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Brandon McCarthy had surgery and is likely done for the year.  I’m sure no one wants to see McCarthy leave the rotation like that, even Daniel Straily.  It reminds me of the time in Little League when I finally got a chance to play because Billy Brunswick had chicken pox.  The team all said Billy should’ve been out there and Grey was the chicken and the pox on our team.  It’s hard to play 2nd base when you’re crying into your mitt, but as I held the mitt to my face, and peeked out the grooves, I glanced down and the mitt’s laces showed a mustache on my shadow, so it wasn’t all bad.  Hopefully, there’s a happy ending to the McCarthy/Straily story too.  Since Straily was sent down at the end of August after his brief trial run, he was hit hard in one start and fared better in the other two.  Pretty much the same way he’s pitched all year, he’s continued that:  lights out; great Ks, little to no walks.  If you have room on your team, I’d absolutely grab him.  Anyway, here’s what else I saw yesterday in fantasy baseball:

Donovan Solano – 3-for-4, 1 run, 1 RBI and a bit of bupkis over the last week, but he has speed if you need that sorta thing.  He’s going to be in this afternoon’s Buy/Sell and in that post I tell you to come back and read this.  If you’ve now gone back and forth a few times, you can stop.  This is it.

Justin Ruggiano – 1-for-4 with his 12th steal.  If only Topps still did those duo cards like back in the day when they had the Otis Nixon and Wally Backman card with the caption, “Crack Is Backman.”  They could have a Parmelee-Ruggiano card with the caption, “Freshly Great’d.”

Josh Johnson – 7 IP, 2 ER, 7 baserunners, 7 Ks to move his record to 8-11 — hey, that’s also Jon Rauch’s height!  Member when we just needed Josh Johnson to be healthy to have a terrific season?  Those were the days.  And you knew where you were then.  Girls were girls and men were men.  Mister, we could use a pitcher who wasn’t a groover again.

Marco Estrada – 5 IP, 4 ER, 7 baserunners, 5 Ks.  Well, if you play in a FIP league, you’re okay.  Not in the general sense.  In the general sense, if you play in a FIP league, you might be a little pasty and have trouble communicating with adults your age.

Norichika Aoki – 1-for-3, a run, an RBI and his 23rd steal.  “Norichika vroom vroom” that’s the background music for my SAGNOF porn.

Jean Segura – 1-for-3 and his 4th steal.  He’s now batting .210.  This yawnstipating audition he’s giving this year is doing all of us a great service.  Pray he doesn’t get hot in the last few weeks, so he stays a legit sleeper next year.

Tim Hudson – 7 IP, 0 ER, 8 baserunners, 2 Ks, lowering his ERA to 3.59.  A pretty great read over at The Atlantic talking about how sports announcers regard certain players, depending on their ethnicity.  I only mention this because I was thinking about how Tim Hudson seemed racist to me like Chipper Jones, Roy Oswalt and Lance Berkman, but this is completely unfounded, could just be the old country boy thing they have going on.  Though, we do have a way of finding out now, when ESPN inevitably hires them.

Jason Heyward – 2-for-4 to raise his average to .275.  He now has 24 homers and 19 steals.  Member about two months ago when I said he’d be better than Justin Upton?  Yeah, there were quite a few people that disagreed.  Yeah, we’ll see those people again in January when football ends.

Jhoulys Chacin – 3 1/3 IP, 0 ER, 10 baserunners, 3 Ks.  This 4-man Rockies rotation that has no starters throwing more than 75 pitches looks like it was edited by Michael Bay and put through a focus group of people who have only watched commercials their whole life.  Try having a conversation with this pitching staff and it will be like trying to talk to a hummingbird.

Chad Billingsley – Might require Tommy John surgery.  Also could use Jenny Craig surgery, but there was no mention of that.

Jason Hammel – 5 IP, 1 ER, 8 baserunners, 6 Ks as he was activated from the DL.  He was out a month with knee surgery to remove a piece of loose cartilage.  No offense to promiscuous Amish women who are sometimes called loose carriages.  Hammel has a season ERA of 3.46 and even more impressive is his K-rate, which is nearly 9.  I’d absolutely grab him in all leagues.

Mark Reynolds – 2-for-3, 2 runs, 3 RBIs and 2 more jacks.   Come on.  Nah, nah, one more time with authority.  Come on!  It’s Mini Donkey, and he’s dropping bombs like Bronx car alarms.  Someone needs to contact Newport cigarettes because Mark Reynolds and Billy Dee Williams need to be on their billboards because he’s Alive With Pleasure!  (Billy Dee because he should always be on every billboard ever.)  On the serious tip, Reynolds didn’t start hitting home runs until I picked him up.  That’s why he’s been bad since 2009, I hadn’t owned him.  Shower me with love, Mark Reynolds, you owe me your career highlights!  I said he could get ten homers in September; he might do it by September 10th.

Chris Davis – 1-for-4 with his 24th homer.  Hitting over .300 in the last week and he’s been known to hit some homers in binges.  You feel me?  Okay, could you stop, it’s a little weird.

Matt Wieters – 2-for-4, 3 RBIs and his 19th homer.  You shouldn’t expect much from your catcher, and I don’t think you do — the Royal You here — yet somehow Wieters is about to hit 20+ homers for the 2nd year in a row and it still feels like a letdown.  I sure hope I’m not here in fourteen after twenty blurbing Mike Trout like this.

Jeff Francoeur – 1-for-4 and a homer.  Dah!  I almost grabbed him for yesterday’s batty call.  Sometimes Frenchy strings together some Freedom Flies, so I’d keep an eye on him.

Eric Hosmer – 1-for-4 and a homer.  Must’ve been in honor of Obama’s speech because I’ve had an empty chair at first base all year.

Lorenzo Cain – 3-for-5 and two steals.  I wanna say better late than never, but my man needs to wind his clock.  You are really late, Cain…Sugar!

Adrian Beltre – 2-for-4 with his 30th homer and fifth this week.  Yeah, and Mark Reynolds just pfft’d.

Jordan Zimmermann – 7 IP, 2 ER, 6 baserunners, 9 Ks vs. The Lovable Losers.  No, not S.D. Jones and Iron Mike Sharpe.

Adam LaRoche – 1-for-3, 2 RBIs and yet another homer.  His 6th this week.  Between him, Beltre and Reynolds, it’s like Don Mattingly, Dale Long and Ken Griffey Jr. are having an orgy in Macy’s window!  (“Having an orgy in Macy’s window” is my new phrase I’m trying to get to catch on.  It means an outrageous display.  Like if your uncle is filling up his buffet plate a little too high at the wedding reception, he’s having an orgy in Macy’s window!  Feel free to use it any time.)

Anthony Rizzo – 3-for-4 with his 12th homer and 2nd in as many games.  Yeah, you should totally drop him.  Useless!

Chris Perez – Ripped ownership about their commitment to win.  He’s right, they’re not committed to win.  If they were, Pestano would be the closer.  For only $10,000, the Indians could’ve bailed out Wesley Snipes and had a leadoff batter, but they were tapped paying the premiums for Grady Sizemore’s insurance.

Jered Weaver – An MRI revealed tendinitis and Weaver is out of his start this weekend.  With Chris Perez’s comments and this bad news for Weaver, yesterday set back the mullet movement twenty years, which puts it right around the time when it was cool.