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."