WHO ARE YOU BRUCE CHEN?! I demand answers immediately. I know, yesterday was just against the Marlins, so we can write off the 7 IP, 0 ER, 6 baserunners, 6 Ks game. But when I put into my supercomputer (that has a mustache too) that Chen has a 1.62 ERA in 72 1/3 IP, my supercomputer walks out the door…And it doesn’t even have legs! If you woke from a season-long coma and saw Chen’s ERA, you’re liable to have a sudden case of Toxic Shock Syndrome (I might be confusing diseases here). So, can the Chen man keep wokking and rolling like he’s Martin Yan? No way in this giant-lush-covered-in-water-thanks-to-Al-Gore planet. He’s not a sub-2 ERA pitcher. He’s barely a 4-ERA pitcher. As a sabermetrician altered license plate in New Hampshire reads, Regress or Die. Anyway, here’s what else I saw yesterday in fantasy baseball:
Cameron Maybin – Padres still hope he’s able to return this year, but he left his PCL rehab assignment with pain in his left PCL. To put that through an Electric Slide Phrase Generator: left PCL, left PCL, riiiiiiight.
Jedd Gyorko – 1-for-4 and his 2nd homer in as many games. I have an idea. No, this isn’t another one of my stupid ideas. How dare you! My idea is simple: put Petco on mile-high tall stilts.
Will Venable – 3-for-5, 2 runs, 2 RBIs, has a hit in every game this month and is a hot schmotato. Oh, won’t you, oh won’t you, hot schmotato with me.
Carlos Gonzalez – Rockies are saying he’s unlikely to be ready when eligible next Tuesday. This is stage one and five in the Cycle of Fantasy Misinformation. Stages 1-5 are: Unlikely to be ready, won’t be ready, will be ready, unsure when he’ll be ready and unlikely to be ready.
Jose Fernandez – 7 IP, 0 ER, 4 baserunners, 6 Ks. I talked about him in yesterday’s podcast. FWIW, and it’s W something if you’re reading, the interview before I come on is pretty solid.
Christian Yelich – 3-for-4, 1 RBI and his 2nd steal, hitting .299 since his call-up and looks more than ready for the majors. I’m kinda excited to see what happens when the Marlins play an extra inning game. What does Yelich do? Keep playing or 10 PM curfew?
Matt Harvey – 6 IP, 4 ER, 10 baserunners, 3 Ks. Mets officially announced what everyone knew the whole season, Harvey will be shut down at 200 innings. So he has about six starts left on the year (35 innings), or two starts if Dusty Baker is traded to New York.
Hyun-Jin Ryu – 7 IP, 1 ER, 6 baserunners, 3 Ks, 2.91 ERA. Be interesting to see where he’s drafted next year, I think he’s still not going to get any respect. Next year, he can enter to the song, Ryu Experienced.
Mark Ellis – 2-for-3, 1 run and hitting near-.375 in the last week with a homer. It rhymes with flat tomato.
Dan Uggla – Hit the 15-day DL after having eye surgery. He’s been complaining the baseball looks like it’s the size of a pill, but after he tried to swallow two baseballs for a headache, Braves felt the time to act was now.
Tyler Pastornicky – 1-for-4 as he fills in at 2nd base for Uggla. Pastornicky isn’t the priest Carmela made out with on The Sopranos, he’s a once-solid prospect who hasn’t done much in his time in the majors. He could steal 25 bags over the course of the season with 7-10 homers, which is good, but if he’s just up while Uggla’s reading an eye chart, then U CN DO BTTR.
Chris Johnson – 1-for-4, 2 RBIs and his 9th homer as he still leads the NL in batting average. Terry Pendleton secretly hopes he comes up short so his autograph appearances for the Most Unlikely Brave Batting Champion don’t dry up, which also sounds like the voiceover on a commercial for female deodorant.
Kris Medlen – 7 IP, 1 ER, 6 baserunners, 5 Ks. As I said after his last start, “Medlen gets the Phils and Metco next, so I wouldn’t be surprised if he has a 3.60 ERA in about ten days and then we’re like, ‘Wow, Medlen’s really come back,’ then he’ll get the Cards after that and we’ll be like, ‘He just had two great starts and now I want to drop him again.'” And that’s me quoting me!
Matt Harrison – Done for the season. Little darling, it feels like years since he’s been here… There goes Harrison, there goes Harrison.
