Last October, at a party in Philadelphia, my wife and I were chatting with a woman we didn't know too well, a friend of a friend's wife.
She was an austere, humorless, preppy little debutante, and pregnant with her fourth child, a progeny count she mentioned no fewer than 33 times in the span of five minutes after we mentioned we "only" had one daughter, as if her apparently BALCO-enhanced eggs were things to be praised by less virile strangers.
Oh, and by "little" I mean she was ginormous. She looked like Octomom . . . with a Galapagos tortoise jammed under her blouse. So even though the whole bar was abuzz with Phillies World Series fever, I, not wanting to be rude, was sucked into hearing her unsolicited theories on pregnancy and motherhood, feeding, and how to properly raise a child. And the whole time, in case we hadn't yet noticed and/or praised her for how great she looked despite being 19-months pregnant, she kept rubbing her own belly and smiling down at it as if to say, "I am the nurturing Earth Mother and you, sweet child, are yet another one of my wondrous miracles." So when we mentioned that we weren't sure whether we were going to have a second child, she looked at us with a weird combo of horror and pity, and with a derisive, pregger-than-thou tone, smiled and concluded, "Well, some people aren't up to it . . . and, anyway, you're not a
real parent until you have more than one child."
Celia, far kinder with a much higher tolerance for frigid imbeciles than I, just nodded politely, fighting the urge to burst out laughing. But I, (A) having had several dozen drinks more than my patient wife and (B) being annoyed that this opinionated troll had stolen attention I
should have been devoting to
Carlos Ruiz's walk-off dribbler that just won Game 3, pointed at her gargantuan belly and asked, "I'm sorry, I forgot to ask: do you know who the father is yet? The Phillies have a 40-man roster and it's sometimes hard to be sure after so many Goldschlager shots." As her tight little smile dropped and she turned and walked away, I added, "My money's on Burrell."
The reason I recall this moment is we're on the cusp of having our second child. A boy. He could literally come any moment now. (I apologize in advance if this column ends abruptly.) And when little Mordecai "Three Finger" Brown St. Amant does arrive, I've promised myself not to be one of those smug, know-it-all, parents-of-multiple-kids that preaches unsolicited gospel to people, strangers or otherwise.
These types, sadly, are also inevitable in your fantasy leagues. Holier-than-thou armchair GMs who get up in everyone else's business, question every minor roster move, offer countless "Are you too #!$ing stupid to see that I'm trying to help your team?" trade offers, and basically suck the fun out of roto baseball for everyone. So, as we approach the midway point, please take a moment to pause and reflect on what type of owner you are and what you're adding to the league. And if you've recently written a three-paragraph home page posting mocking someone's "Add
Kurt Suzuki, Drop
John Baker" move, please, back away from the laptop and bash yourself in the skull with a ball-peen hammer.
And with that, which players have been especially virile (or impotent) lately?
RISERSKevin Slowey/
Nick Blackburn: Much like
Jason Marquis in the NL, Slowey is that "guy you'd never guess has as many wins as he does" guy. But after beating Houston on Friday, he notched his 10th victory (tied with
Roy Halladay) against two losses, while upping his K/9 from 6.4 to almost 9. As for Blackburn, while he'll never K many guys (39 in 93 IP), in his last eight starts he's gone 4-0 with a 1.84 ERA lowering his season ERA from 4.32 to 3.09.
Geovany Soto: Clearly, all it takes is a little taunting and a recommendation last week -- "His upside is worth buying low if his owner has had enough" -- to get a guy going: .437 with 2 HRs his last six games. It's a start.
Corey Hart: A notoriously streaky hitter, Hart was hitting .239 on June 10. Now, after a 15-38 (.394)/3 HR/10 RBI/9 R streak, he's up to .263.
Scott Rolen: June's been kind to Rolen. Already at .308 to start the month, he's raised his average to .329 with a 24-60 (.400) stretch, chipping in 13 Runs. The HRs (1) and RBI (6) have been modest at best, but the average is a nice bonus for the career .284 hitter.
Cole Hamels: Coming off a 10 K performance that should have netted him his fifth win (had the Phils not scored just one measly run), Hamels seems to have put that brutal April – 0-2, 7.27 ERA, 1.79 WHIP, .365 BA against -- behind him. In nine starts (59 IP) since May, he's gone 4-1 with a 57/10 K/BB ratio, 3.31 ERA, 1.24 WHIP.
Jose Lopez: Like Tulo, here's is another young middle infielder who struggled out of the gates but turned it on recently: last ten games (de-railed, unfortunately, by a bereavement leave), Lopez hit 5 HR, knocked in 13 and raised a crappy .227 AVG to a still-kinda-crappy-but-better .248.
