Jacoby's first at-bat

on Andrew's team comes against James Sheilds, of all people.

And it's....a ground out. I win the trade!

I have discovered the problem

I have discovered that Gary Sheffield has been telling other players on my team how great it is to be on the DL. Apparently he is very convincing.

"I don't want to take a chance," said Ordonez, third Tiger this month to go on the DL due to an oblique muscle pull. "You know when it is not going to be OK, and it is going to be a miracle if you feel better. "Sheff (Gary Sheffield) told me, 'You've got to take care of it.' "

Interleague play is over.

The AL spanked the NL once again, 149-102.

The Royals went 13-5, and the Mariners managed to play .500 ball.

Red Sox pitchers, by the way, were 0-25 at the plate, with one strained back.

Really?

Lackey and Nathan for Quentin? I am at a loss. No interest in JD, Hamilton, or Sizemore but Quentin for BOTH LACKEY AND NATHAN!!! I just don't get it.

Quentin's Numbers:

.253/.342/.530 (2006)
.218/.298/.349 (2007)
.280/.393/.522 (2008)

If he can continue playing about 100% better than he has in the past, then for a 26th round pick, that is a good deal. But I seriously don't see it. I would guess that after his second half regression, Quentin will be a 10-15th round draft pick. There's just too many good outfielders to warrant a high draft pick on him. To use a keeper on a 10-15th round pick is not very useful in my opinion, making this trade a head scratcher to say the least.

When is it time to give up?

So we're officially at the mid-way point of the season now and I have 7 points more than the minimum.
As a fun meaningless analysis I took the current standings and assumed that every team does the exact average of the cumulative first half performances....except for mine. MY team, instead, does the absolute best of all the first half numbers across the board...above are the results.

I have no shot. Even in that dream scenario, the Bill juggernaut would still beat me. And now that's he's zeroed in further with the Andrew dumping....odds are not good he'll be performing at the "average" (which I of course helped bring down significantly) .

But, my friends, there is still time to dream. Like Boston down 3-0 in the ALCS, already the laughing stock of the entire league, the AAA Legacy climbs on. And slowly but surely, the AAA is getting the call. And hitting the majors.

So yes, it is time to announce the return of the storied franchise Pete Rose Legacy. The AAA Legacy is no longer. And the Pete Rose Legacy does not lose. It stages improbable second half come backs. And it also has sex with the prom queen.

You have all been warned.

The Fantasy Value All Stars

I thought it would be interesting, now that we're at the halfway point of the season, to take a look at players who have been top contributors at various positions, but weren't too highly rated coming into the season. Overall, there seem to be a lot more under-performers than guys who are easily outpacing expectations. Definitely a down year fantasy-wise for the AL, even if that doesn't show up in interleague play.

C - AJ Pierzynski. 23rd round. Dusty's Base Cloggers. He might be an asshole, and I don't think anyone expects him to keep his performance up (not even his own manager, who just traded for Napoli), but Pierzynski has been the #2 fantasy catcher in the AL this year. Mauer is number 1, but with him going in the 3rd round, it is hard to call him a "value pick".

1B - Kevin Youkilis. 10th round. Don't Trade Roberts. A tough call between Giambi (undrafted) and Youkilis here, but when you get the #1 1B in the 10th round, the same round as huge busts such as Jhonny Peralta, Phil Hughes, Kelvim Escobar, and Ryan Garko, there is definitely some good value there.
Honorable mention: Giambi, Casey Kotchman (AAA Legacy, 19th round)

2B - Dustin Pedroia. 9th round. Mandrew and the VORPIES. He hasn't been as good of a "real" baseball player this year, with a pretty substantial decrease in OBP, Pedroia has been a great fantasy player this year, easily on pace to top HR and SB numbers from last year. Although he doesn't quite count, as he was a keeper, even I didn't think Ian Kinsler (11th round) was going to be this good. According to Yahoo, he has been the best fantasy player in the AL, and is on pace for a massive 25 HR, 40 SB season.
Honorable mention: Kinsler, Jose Lopez (Mandrew and the VORPIES, undrafted)

3B - Joe Crede. 17th round. Dusty's Base Cloggers. Thin pickings at 3B. Although Huff has been better according to Yahoo, he's hardly played for anyone's team, so I have to go with Crede.

