Acuña Is Back – We’re Gonna Party Tilde Dawn

Sun beating down across a desert landscape. Sweat beading from my forehead. I lift a thermos to my face and spray my face with liquid to freshen myself. “I think I just sprayed my face with urine,” I say to no one, because no one is around. A mirage from the sand rises; it’s Pegasus. The horsey with wings kneels in front of me so I can get on. Pegasus turns to me and says, “I need to get you to an internet cafe so you can put Ronald Acuña Jr. in your lineup.” Thank you, Pegasus! Thank you, Ronald Acuña Jr.! Thank you, Tildaddy! Okay, now I’m just singing that crappy Alanis song, Thank you. I really needed Acuña (1-for-5, 1st and 2nd steal, hitting leadoff). Now stay on the field, Tildaddy says it’s October! Anyway, here’s what else I saw yesterday in fantasy baseball:

Dansby Swanson – 2-for-3, and a slam (1) and legs (2), hitting .209, and batting 9th. “Hey, I don’t want to alarm anyone but we have to chuck a dead body overboard–Whoa! Hold on a second! Dansby Swanson moved! He’s alive!”

Adam Duvall – 1-for-4, 2 RBIs and his 1st homer, hitting .200. Braves activated Acuña, Swanson and Duvall all in one night. Not sure how much value Swanson’s gonna have hitting 9th, but Duvall never hits just one homer. By next week, he’ll have five.

Kyle Wright – 7 IP, 1 ER, 7 baserunners (4 BBs), 8 Ks, ERA at 1.13. You might be thinking sell, but he’s got a 12.8 K/9, 2.3 BB/9, 2.13 xFIP. Could he actually be a buy high? Depends on price, of course, but yes.

Andrew McCutchen – 3-for-4, 3 RBIs and his 1st homer, hitting .250 and leadoff. Wouldn’t be shocked to see A-Knee McClutchin’ get hot for an extended period of time.

Freddy Peralta – 6 IP, 0 ER, 3 hits, zero walks, 7 Ks, ERA at 5.00. The Pirates’ lineup actually looks better than the Brewers’. Irrelevant for FreddyKBB, but you know him.

Jose Quintana – 5 IP, 1 ER, 4 baserunners, 9 Ks, ERA at 3.32. So far Quintana has easily been my best pitcher in my NL-Only Tout Wars league. Guess how well that team is doing so far.

Jack Flaherty – Threw from 240-feet. Sounds like he’s planning on being the Cards’ next Rick Ankiel.

Nick Lodolo – Hit the IL with a lower back strain. Dude’s 24 years old, and he’s got back problem? Lo-DOH-lo.

Tyler Mahle – 5 1/3 IP, 3 ER, 8 baserunners, 8 baserunners, 5 Ks, ERA at 6.45. He looked like he was throwing batting practice. Like Carrot Top’s face, just massively hittable. He settled in for a little while, and was giving me false confidence to start him next time out, and the Streamonator says no no no.

Wil Myers – Hit the IL with a bruised thumb. Shame it’s not a braised thumb, those are delicious.

Nick Martinez – 5 IP, 2 ER, 7 baserunners, 5 Ks, ERA at 4.12. Nick stands for Not Interested *spritz cologne, to passerby* CK.

Dakota Hudson – 6 IP, 0ER, 4 baserunners (3 BBs), 4 Ks, ERA at 2.75. No, he’s not really this good, i.e., that Dakota’s gonna go south.

Alec Bohm – 1-for-4, 2 RBIs and his 2nd homer, hitting .326. I truly am happy for you, all of you who drafted Bohm this year. No, I’m not bitter that I had him in every league last year and not this year. Not at all! Haha, don’t be silly.

Zack Wheeler – 6 IP, 0 ER, 5 baserunners (4 BBs), 7 Ks, ERA at 5.79. Meh, that’s against a pretty garbagey team in the Rockies. If you can sell Wheeler on the back of this start, I would be doing it. He hasn’t been right, nothing’s changed.

Kyle Tucker – 1-for-1, 2 RBIs and his 4th homer, a pinch-hit homer, and thank God I thought to myself before this game, “Don’t care if Dusty can’t see how hot Tucker is and is benching him, I am keeping him in my fantasy lineup.” Absolutely galaxy brained myself into a homer. LFG!

Justin Verlander – 7 IP, 1 ER, 4 baserunners, 8 Ks, ERA at 1.73. Imagining myself in the preseason saying I don’t trust Verlander to Verlander and him just laughing hysterically.

Martin Perez – 7 IP, 1 ER, 2 baserunners, 4 Ks, ERA at 3.00, and was perfect for six innings. Question I can prolly find out the answer to with a little research, but are there any pitchers with a 4.oo or higher ERA? Besides Gerrit Cole, Brandon Woodruff, and Zack Wheeler.

Corey Seager – 2-for-4, 2 runs and his 2nd homer, to pull the Rangers within one run in the 9th, as they lost. That’s worth $250 million alone!

Alek Manoah – 7 IP, 0 ER, 4 baserunners, 7 Ks, ERA at 1.44. Manoah mama mia! Literally, there were a few crowd shots of his mom and *chef’s kiss*.

