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True or false:  A) Dansby Swanson is famous for being Ted Knight’s caddy in Caddyshack. B) Starting a meme at his frat house in Arizona where he’d put his checkered pants on a cactus with the caption, “I’m thirsty, yo.”  C) There’s no C.  D) All the above.  E) Was drafted a second ago by the Diamondbacks 1st overall, then traded to the Braves for the fellow WASP, Shelby Miller, and all-around terrible pitcher.  If you answered D) All the above, how did you know what all the above was before reading E?  Also, it was a true or false quiz, what the hell is all of the above?!  So, Dansby Swanson is being called up by the Braves just in time, no lie, for their series against the Diamondbacks.  Dayum.  Hello, wounds, here’s your salt.  In Prospector Ralph’s midseason top 100 prospects, Dansby was 22nd overall, right by Willie Calhoun, who totally tanked Mike Dukakis’ campaign.  Swanson is a 22-year-old that was a’ight in Double-A (8 HRs, 6 SBs, .261 in 84 games).  That’s neither here nor there, he’s young; he should be owned in most mixed leagues; you’re not going to find his talent level on waivers in many leagues; semicolons; fun.  Anyway, here’s what else I saw yesterday in fantasy baseball:

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When your team is battling for a playoff spot, what’s the most important thing?  Winning.  Winning out of the bullpen is a thing that is not predictable, I get it, but when your team goes 7-0 from the bullpen in the last 14 games, that is just a damn near beautiful thing if you love bullpens as much as I… I mean, you may not, but that’s cool (maybe).  You have your love interests… invested in beanie babies or all your Gregg Jefferies’ rookie cards that your whole childhood fortune is invested in… Just saying, you should probably move out of your mom’s basement or branch out from the family business for a bit.  As a whole, the Pirates are a top-3 club for bullpen ERA, and are led by the king of Holds currently: Tony Watson.  Him and his merry men of “set-uphood” have completely just wrecked shop out of the pen lately, their ERA is 1.21 and they have allowed just a measly 34 hits in 52 innings.  Take it from me, that is getting the job done.  The addition of Joakim Soria has lengthened their bullpen to the point where Jared HughesJoe Blanton, and Arquimedes Caminero are in prime win plucking spots.  Yeah, I just used Joe Blanton in a fantasy write-up, and no it’s not 2000-never.  So stick around as I wax symbolic about other bullpen situations arising as we stream towards the fantasy baseball playoffs.

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I think we need to sit down and have a talk about Cody Allen.  He does his chores by striking people out on the regular, but other than that, what exactly is he doing to make us feel all cuddly as a RP-2?  I will tell you, because that’s sorta my job here at Le Razzball.  That, and I think I am the designated golf cart driver at the bi-millennial golf outing.  So I have basically looked at every facet of Allen’s year to date and even compared them to last year’s goodness that he dropped on us.  The velocity is still there, and has risen slightly over the last week, but has just one counting stat in the last 18 days.  That, my friends, is not very good at all for someone you drafted expecting a good 30 plus saves from.

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Step right up folks, only $5 waiver wire bucks gets you the admission of a lifetime!  It brings you wonderment beyond compare, unfulfilled roster spots with the snap of a finger, and most of all, it gives you zero return on your initial investment sometimes.  Yes, that’s right gents (and gals too!), it’s the ever growing laundry pile that sits in the corner, but without the physical stench its the bullpen keystone capers.  Key the music!  The Blue Jays started the year thinking the man with the poor eye sight would be nice a cozy in the head bullpen chair.  Unbeknownst to them, he sucked and failed at his job and was demoted to a set-up role.  Fast forward two and half whole weeks, and he is somehow back to being the man again.  Did he develop a new pitch, started throwing with his feet? Nope, he is still the same ole Brett Cecil.  He isn’t throwing any harder and didn’t change his wind-up.  He is just the next man up after Miguel Castro went all bay of pigs, making us all buy into him, and then poof went the dynamite.  I personally didn’t think it would be a forever type scenario, and as far as I’m concerned, Cecil isn’t the man either as he sits right now.  That just opens the door for possiblities… a trade (Papelbon perhaps), a free agent signee off the street (Rafael Soriano), or eventually going back to Castro or letting Roberto Osuna get a shot at the title.  My answer is yes to all the above.  I think it takes another failure by Cecil for the contending Blue Jays to realize that they need to shore that thing up.  So in a month we could see a whole new bullpen there, and no, I am not kidding.  So now that the team beyond the wall is taken care of this week, let’s peruse what else is happening around the league in bullpen situations.