Troy Tulowitzki: Last 10 games: .413/3 HR/8 RBI/10 R/4 SB.
David Ortiz: Hey, it's only fair that we give the big fella credit for fighting out of his funk (and by "we" I mean me, as I'm the one who oh-so-hilariously called him Big Popup throughout April and May). And thanks to a .308/5 HR/12 RBI June wherein he's also nearly doubled his OPS (.520 to 1.054), he's back on the roto radar. That said, I'd immediately sell high to your league's Sox homer, especially if Papi doesn't gain 1B eligibility (in some leagues) in NL parks this week.
Alex Rios: Pedro Cerrano must be passing Jobu around the Jays' clubhouse. Like Rolen, Rios has enjoyed June, hitting .357 with 2 HR and 9 RBI over his past ten games. Better yet, he's finally running: 7 SBs this month, after just 4 in April and May combined.
Last October, at a party in Philadelphia, my wife and I were chatting with a woman we didn't know too well, a friend of a friend's wife.
She was an austere, humorless, preppy little debutante, and pregnant with her fourth child, a progeny count she mentioned no fewer than 33 times in the span of five minutes after we mentioned we "only" had one daughter, as if her apparently BALCO-enhanced eggs were things to be praised by less virile strangers.
Oh, and by "little" I mean she was ginormous. She looked like Octomom . . . with a Galapagos tortoise jammed under her blouse. So even though the whole bar was abuzz with Phillies World Series fever, I, not wanting to be rude, was sucked into hearing her unsolicited theories on pregnancy and motherhood, feeding, and how to properly raise a child. And the whole time, in case we hadn't yet noticed and/or praised her for how great she looked despite being 19-months pregnant, she kept rubbing her own belly and smiling down at it as if to say, "I am the nurturing Earth Mother and you, sweet child, are yet another one of my wondrous miracles." So when we mentioned that we weren't sure whether we were going to have a second child, she looked at us with a weird combo of horror and pity, and with a derisive, pregger-than-thou tone, smiled and concluded, "Well, some people aren't up to it . . . and, anyway, you're not a
real parent until you have more than one child."
Celia, far kinder with a much higher tolerance for frigid imbeciles than I, just nodded politely, fighting the urge to burst out laughing. But I, (A) having had several dozen drinks more than my patient wife and (B) being annoyed that this opinionated troll had stolen attention I
should have been devoting to
Carlos Ruiz's walk-off dribbler that just won Game 3, pointed at her gargantuan belly and asked, "I'm sorry, I forgot to ask: do you know who the father is yet? The Phillies have a 40-man roster and it's sometimes hard to be sure after so many Goldschlager shots." As her tight little smile dropped and she turned and walked away, I added, "My money's on Burrell."
The reason I recall this moment is we're on the cusp of having our second child. A boy. He could literally come any moment now. (I apologize in advance if this column ends abruptly.) And when little Mordecai "Three Finger" Brown St. Amant does arrive, I've promised myself not to be one of those smug, know-it-all, parents-of-multiple-kids that preaches unsolicited gospel to people, strangers or otherwise.
These types, sadly, are also inevitable in your fantasy leagues. Holier-than-thou armchair GMs who get up in everyone else's business, question every minor roster move, offer countless "Are you too #!$ing stupid to see that I'm trying to help your team?" trade offers, and basically suck the fun out of roto baseball for everyone. So, as we approach the midway point, please take a moment to pause and reflect on what type of owner you are and what you're adding to the league. And if you've recently written a three-paragraph home page posting mocking someone's "Add
Kurt Suzuki, Drop
John Baker" move, please, back away from the laptop and bash yourself in the skull with a ball-peen hammer.
And with that, which players have been especially virile (or impotent) lately?
RISERSKevin Slowey/
Nick Blackburn: Much like
Jason Marquis in the NL, Slowey is that "guy you'd never guess has as many wins as he does" guy. But after beating Houston on Friday, he notched his 10th victory (tied with
Roy Halladay) against two losses, while upping his K/9 from 6.4 to almost 9. As for Blackburn, while he'll never K many guys (39 in 93 IP), in his last eight starts he's gone 4-0 with a 1.84 ERA lowering his season ERA from 4.32 to 3.09.
Geovany Soto: Clearly, all it takes is a little taunting and a recommendation last week -- "His upside is worth buying low if his owner has had enough" -- to get a guy going: .437 with 2 HRs his last six games. It's a start.
Corey Hart: A notoriously streaky hitter, Hart was hitting .239 on June 10. Now, after a 15-38 (.394)/3 HR/10 RBI/9 R streak, he's up to .263.
