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Please see our player page for Cristian Pache to see projections for today, the next 7 days and rest of season as well as stats and gamelogs designed with the fantasy baseball player in mind.

In our 27th episode, Mike Couillard and Jeremy Brewer are joined by Adam MacKinnon, baseball writer and contributor including the author of Baseball for Kids: A Young Fan’s Guide to the History of the Game, for an overview of the NL East in the second part of our 2024 preview series. Over the coming weeks, we will analyze our […]

Please, blog, may I have some more?

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*digs nose into an open field of grass, lifts head, eyes filled with tears* This smells of my youth!

Passerby, “My dog just peed there, so probably smells of youth because you used to wet yourself.”

Baseball is back.

“Hello, Genie, I have three wishes for this baseball season. My first wish: No one I roster get hurt. My 2nd wish: Everyone I roster do well. I drafted Oneil Cruz everywhere so, really, I’m doing much of the heavy lifting for this wish. My 3rd and final wish: All 3rd base coaches send runners home by doing the Moonwalk. Thanking you in advance, Genie. Wait a second, you’re not a genie, you’re Bartolo Colon in Blue Man Group paint. Damn you!”

Welcome back to another season of baseball! This one won’t be like a lot of the ones in the past few decades or so, because singles up the middle are back, and the pitch clock. Can’t believe how little jock scratching is in baseball with this pitch clock. Baseball has gone woke! Bring back the slow, intimate groin adjustments that baseball was once famous for!

So, I’m glad I didn’t waste a wish on trying to keep Mets healthy, because that was never happening. Justin Verlander hit the IL with a low-grade teres major strain. Triston McKenzie just had one of these and now we have another? How many major strains are we getting this year? Wait a second, Rob Manfred didn’t make some sorta deal with a dispensary and this major strain is a tie-in, right? With Verlander out, I’d go ahead and grab Tylor Megill, and let’s hope he’s as good as previous seasons for Ks (9.9 K/9) and command (2.6 BB/9). Don’t be Slippin’ Megill! Anyway, here’s what else I saw yesterday in fantasy baseball:

Please, blog, may I have some more?

Houston Astros 

Yainer Diaz is doing Yainer Diaz things. He’s hitting .300 and leads the team in RBI but has a higher batting average than on base percentage thanks to six strikeouts and zero walks. He’s also not catching all that much. Might be a frustrating piece for our game. 

Korey Lee’s having a nice spring, slashing .269/.345/.538 with two steals. I’m skeptical that either guy could really push Martin Maldonado for his job given the club’s obvious preference for veteran defense behind the dish. 

Please, blog, may I have some more?

Major League Baseball isn’t supposed to look this easy this deep into a guy’s career. Miguel Cabrera’s got five homers on the year! Albert Pujols now has more homers than everyone in the league since August 14th, except for Aaron Judge, and he doesn’t have less homers than Judge, he has the same amount! All the hype about Judge and Pujols has same number of homers as Judge over the last six weeks! Pujols is 78 years old, and has 15 homers since August 14th! I don’t care if they’re meatballing him and Rob Manfred is sticking a PEDs needle in Pujols’s butt after he exits the shower. This is incredible. This isn’t supposed to be possible by a guy heading to the grand sunset over the bleachers. Yesterday, Albert Pujols went 2-for-2, 2 runs, 3 RBIs and his 23rd homer, as he hits .268. He’s having a better season than Eloy Jimenez! On top of everything yesterday, Pujols tied Babe Ruth for 2nd on the all-time RBIs list with 2,214. That is such an absurd number of RBIs. Go ahead, and average 110 RBIs for 20 years, and you get close! Anyway, here’s what else I saw this weekend in fantasy baseball:

Please, blog, may I have some more?

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Ian Anderson (2 IP, 7 ER, ERA at 5.31) pitches like Jethro Tull singing, “Hello, darkness, my old friend.” Uh-oh, we’re being visited by Comatose Since March Man. This is gonna be brutal. Hey, Comatose Since March Man, how ya feeling? “Great, man! You ever sleep for four months? That’s what I feel like! Anyway, let’s talk about my fantasy baseball team! Ian Anderson is building on his 2021 season and is now an ace, right? Right?! Why are you tiptoeing backwards?” Seriously, though, how long until the Braves put Ian Anderson out to pasture with Touki, Ynoa and every other pitcher who they have that’s good for one season? Soon! Okay, the highlights, not the lowlights:  Nick Castellanos (2-for-4, 3 RBIs) hit his 8th homer. “Hey, we could just put the car in neutral and roll it off a cliff with him in the driver’s seat–Whoa! Hold on! He moved! Castellanos is alive!” This was Castellanos’s first, and only as it turned out, homer in June, and he was hitting .212 entering yesterday’s game with five runs. Apizzarently, he’s become the Greek God of Hardly Any Contact. Then, Kyle Schwarber (1-for-4, 3 RBIs) said farewell to June with his 23rd homer. Someone please Back to the Future Schwarber with a Walkman in the middle of the night and tell him June is another 60 days long. Next up, or I should say nextus is Rhysus, the Philly savior, (1-for-3, 2 runs) hit his 15th and 2nd in as many games. Finally, the one true DH on a team filled with them, Darick Hall (2-for-5, 3 RBIs) got his 1st and 2nd homer on his first and second hits. When the Philly and Yacht Rock legend, Darick Hall, hits a homer, they better be playing She’s Gone. He will be in this afternoon’s Buy column, and he’s solid for power, but I’m not sure how much else. Sorry, Charlie, for the imposition… Anyway, here’s what else I saw yesterday in fantasy baseball:

Please, blog, may I have some more?

