for-4 and his 10th homer, hitting .206.  There’s two guys hitting above .240 in the everyday Astros lineup.  Well, one and half men.

Collin McHugh – 7 IP, 2 ER, 7 baserunners, 9 Ks, ERA down to 3.38.  Reports are that McHugh’s velocity has been down, but he looked solid against the Blue Jays yesterday, and this might have been another attempt by MLB to break up the radar gun union, Local 101.  Stew Parrist, a radar gun operator in Jersey, flicked his cigarette, and said, “I’d like to see some amateur radar gun operator try to clock an R.A. Dickey knuckler.  You have to stay with the pitch all the way to the plate.  No matter how many times it dipsies or doodles.  A radar gun operator friend of mine — union man — had to clock Aroldis the other day.  Sounds exciting, right?  You can’t blink for the whole ninth inning!”