Manny Ramirez – Released by the Rangers. Manny just couldn’t get on track in Round Rock. Dwight Gooden said round rock also knocked him off his game.
Brett Anderson – Looks like he’s returning as a reliever. Since he usually gets injured every forty innings, this might be a nice way to keep him healthy. To sound totally full of myself, I really like Gray, so this move is A’s-ok with me.
Bartolo Colon – 4 IP, 5 ER vs. the Astros. Give your fantasy team an enema and get on with the Colon cleanse.
Yoenis Cespdes – 3-for-4, 2 RBIs and his 19th homer. Get hot, friend, get hot.
Chia-Jen Lo – Got the save yesterday. Maybe the Astros saw the A’s green and decided to go with C. Lo. Not sure, but if you’re desperate for saves, I could see grabbing him. At least he’s pitching moderately well.
Erasmo Ramirez – 5 1/3 IP, 4 ER, 8 baserunners, 7 Ks. More like Eras-Moe Howard.
Brad Miller – 2-for-5 and two solo homers. Not only did I drop him, but I alerted Rudy that I did and he picked him up. This is my 2nd worst nightmare. The first being accidentally falling face-first into a vat of Nair.
Dustin Ackley – 3-for-4, 1 RBI, and has hit in six of the past seven games and is hitting .500. I imagine if I call him a hot schmotato I’ll receive a resounding meh, but there you have it. Ack right, Dustin, ack right.
Justin Smoak – 2-for-4, 1 run, 2 RBIs. Has hits in all but one game this month (hitting near .370 with 4 homers in August), and hit .289 in July, so it’s not completely out of nowhere. Throw everything you learned in elementary school out the window and stop, drop and roll towards Smoak. C’mon, don’t literally throw your elementary school notebooks out the window. Throw them in the trash, you hoarder.
Jon Jay – 4-for-6, 1 run, 1 RBI and his 4th steal, hitting near .400 in the last week without a whole lot of power. The Federalist is just keeping things democratic.
Zach McAllister – 6 IP, 1 ER, 5 baserunners, 7 Ks vs. the Twins. See that, Danny Salazar, that’s what you were supposed to do! McAllister isn’t anything but a streamer in deep leagues or else you’ll be reaching for a McAlkaseltzer.
Josh Willingham – 1-for-4 and his 12th homer. He’s another veteran in the same mold as Aaron Hill and Adam LaRoche (who also homered yesterday). There’s a lot of stats in Willingham’s bat if he’s going to salvage this season. Wouldn’t surprise me to see him get above 20 homers on the year. I could see taking a flyer on him for power.
Ben Zobrist – 2-for-5, 3 RBIs and 2 homers. That makes me so happy I wanna smash a guitar. Preferably Zobrist’s wife’s guitar.
Chris Archer – 5 IP, 5 ER. When he left his last start after 1 2/3 IP because of forearm tightness, I told you to drop him, now I say, “You didn’t listen to me, did you?”
Hector Santiago – 5 IP, 1 ER, 10 baserunners, 3 Ks, 3.37 ERA and more than a K an inning in 117 2/3 IP, and did virtually the same last year (10+ K-rate and a 3.33 ERA in 70 1/3 IP). Can you say 2014 sleeper? If you can’t, you might want to see a speech therapist.
Avisail Garcia – 2-for-4, 2 runs, 2 RBIs and has more upside than you can wave at because upside is amorphous and you can’t wave at it. I’d grab him if I needed an upside gamble as a 5th outfielder.
Randall Delgado – 7 IP, 3 ER, 6 baserunners, 2 Ks. He has a 6+ K-rate this year, which doesn’t fully compute with his minor league numbers, but neither does his under-2 walk rate. If he can find some more Ks while holding the control, there’s a chance here for something other than what he is now, which is Kyle Kendrick-clone. Call him Clonedrick.
Paul Goldschmidt – 3-for-5 and two homers. Au Shizz! AU SHIZZ!
Gerardo Parra – 2-for-4 and a homer, after getting two steals on Monday. Member in May when he was hot and you owned him? Yeah, I barely remember too, but he was, and he looks like he is again.
Chris Davis – 1-for-4, 2 RBIs and another homer. Only six more homers to 500!
J.J. Hardy – 2-for-4 and his 4th homer in the last six games. Hardy rawr rawr!