Scott Rolen: June's been kind to Rolen. Already at .308 to start the month, he's raised his average to .329 with a 24-60 (.400) stretch, chipping in 13 Runs. The HRs (1) and RBI (6) have been modest at best, but the average is a nice bonus for the career .284 hitter.
Cole Hamels: Coming off a 10 K performance that should have netted him his fifth win (had the Phils not scored just one measly run), Hamels seems to have put that brutal April – 0-2, 7.27 ERA, 1.79 WHIP, .365 BA against -- behind him. In nine starts (59 IP) since May, he's gone 4-1 with a 57/10 K/BB ratio, 3.31 ERA, 1.24 WHIP.
Jose Lopez: Like Tulo, here's is another young middle infielder who struggled out of the gates but turned it on recently: last ten games (de-railed, unfortunately, by a bereavement leave), Lopez hit 5 HR, knocked in 13 and raised a crappy .227 AVG to a still-kinda-crappy-but-better .248.
Troy Tulowitzki: Last 10 games: .413/3 HR/8 RBI/10 R/4 SB.
David Ortiz: Hey, it's only fair that we give the big fella credit for fighting out of his funk (and by "we" I mean me, as I'm the one who oh-so-hilariously called him Big Popup throughout April and May). And thanks to a .308/5 HR/12 RBI June wherein he's also nearly doubled his OPS (.520 to 1.054), he's back on the roto radar. That said, I'd immediately sell high to your league's Sox homer, especially if Papi doesn't gain 1B eligibility (in some leagues) in NL parks this week.
Alex Rios: Pedro Cerrano must be passing Jobu around the Jays' clubhouse. Like Rolen, Rios has enjoyed June, hitting .357 with 2 HR and 9 RBI over his past ten games. Better yet, he's finally running: 7 SBs this month, after just 4 in April and May combined.
Russell Martin: Yay! His first homer of the year! Much rejoicing! (Rumors that
Manny Ramirez just happened to be loitering in the clubhouse earlier that day handing out, cough, "Pez candies," cough, are unconfirmed.)
B.J. Upton: Because I have to go do something else right now (read: nap), I'll just lazily cut/paste Gleeman's take on Upton from yesterday's Daily Dose: "Upton is now hitting .330 with three homers, six doubles, 13 runs, and 15 RBIs in 18 games this month while going 11-for-13 swiping bases. He's also struck out in 22 percent of his plate appearances after whiffing 28 percent of the time through two months and as usual Upton has drawn walks in bunches. He's still sporting a sub-.700 OPS, but the time to buy low is clearly disappearing in a hurry."
Brian Wilson: Ten straight saves while lowering ERA under 3.00 (2.94) after an '08 where it was hovering near 5.00. And he's notched 36 K in 33.2 IP. One of the more secure middle-tier closers out there.
Mark Buehrle: Just keeps chugging along. 7-2, 3.17 ERA, 1.13 WHIP. Not sexy, but he gets the job done.
Scarecrows: My daughter informed me this morning that she doesn't like scarecrows. But she does like robots. "Why do you like robots?" I asked. "They taste like lemons," she answered. Of course they do, sweetie. Of course they do. (Cute now; not so cute when she's muttering about robots and scarecrows while wacked out of her mind on Hollywood Boulevard someday because Daddy paid more attention to fantasy sports than to her.)
Ricky Nolasco: Three fairly solid starts in a row – 18 IP, 18/4 K/BB, 5 ER, 1 HR – that lowered (yes, lowered) his ERA to 7.15. Still, there might be a tiny sliver of "buy low" left so, while it might sound insane, I wouldn't be scared to dangle a Peavy (who I personally think is done) or Webb (ditto) if -- and only if -- you're getting a big upgrade at another position.
Luis Valbuena: This is deep Matt Stroup Waiver Wired territory, but sometimes I have to go off the reservation. Over his last five games he's 10-24 with 3 HR, 4 R, 7 RBI. And he's got 2B/SS eligibility (in Yahoo at least). If the equally hot
Mark DeRosa (also a quasi-riser this week) is traded, Valbuena would see regular ABs (and it's not like
Jhonny Peralta is on fire, either).
Derek Lee: .357 with 4 HR/12 RBI/8 R over past 10 games.
Edwin Jackson: 6-4, 2.39 ERA, 1.06 WHIP and 72 K in 75 IP. Yet I bet most of us wouldn't know
Edwin Jackson if we were attending an
Edwin Jackson convention held at the
Edwin Jackson Hotel & Conference center in lovely downtown
Edwin Jackson.