SS - None. It seems like every shortstop who has played regularly for a team has underperformed. Peralta hits tons of home runs, but has a brutal average. Jeter, O-cab, and Michael Young are all having down years. Yuniesky Betancourt has been on fire since being traded (.327 average for Spencer), but he still is the 10th best AL SS overall. In a 6 team league, that isn't so hot.

OF - Josh Hamilton. 12th round. Don't Trade Roberts. Even though he's been nicked up a bit the last few days, Hamilton has been on pace for a historic season. Hitting 19 homeruns, and already driving in 76. Everyone else in the league needs to hope he makes like Morneau in the second half of 2007, so Mark can lose the league and call him a fuckhead.

OF - JD Drew. 20th round. Don't Trade Roberts. Mark's team shows up again. JD Drew has been unbelievable since Ortiz went down, incredibly outpacing whatever run production you'd expect out of Papi. A massive June has put Drew as the 5th best outfielder. Tough to beat with a 20th round pick.

OF - Carlos Quentin. Undrafted. Berkeley Hoboes. Despite a slow couple of weeks to start June, Quentin has been an offensive force, with 50+ runs and RBI, 17 homeruns, and even a few steals. He could be the offensive waiver wire player of the year.

Honorable mention: OF was actually full of bargains this year. All the fantasy previews kept saying that OF was shallower this year than in years past, but the performances of players like Milton Bradley, David Murphy, and the once-cut Jose Guillen have meant that talent has always been available on the waiver wire.

SP - Cliff Lee (undrafted, Dusty's Base Cloggers), Shawn Marcum (22nd round, YOUUUUKKK), Justin Duscherer (undrafted, Pete Rose Legacy), John Danks (undrafted, Berkeley Hoboes), Rich Harden (14th round, Don't Trade Roberts). Coming into this season, if this was your staff, I think everyone would have advised you to give up right now, and simply not bother paying attention. They all started off amazingly well, and have hit a few rocky patches here and there, but they've been top 15 starters this year. Considering anyone could have easily assembled this staff for peanuts, that is pretty impressive.

RP - George Sherill (15th round, Berkeley Hoboes), Joakim Soria (12th round, Berkeley Hoboes), Troy Percival (16th round, AAA Legacy). Unsurprisingly, bargains can be found at RP. Sherrill is #2 in the AL in saves at 26, and Soria isn't too far behind at #5 with 21. Percival, despite his hamstring problems and recent ineffectiveness has still saved 18 games, more than much more highly rated closers such as Huston Street (9th round), JJ Putz (3rd round), or Bobby Jenks (8th round). Maybe those analysts are on to something when they say don't pay for saves.

Anyone want to step up and put together an all bust team? Despite my current lead, I imagine you'll be seeing more than a few of my draftees in there.

Completely off topic.

When did we decide was the decision deadline for Football keepers again?

Swelling, Spasms, and Babies

I can't figure any of this out anymore.

• Matsui has his knee drained last Wednesday but is in the starting lineup Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Then, after a day off Monday, his knee (and now a stiff neck) kept him out of the lineup Tuesday and Wednesday. He "may be available for pinch-hitting duties". WhooHoo.
  
• In Monday's pre-game warm ups, Youkilis gets hit by a ball in the eye and misses that game and the next.
  
• Hamilton injuries himself in the 4th inning of Tuesday's game and is now the dreaded "day to day".
• Not to be outdone, "The Mariners confirmed that Erik Bedard won't make his start Wednesday because of back spasms."

Just fantastic.

• Oh yeah, Bartlett will miss Weds and Thurs games for the birth of his first child.

