Just in time for the H2H playoffs, Troy Tulowitzki returns to throw a quandary into your lineup. Do you bench a guy that has actually been performing for a guy that hasn’t done anything this year and is coming back from an injury? Let’s answer that question with other questions. Do the Rockies start Tulo in every game risking injury? Do they have aspirations of moving up to finish with a slightly better record while still coming in last? Do the Rockies risk next year for that? Why is Tulo even coming back at all? Are all planets round or are there some, say, triangle planets? Are the Rockies trying to boost his value for an offseason trade? What is the point of him returning? If with age comes wisdom, why do teenagers make me feel stupid? Isn’t it more likely that Tulo will only start here and there and get pulled in the late innings? Are the Rockies out of their mind for even letting him return? Who wouldn’t let Robert Redford sleep with their wife for a million dollars? I’d take $100,000, which is negotiable. I don’t think Tulo has any real value for the rest of the season. If you can start him only when he’s in the lineup, I’d take the gamble, but I’d prefer a guy that is already starting and producing. Anyway, here’s what else I saw this weekend in fantasy baseball:
Nick Markakis – Out for 6 weeks with a broken thumb. He said he’d still travel with the club, obviously not by hitchhiking.
Nate McLouth – 0-for-2 with his 7th steal. McLousy will be an everyday starter now that Markakis is out. He’s hitting around .340 in September with no power or speed. He’s pretty shoddy with a chance of meatballs.
Zach Britton – 3 1/3 IP, 5 ER. Damn, the Yankees haven’t beaten up on Britton that bad since 1776.
Joe Kelly – 6 IP, 2 ER, 7 baserunners, 5 Ks. Pitched well, but I imagine a quick four runs of support in the first two innings is psychologically similar to when I drink tequila. “My bad, officer, I had no idea roof surfing like in Teen Wolf was illegal.”
Matt Holliday – 1-for-4, 2 RBIs and his 26th homer. He’s in position to finish with decent homers, 95 runs, 100 RBIs and a .300+ average, and somehow he’s felt pretty yawnstipating this year, right?
Carlos Beltran – 2-for-4 with his 29th homer and what I think was his first hit since July (not that much of an exaggeration). He’s now hitting barely over .200 since the ASB as he proved himself to be more of an Early Bird Special than The Great Zombino.
Jake Westbrook – Will miss his next start with an oblique strain. Sounds like he’s *pinkie to mouth* Westbroke.
David Ortiz – His season is likely over. Valentine tried to stay positive and called Ortiz’s season a wrap.
Adam Dunn – Could be sidelined until next weekend with an oblique strain. Dunn said, “There’s nothing oblique about it, that sh*t hurts!”
Johnny Giavotella – 0-for-1, 3 BBs with 2 steals, he’s now hitting over .300 in the last week. Must be energized with his kid, Lorenzo, hitting leadoff. Fist pump!
Jeremy Guthrie – 8 IP, 0 ER, 6 baserunners, 4 Ks. Now has an ERA around 3.50 while on Kansas City. Jer-Gu, the Damaja…Not the Queens, but what? The Royals!
Alcides Escobar – 2-for-5, hitting around .300 in the last week. On the year, he has 28 steals and a .295 average. Took him about three years of my touting him, but he’ll be 26 years old going into 2013 and his skills have finally caught up to my own personal hype machine. With shortstop being so soft for fantasy, I could see Alcides being a top 10 option. Yeah, it’s that soft.
Johnny Cueto – 4 IP, 4 ER, 10 baserunners, 6 Ks and moves into 2nd for the NL ERA lead behind Dickey. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
Brian McCann – 5 for his last 9 with 2 homers after getting a cortisone shot early last week. Can Hosmer get like 5 cortisone shots? Actually, is it against the law if I hold a fantasy team meeting where I give all my players a cortisone shot? And by ‘hold’ I mean against their will.
Tommy Hanson – 5 2/3 IP, 2 ER, 5 baserunners, 5 Ks to lower his very pedestrian ERA to 4.35. During October, I will go over all of my end of the season rankings compared to my preseason ones, but for s’s and g’s let’s look at the starters I told you to avoid from the top 40 starters: Josh Johnson, Ian Kennedy, Yu Darvish, Josh Beckett, Ricky Romero, James Shields and Tommy Hanson. Like Harrison Ford’s one quarter Jewish ancestry, not too shabby.
Giancarlo Stanton – 2-for-4, 2 runs with a slam (33) and legs (6), raising his average to .286. I hate to point out the obvious, but Stanton missed a month for injury and didn’t look right in all of April due to his knee. That’s right, his numbers are basically missing two months of the season! Okay, so I finally watched The Franchise: A Season with the Marlins. As if I didn’t despise Loria enough, I watched as he talked about how his eyesore of a stadium is comparable to the Eiffel Tower in terms of architecture. Yeah, if a giant unicorn ate the Eiffel Tower and then vomited it back up. Also, I love how his douchebag (sorry, words are failing me how annoying this show was) stepson — who is the President of the team! — decides to run 50 miles in the name of charity and is using taxpayers’ money for a police escort, while blocking traffic the full 50 miles. Then his snively stepson — let’s just call him Snively McMarlin — is in Italy on vacation during the trading deadline, and hears about the Hanley trade on speakerphone. Classic. I’m guessing the front office couldn’t get Snively to go to Siberia for the whole season. Also, it made me actually feel bad for Heath Bell. Snively McMarlin and Ozzie pretend to have a “scene” where it’s made clear that they’re not sticking with Bell because of his contract, but it’s poorly acted and obviously staged for the cameras. Wish Bell would’ve been traded to a playoff contender for his dad’s sake. Unfortunately, he was obviously a product of Petco and his contract is almost as bad as Vernon Wells’. Finally, Ozzie is classless.