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Hello, I’m Keith Morrison of Dateline. Today’s story is about a young closer who had the life that we all dream about — money, girls, Tony La Russa’s private phone number to find out if a product used animal testing. What Trevor Rosenthal didn’t have, his shut ’em down stuff. We pick up the story right after Rosenthal took the mound on April 7th. He was in for his third save, but there was something wrong. Could it have been he lost his control? Or was something else lurking deep in his past — perhaps a high school sweetheart who assumed the identity of Rosenthal’s favorite Starbucks barista, who was putting Visine in his favorite latte drink. Visine that has been known, when digested, to cause runs. Coming up later, Rosenthal can’t find the strike zone for three months, he blows numerous saves, Pat Neshek looks incredible in a setup role and Matheny groans. This is the story of The $12 Salad That Became A Brain Freeze. So, the Cards have been patient with Trevor Rosenthal, even while he hasn’t looked good for the majority of the year, but recently he’s been hideous. I wouldn’t be surprised if the Cards go to Neshek, who has a 0.86 ERA, 0.57 WHIP and four saves already. Yesterday, Seth Maness (no relation to Brandon Guyer) got the save, but that was more because Neshek had thrown already in the game. As for the title, you may not stay…for Trevor stung! Anyway, here’s what else I saw this weekend in fantasy baseball:

Please, blog, may I have some more?

The first bullpen report of the year is always league-dependent, so read this with a grain of salt.  Some of the top-chaps will be and should be rostered in most normal scoring leagues, while some are strictly reserved for Holds only leagues.  For those of you with the ever trending upward Saves+Holds leagues (NSVH), (a trend I have tried for a few years that seems to work) the process isn’t really a groundbreaking formula where you need a calculator watch and/or an abacus to figure out.

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Winning is defined differently through the annuls of our time. I mean Chuck Sheen uses it because winning is banging a gaggle of porn stars. Winning in fantasy baseball is fake, but it really isn’t. It’s getting with the trends and knowing when to throw out your IOU sweatshirts because Champion ones are cool now. Winning NSVH and straight holds leagues is no different. Follow winning trends. Look at the schedule, who plays Miami or Houston. What bullpens have been cold blooded, or just be lazy and ask me. I have useless amounts of brain… wait check that. I have a dwindling amount of brain cells at your disposal. So go with the trends of who is garnering holds, and don’t be afraid to add/drop a ton, they are only RP, a new one comes up every other week that gets 3-4 holds in a week then fades into the blue like the end of “Shane”. So enjoy the week to come and good luck.

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Sometimes I wonder if I’ll ever run out of players to talk about for this series. After all, we are dealing with a finite source of things to talk about when dealing with 20-30 team leagues. Then I remember, I passed that point about two weeks ago. So here we are, boldly going where no fantasy player ever wants to go. Yes, that was a Trek tie-in. Maybe it has something to do with the new movie coming out soon. As you can tell from my avatar, I’m certainly not anti-Trek. Yet, there seems to be a lot of angst with J.J. Abrams’ take on the franchise. I for one, being a fan since birth, have no issues whatsoever, even though the lens flares have given me skin cancer. So what if the new movies have lots of explosions? And shiny lights. And Canadian Bruce Greenwood. Yeah, I’m pretty sure William Shatner never got into a space suit and flew around asteroids. But what these movies presuppose is… maybe he should have?

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No intro today. I’m too busy eastwooding empty chairs around the house. I, too, want to scold that invisible Kenyan President for having the audacity of being born in the foreign country of Hawaii. If you need context, I’m not sure what happened the other day, but I was flipping channels and saw Clint Eastwood having a 20 minute […]

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