My AL Balot

Today I get an email from redsox.com imploring me to vote for Varitek, only 45,000 votes behind Joe Mauer. I hate the fact that the All Star starters are dominated by undeserving players from large market teams and Varitek would represent the worst of that kind.

Varitek .230/.308/.392
Mauer .331/.417/.437

This isn't even close. The fact that the Red Sox have 1.5 billion fans verses the Twins 325 means that, with a push, Varitek probably will overtake Mauer.

Pedrioa over Kinser is another joke:

Pedrioa: .282/.329/.410
Kinsler: .305/.362/.502

Here is my ballot with the leader in the parenthesis.

C Joe Mauer (Mauer)
1B Kevin Youkilis (Youkilis)
2B Ian Kinsler (Pedrioa)
3B Miguel Cabrera* (Rodriguez)
SS Orlando Cabrera (Jeter)
OF Josh Hamilton (Ramirez)
OF J.D. Drew** (Hamilton)
OF -None- (Ichiro)
DH Aubry Huff (Ortiz -inj-, Matsui)
Write-in: Carlos Quentin

But the biggest joke of all is the fact that Carlos Quentin is not even on the ballot (.280/.392/.533) with the 6th best OPS in the AL. I mean, you gotta think at least 95% of the votes are over the Internet, right? So why the fuck can't they have added him, like, two months ago?

*I would vote for A-Rod here, his number are deserving, but I cannot vote for the guy. Just can't.
**Milton Bradley is listed as an OF on the Ballot, which he isn't. Bradley has better numbers than Drew and Quentin, but it's hard for me to vote for a guy for a position that he doesn't play.

Highlights from Game 6

Before I completely turn my attention back to baseball (Christ, we're 75 games into the baseball season and basketball is just ending) I wanted to share some of the highlights of Game 6.

• Paula Cole ("Where Have all the Cowboys Gone") sang the National Anthem. You literally could not hear her by the end the crowd was so loud.
• Celtics introductions - The Celtic's intro is so freaking cool live. It's madness with everyone screaming along with KG and Paul Pierce on the jumbotron.
• Crowd chanting De-Fense . . De-Fense . .every defensive possession, all game long, even when up by 40.
• Ray Allen, Posey, and House draining threes it felt like on every shot (looking at the box score, House was 1-5, but for some reason I don't remember those 4 misses).
• Thinking to myself this game is not over... this game is not over... this game is not over. It wasn't until we entered the fourth quarter up by 29, I was like... Ok, even if the Celtics don't score this quarter, they still have a good chance at winning.
• You got Rondo'd! You don't get a good appreciation of his speed watching on TV. Sitting up in the balcony, you get a better perspective of how quickly he moves with and without the ball.
• Na, Na, Na, Na... Hey, Hey, Hey... Goodbye. That was the loudest crowd cheer I've ever heard at a sporting event. Hands down. I hope it translated on TV.
• Booing David Stern. This was so satisfying. Don't even get me started on how messed up the finals schedule was. Having 2 days off between home games and only 1 between away games, NO Friday night or Saturday night games, 9:15pm start times...etc. Despite what I've read, I really don't think it had anything to do with the referee scandal. I mean, we had just won the Championship, right?
• The crowd breaking out yet another De-Fense chant during Doc's speech on the Garden floor after he mentions how the season started with defense. Couldn't hear the rest of his speech, but I am sure it was pretty awesome. I also missed Pierce dancing on his chair to Gino - I'm hoping to find a youtube clip of that sometime.
• So yeah, all in all a good time. The riot police were out in force outside the Garden. It was kind of funny. They would all of a sudden just march forward in unison without warning for about 10 steps and then stop. During one of their marches, I got a bunch of people singing the Darth Vader entrance music as we took pictures of them and retreated. Good times...

Finally, make sure you check out this locker room video of Big Baby - wtf.