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Yesterday, Jazz Chisholm Jr. (1-for-4, 2 RBIs and his 3rd homer) was moved back to the leadoff spot. Whatever was worked out between Jazz and Don Mattingly was worked out behind closed doors. There’s no way of knowing. What happened, if I had to guess, was Jazz said to Don, “I’m sorry for drawing a mustache on all the photos of you around the clubhouse. The Rollie Fingers-curl was especially inconsiderate. I still think your machismo is being undersold clean-shaven, but I respect your opinion.” Then Don replied, “And I’m sorry I said your parents have no taste for naming you after the worst Ken Burns doc.” Then later on, Jazz heard someone named John, thought it sounded too much like Don, and said this:

So, the Jazz drama’s prolly not done yet. I’ll admit to maybe being too reactionary about Jazz being a Sell in the 1st week because he was hitting 9th, and I’m glad Don came to his senses. Also, in this game, Jesus Sanchez (2-for-3, 3 runs and his 3rd homer), hit his third homer, and looks every bit of the sleeper I called him to be in the preseason. Speaking of sleepers, Rudy tells me the title means P = Pablo, Js = Jesus and Jazz. Mmmkay, and the Pablo Lopez (7 IP, 0 ER, 3 baserunners, 9 Ks, ERA at 0.52) I was very worried about in the preseason looked as good as the Rodon and Kershaw, who I was equally worried about. It’s a long season though, and it’s not exactly actionable to say Pab-Lo will just get hurt, but, well, that was the concern with his shoulder. Anyway, here’s what else I saw yesterday in fantasy baseball:

Please, blog, may I have some more?

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Motivational speaker, Manny Machado, entered the Padres’ clubhouse before yesterday’s contest and asked new head coach, Bob Melvin, if he could speak. His teammates’ rapt attention centered on Manny, and he spoke, “I won’t always run hard to first, 2nd, third or home. I will usually ask for a golf cart to take me out to 3rd base between innings. When it’s my time in the on-deck circle, I will ask the umps if I can put on water wings and slap around in a kiddie pool. When that clock strikes April 19th, I will check out until sometime in July. But I am telling you right now, you have every piece of me from this moment here, until roughly ten o’clock on April 18th, then again sometime in July. And I will take you where you need to go, so hop on!” And with that Wil Myers stood and began to clap at first. Then he elbowed Eric Hosmer (4-for-5, 1 run, 2 RBIs), who was dreaming of grounding out to 2nd base, and he stood and clapped too. And, before anyone knew it, the entire clubhouse was in a rousing ovation for their leader, Manny Machado — the best clubhouse guy a team could hope for. Then, as the ovation began to dissipate, Machado asked Luke Voit if he could drive the golf cart that would take him out to the field. So, yesterday, Manny Machado (5-for-6, 4 runs, 2 RBIs) hit his 1st homer, a 111 MPH shot into left field, and two steals for the magnificent slam and double legs. This was Machado’s 2nd career five-hit night. Five hits, 4 runs, 2 SBs with a homer in a game had only been done three times since 1987 — Andrew McCutchen, Carl Crawford and Tony Gwynn. Machado gets a bad rap; he does usually put up top 25 overall type numbers, as long as Voit continues to gas up the golf cart. Anyway, here’s what else I saw yesterday in fantasy baseball:

Please, blog, may I have some more?

On the eve of Opening Day, I’m trying to recall the last time so many high-profile rookies were scheduled to break camp with the big club. Might’ve been . . . never? Prospect coverage has come a long way these past few decades. Used to be cool to bash rookies and the prospect lovers who drafted them. Now you’re just leaving money on the table if you ignore the possibility that Julio Rodriguez opens the season in center field for Seattle. 

Focusing on Rodriguez in particular, I moved earlier than Average Draft Position at the time to select him in the 18th round of The Great Fantasy Baseball Invitational. Pick 265. He went inside the top 75 this week. Incredibly weird to me that three weeks of stats is worth 200 draft spots in the echo chamber, but that’s the illusion of certainty for you. Object permanence. I guess there was an outside chance Julio stayed in the minors until July, but not really. Not without a catastrophe of some kind. 

I’m already eager to see how next year’s crop of potential rookies is treated during draft season. Will we overweight the 2022 outcome, which happened partly due to a backlog built from the paradigm of punting combined with a CBA in flux and a lost 2020 season? Or is this simply the new reality? If a player is ready to help generate major league wins for a contending team, he will open the season on the roster. Sounds crazy, I know. 

So let’s run through the list, consider the fates of each player, and celebrate what we all hope will be a new chapter in baseball history, where service time suppression starts to creep away from center stage. 

Please, blog, may I have some more?