Ricky Nolasco – 9 IP, 0 ER, 5 baserunners, 6 Ks. I mentioned this briefly last week but guys like Nolasco can be a lot more valuable than chasing rookie nookie on starters that are throwing more innings than they have in the past. And that’s me paraphrasing me!
Rajai Davis – 2-for-3, 2 runs and his 41st steal as he batted 5th. I look at Rajai batting 5th as this: the Jays can’t have eight hitters batting 9th.
Anthony Gose – 2-for-4 with his 14th steal in 33 games and he also had a slam & legs on Saturday. He’s got great speed and bad Ks, which has led to a poor average. If you’re desperate for SAGNOF, well, it’s got no face.
Mike Napoli – Will begin his rehab assignment and has been cleared to run in the outfield while attached to a bungee cord. I’m sure a lot of his owners wouldn’t mind if he were running down the side of a building attached to a frayed bungee.
Roy Oswalt – 2 IP, 4 ER before leaving with elbow soreness. No word yet on his injury timetable, but the Rangers are hoping he’s out for the season.
Clayton Kershaw – Scratched from yesterday’s start, but the Dodgers hope he’ll be ready on Tuesday after giving him a cortisone shot. Hopefully, they bat him fourth.
B.J. Upton – 3-for-5 with three solo homers. Due to an early start time, Joe Maddon only saw two of the homers.
James Shields – 9 IP, 0 ER, 2 baserunners, 8 Ks to lower his ERA to 3.71. His first half ERA was 4.17, so he’s definitely turned things around in the 2nd half due to a great August (2.75 ERA) because his July 4.75 ERA wasn’t inspiring. As of right now, I’m going back in on Shields for next year, but I see no indication why he won’t have a 4+ ERA for a month or two here and there.
Corey Hart – Left yesterday’s game limping. Brewers said he has an ankle sprain and could miss a week or more. PBS said his limp didn’t look bad. That’s the Pimp Breadwinner Society, which is co-chaired by “Stylish” Teedore Watkins.
Norichika Aoki – 2-for-5 with his 8th homer. ESPN Fantasy tells me that he leads all NL rookies in OPS. I like Aoki, but that’s about as useless as fantasy info gets. Guess it helps the .0001% of people who play in those OPS leagues that only use NL rookies.
Mike Trout – 1-for-4 with his 27th homer. Has anyone made one of those fish symbols yet for cars that says Trout in the middle?
Andrew Werner – 6 1/3 IP, 1 ER, 7 baserunners, 6 Ks as the Stream-o-Nator‘s hard-on for Hodgepadres continues.
Chase Headley – 1-for-4, 4 RBIs and his 27th homer to go along with 102 RBIs. It’s fair to say he blew away any expectations I had for him this year. 27 homers with Petco as your home park is like when Babe Ruth hit 50 home runs and it was more homers than some whole teams combined. Imagine fantasy baseball back then… If you didn’t have Ruth, you lost the league. If two teams that didn’t have Ruth faced each other in H2H, the offensive matchup would be like 4 RBIs vs. 3 RBIs for the week.
Josh Donaldson – 1-for-4 with his 7th homer, and 5th in the last ten games. Somewhere, Sam Donaldson doffs his toupee in his honor.
Brock Holt – 3-for-5 and hitting .414 since his call up last week. Very little to see here, but you never know where a hot schmotato might come from. If you need steals and runs and potentially average, I’d take a flyer.
Justin Morneau – 2-for-4, 3 RBIs and his 18th and 19th homers. His once promising career called and said, “Hey, I remember this guy!”
Carlos Santana – 3-for-5, 2 runs, 2 RBIs and his 15th homer, raising his average to .249. Please let him raise his average to .260 with 5 more homers, so he’s overrated again next year.
Curtis Granderson – 3-for-3, 5 RBIs with his 35th homer. Since he only came into this game as a pinch hitter hopefully you didn’t get the ol’ sonavabench!
Mark Teixeira – Re-injured himself and might be out the rest of the season. The Yanks are looking at the x-rays, and talkin’ ’bout the options and talkin’ ‘bout sweet time. I asked a Tex owner when it sank in that you lost Tex, that this might really be the real end… How’s it hit you when you get that kind of news? Man, whatcha do? And he said, “I went sky diving, I went rocky mountain climbing, I picked up Shin-Soo for two point seven seconds, don’t call him Fu Man Chu, that’s rude. And I loved Mark Reynolds deeper and I spoke sweeter, and I gave forgiveness to Hosmer that I’d been denying. And he said, “Some day, I hope you get the chance to play fantasy like your teams are dyin’….”