The Injury Train Continues

Add Konerko to the list. Then I pick up Coco, and 2 days later he has a hand injury. unreal.

I heart Ichiro

Playing on this team and seeing what is happening around me, I feel that something is beginning to fall apart. But, if I was not in this situation, and I was objectively watching what just happened this week, I would probably be drinking a lot of beers and booing. -- Ichiro

Everything must go!!!!111!!!!1

So my team is bad, and it's time for me to come to grips with this fact and start looking at next year. I'm opening up my roster- pretty much anyone is available, an I'm looking for good to great value in keepers. I already have some offers in on some players, but I won't be making any trades until the end of this week at the earliest.

Andrew

The last two weeks in not so brief

First of all, I'd like to say the Celtics are ridiculously good. Their defense in the 3rd quarter the other night was unbelievable, and Doc Rivers finally used a small lineup of shooters to take advantage of the Laker's lack of a physical big man. It must be an exciting time to be in Boston.

But now on to the baseball. To keep the updates at even intervals, the stats and standings are as of the morning of Friday, June 13. I don't have at bat totals for this week, and I think I'm going to give up on keeping track of them.

As usual, we'll start off with the current standings, and the change in the standings in the last two weeks.

Although the overall standings haven't changed for about a month (at least for the days I'm doing the updates, I missed the brief moment I was in first place), there were big changes in the point totals this week. Spencer has plummeted to below 20, and Luke has fallen out of striking distance from first for the first time since I started keeping track of the stats. The biggest winner of the last two weeks was clearly Andrew, who gained 5 of his 6 points in pitching stats.

Andrew was the big beneficiary of blow ups from my and Caleb's pitching staffs, with each of us gaining a quarter point on our ERAs, and Caleb adding 0.05 to his WHIP, allowing Andrew to gain three points from the overall leaders.
Overall, my offense continued to hit extremely well, leading in R, HR, and RBI, with Manny, Swisher, and David Murphy leading the way. Caleb also had a huge two weeks in stolen bases, swiping 8 more bags than anyone else, however, because my lead was so large to begin with, he wasn't able to gain any points.
Batting average was also a big mover this last week, with Caleb and I gaining points, at the expense of Luke. Unlike the pitching stats, where the change was driven by poor performance, batting average changed because both Caleb and I had big offensive weeks - I added 10 points to my batting average, while he added 9. Here is a chart of batting average for the last two weeks.

Week in Brief?

C'mon Bill!!

Anyone watching the game?

And can they tell me how bad Ellsbury's wrist injury is? With Coco ejected, the outfield D went from spectacular (from LF to RF: Jacoby, Coco, Drew), to horrendous (LF to RF: C. Carter [yikes], JD Drew, Youkilis). The thought of Youkilis as a RF is terrifying. And everything I read about Carter said his real position was probably DH. Christ. Hopefully Coco won't get suspended for too long, and Ellsbury will be OK in a week or so.

Thome for Kotchman

To me, this one is a pretty clear trade of average for power. Kotchman hit 6 bombs in April but hasn't homered in 30+ games -- it seems like he'll end up in the 15HR range that was initially projected for him. For me, that makes him less appealing as a keeper - a late pick that hits .300 with moderate power is OK, but not huge upside. Hitting in the angels line-up helps and he should get good runs and RBI totals.

I'm hoping Thome still has one 30HR year left in him. He's historically never hit below .270 or so. You could definitely see him having a .250 year or so, but I'm not expecting him to hit .200 the rest of the way. I think this is actually a pretty good deal for me, capturing Thome's 2nd half upside with the power I need having lost Manny and with Hafner and Sheffield being totally unknown quantities at this point.

It's still a great deal for Bill, however, as it gets him exactly what he needed, which is more average. Kotchman is solid, and I've definitely helped Bill's chances pretty substantially with the two trades I've made with him this year.

That's just sad...

"Although [Vernon] Wells has been on the DL for 22 days, he still leads the Jays in RBIs with 24."