Milton Bradley: Behold the hierarchy of "Sentences That
Always Precede a Punch Being Thrown":
1. "You think you're better than me?"
2. "So sorry to bother you so late, Mr. Crowe, but the other hotel guests have complained about the noise."
3. "Now Batting…
Milton Bradley."
Volatile though he is, Uncle Milty's in the midst of a 10-game hitting streak that's raised his average from .209 to .248. Hey, it's something.
Ian Stewart: His average (.228) isn't exactly neato, but he, not the sizzling
Brad Hawpe, leads the Rocks in HRs with 13 and has 2B/3B eligibility in most leagues.
FALLERSJohan Santana: Blisters. New grips on the baseball. Decreased velocity. "Knee injuries" diagnosed by former pitching coaches who are apparently Will Hunting-level smaahhht and fast-tracked themselves through medical school in just one year since being fired to become orthopedic experts. There were suddenly a few worries about the Mets' ace after his thrashing at the hands of the Yankees. But settle down, all you worrywart Schleprocks: he went 7.1 strong innings against a tough Rays team and still has 8 wins/3.22 ERA/1.19 WHIP/97 K in 89.1 IP and the window to buy at even a miniscule reduced rate is 995 closed, so pounce while there's even a sliver of doubt in his owner's mind.
Kerry Wood: Four blown saves in 12 chances ain't gonna cut it. But he's in good company: Cleveland bullpen leads MLB with 13 blown saves. Blown saves happen, but even if they have, say, eight of those games back they're 37-35 and in the hunt for the AL Central.
Dice-K: As I predicted via
Twitter in the week or two leading up to it, Dice has been DL'ed with, um, "weakness" in his arm to make room for Smoltz. Don't buy low. Repeat . . . stay away.
Juan Pierre: Pierre's been rock solid -- .318 over his past five games, .337 with 35 Runs and 17 SB overall – but when Manny comes back, Juan likely goes back to a reserve role because (A) his arm from CF makes
Johnny Damon's look like Roberto Clemente's and (B) the chances of LA shipping him and his fat contract off at the trade deadline are slim, and because (C) everyone in your league probably knows all this, it'll (D) make it very hard for you to deal him. But one positive is that (E)
Orlando Hudson owners might see their boy back leading off a potent, Manny-filled lineup, where he thrived earlier this season. To which Pierre owners say (F) that, what does a guy have to do to keep a starting gig around here?
Alex Rodriguez: "Fatigue" huh? Hm. Interesting. I guess when you're out partying with
Penny Lane, Russell Hammond and the rest of Stillwater until the wee hours, you're gonna be a little tuckered. If his Yankee teammates haven't already organized a Private Pyle blanket party by now -- if only for his recent 4-for-31 skid -- they should really be looking into it. Hard, bruise-inducing bars of Irish Spring Sport soap are like a buck each, tops.
Rich Harden: After looking good in his first start off the DL (9 K in 6 IP), he got pounded last time out (7 ER in 5 IP). You knew you were taking on risk when you drafted him. Weirdly, though, he's been relatively healthy (only one DL stint thus far is positively Ripkenean for a guy who's only started more than 25 games once in his career) And he's still striking guys out (64 K in 54.2 IP). But a nearly 20% HR/FB rate is doing him no favors and after lowering his WHIP from 1.22 to 1.06 the last three seasons, its back up to 1.41. Still, I think he's a quasi-buy low after last Friday's drubbing.
Magglio Ordonez: Maybe toxic fumes from his favorite
hair care product are causing him double vision at the plate. Whatever it is, he hasn't homered since April 27th, only has two extra base hits and 3 RBI this month (while slugging .292), and only 11 of 59 hits this whole season have gone for extra bases. Unlike with another veteran OF who's shown zero power, Vlad Guerrero (1 HR in 125 ABs), who at least has a tiny shred of name value left, there aren't many Maggs believers left out there, so you're stuck with him.
Jose Reyes: (Cut to dusty grandfather click slowly tick . . .tick . . .ticking as Reyes owners wait for his return.)
CC Sabathia: The beating he's taken the past few years might be catching up to him. Again. His K/9 is down to barely over 6 (from nearly 9 last season). His K/BB is down to 2.26 from 5.12. And now he's battling a mysterious bicep injury which doesn't sound serious – yet – but if you can deal him for an ace (or a near ace and an upgrade at another spot), peddling his Yankee name value, I'd do it.
Jamie Moyer: With a 6.35 ERA, looks like age has finally caught up to . . . oops, sorry, gotta run – contraction time . . . little Shoeless Joe Splendid Splinter Cool Papa Catfish St. Amant might be on his way!