Santiago Espinal – 1-for-4 and his 3rd steal, and he’ll be in this afternoon’s Buy column! How enticing! If you can’t wait, it’s now available on the Patreon.

Bailey Ober – Left with groin tightness. Damn, BO, that stinks.

Tarik Skubal – 5 IP, 3 ER, 8 baserunners, 4 Ks, ERA at 3.05, but also three more unearned for the heart-stopping ticker shock. You have any fantasy teams where you’re like, “I really want to drop a guy but every pitcher I have has an ERA around 3.00?” Then you see all pitchers in the major leagues have an ERA around 3.00, except Zack Wheeler and Gerrit Cole and you’re like, “Damn, man, this is playing games with my mind.”

Shane Baz – Might be back by June 6th after having loose bodies removed from his elbow. That’ll take a quick rehab, while also being one of the longest episodes of Forensic Files.

Chris Flexen – 6 2/3 IP, 2 ER, 8 baserunners, 4 Ks, ERA at 3.38. Seattle breeds these low-walk, low-strikeout guys. Like someone fed Marco Gonzales after midnight, and his appendix fell out of his body and grew into Flexen.

Reid Detmers – 5 IP, 1 ER, 3 baserunners, 4 Ks, ERA at 5.19 with only blemish a home run allowed to Austin Hedges. Can’t believe he allowed a homer. Who allows home runs anymore?

Everyone, “No hitters can knock this ball out of the park.”
“Let me pitch, coach!” — Matthew Boyd

Patrick Corbin – 6 IP, 2 ER, 6 baserunners, 8 Ks, ERA at 8.69 vs. Trevor Rogers – 6 IP, 1 ER, 4 baserunners, 4 Ks, ERA at 5.09. This matchup was billed as, “Patrick Corbin Burnes vs. T. Rogers, but one of the good T. Rogerses, not the Trevor one who hasn’t been great this year.” As you can imagine, not a lot of people call it by that billing name. Wish I could say either pitcher looked great, but those lineups just looked so bad. Rogers’s line is okay, but, again, kinda bleh. Here’s Coolwhip’s Trevor Rogers fantasy, where he broke down some of his issues.

Bruce Zimmermann – 4 1/3 IP, 0 ER, 4 unearned, 6 baserunners, 5 Ks, ERA at 0.93. So, I watched him, because I really loved that movie, They Call Me Bruce, and I got Zimmermania! Also, he’s been pitching well, and I needed to do a watchy. So, he has a 90 MPH fastball that is crizzap. Coming into the game, it had a .493 xBA and I guffawed. His 85 MPH slider looks unhittable, and his change isn’t far off. Hitters need to lay off the junk and sit fastball, but that’s not easy, clearly. He gets the Twins next time out, at home, and I could see picking him up, then going one start at a time.

Kyle Bradish – Called up to start today. Finally, that guy from The Real World: Chicago, who now does NFL commentary, gets his chance for the Orioles. First, to answer all your questions, Grayson’s not far behind. I’m guessing a month. Bradish is opponents-based-on-matchups, and today’s vs. the Sawx isn’t great. Bradish should be up for a while, unless he’s very bad, which he shouldn’t be. Mid-90s fastball with a big curve and workable slider, and next-to-no command, which could lead to roofies. I looked at him on waivers in my 15-team league, and left him there for now.

Aaron Judge – 2-for-5, 2 runs, 4 RBIs and his 5th homer, hitting .296. Judge is the last person in the majors who can still hit the ball out of the park. If MLB is gonna mess with the baseball, why not make it a game within the game? Have three different balls in a glass case presented to the pitchers by the umpire. One ball is neutral, and the other two are hitter or pitcher positive. The pitcher chooses each inning a new ball.

Leury Garcia – 1-for-3 and his 1st homer, hitting .114. Leury Garcia homers and La Russa hands a dollar bill to Rick Hahn like they’re Mortimer and Randolph in Trading Places.

Michael Kopech – 5 IP, 2 ER, 7 baserunners (4 BBs), 3 Ks, ERA at 1.42. Wonder if we get an insane stretch from Kopech where he’s a number one starter this year, or we have to wait until next year. It’s coming at some point though.

Brad Keller – 7 IP, 1 ER, 3 baserunners, 3 Ks, ERA at 2.19. One guy who’s not going to be an ace suddenly is B. Keller. Prolly not M. Keller either. I’d check the Streamonator for him.

Adalberto Mondesi – Tore his ACL. Not sure if everyone saw the injury, but he was going back to first base on a pickoff, and stutter-stepped. He stutter-stepped an ACL tear. Mondesi’s muscles are made of 75-year-old catguts. Take a 75-year-old cat, have the cat fill out a donor card for when they pass. Let them pass naturally by you accidentally kicking out the respirator plug when they’re not looking, then ask the doctor for the 75-year-old cat’s gut–No! Catguts aren’t cat’s guts! They’re made from donkeys’ intestines. Why not call them donkeyguts? I don’t know! Why can’t Mondesi stay on the field? I don’t know! I have no answers!