Jason Vargas – 4 1/3 IP, 4 ER, 9 baserunners, 3 Ks vs. the Yanks, as gave his owners The Vargas Face.
Mike Trout – 1-for-4, 2 runs, 3 RBIs and his 21st homer. Why don’t I own him anywhere? Jesus, please holla back. If you don’t wanna listen, show me where Pastor Ma$e at.
Mark Trumbo – 2-for-5, 2 RBIs and his 26th homer. He’s also batting .237 so it’s not all peach cobbler and large-breasted women. That’s Thanksgiving at Mike Napoli’s house.
CC Sabathia – 6 IP, 2 ER, 9 baserunners (6 BBs), 7 Ks. Geez, even when his ends aren’t bad the means are ugly. Ollie North couldn’t even defend six walks in six innings.
Alfonso Soriano – 3-for-6, 3 runs, 6 RBIs and 2 homers (21, 22). Yesterday, Alf was cruising on the Gordon Shumway.
Eduardo Nunez – 2-for-6, 2 runs, 4 RBIs. The Yankees didn’t only face one bad starter yesterday, but they got to face a 2nd bad one when Joe Blanton entered the game in the 7th. Stream-o-Nator, “Hey, that’s not nice!”
Yovani Gallardo – Likely to return next Tuesday. His owners should mark their iCal as next Tuesday the day their ulcer returns.
Marco Estrada – 6 IP, 1 ER, 4 baserunners, 2 Ks in Texas, which was a start I wanted no part of and now he gets the Reds twice next (not in the same game; what is this 1898?). So, Estrada has back-to-back solid games, but I don’t want any part of him right now.
Scooter Gennett – 2-for-4, 3 RBIs and 2 homers. This inspired Rickie Weeks to get an even closer parking spot at his doctor’s office. This was Scooter’s fourth homer in the last three games and has shown some speed and pop in the minors. In deep leagues, I could see grabbing him to see if this is the start of his career and the end of Weeks’s.
Aramis Ramirez – 0-for-3 as he was activated from the DL. While you’re debating between Aramis or A-Rod on your fantasy team, think how hard the decision would be if you had a DeLorean.
Mitch Moreland – 2-for-2 and his career-high 17th homer, which is all well and good, but he was pinch-hit for later in the game as Ron Washington utilizes a strict platoon. Damn that Washington, always fidgeting.
Homer Bailey – 6 1/3 IP, 4 ER, 9 baserunners, 5 Ks went against Jeff Samardzija 6 IP, 4 ER, 10 baserunners, 5 Ks. The first 10,000 psychiatrists in Chicago were admitted for free to witness the two most schizophrenic starters.
Brandon Phillips – 3-for-6, 1 run, 1 RBI and 2 steals, doubling his season total. It would be so nice if BP suddenly realized that his stats don’t look so good and decided to start padding them. So, so nice.
Nate Schierholtz – 1-for-4 with his 16th homer, his 2nd this week while hitting over .300. Has been in the last three or four Buy columns and will be in another one this Friday the way he’s going.
Ryan Dempster – 7 IP, 1 ER, 6 baserunners, 4 Ks. Here’s JB’s big preseason sleeper coming through (in this game, he’s got a 4.50 ERA on the year — oofa). Go take on JB over in our fantasy football leagues, and see if he’s got any hot football sleepers. Are they called sleepers with football? I feel like football’s so rah-rah-I’m-gonna-punch-you-in-the-nuts-while-we-wrestle-for-the-ball that sleepers seems too refined. In football, they’re probably crashers or wreckers.
Jacoby Ellsbury – 1-for-6, 2 runs, 1 RBI and 2 steals. Now has 44 steals on the year. Can I write the 2014 overrated post for him now? Do I have to wait until next year?
Josh Johnson – Heads to the Disgraceful List. Long overdue as this Johnson’s been all wang for the whole year.
Colby Rasmus – After the Jays said he had abdominal problems, they’re now saying he could be headed to the DL if his oblique doesn’t show improvement. No one is exactly sure what needs improvement or what the problem is. Sounds promising! Maybe Dr. Whosiewitzus can check under his whatchawhosie.
Todd Redmond – 5 1/3 IP, 0 ER, 4 baserunners, 5 Ks vs. the Red Sox. This start came after a 6 IP, 10 K start vs. the Astros, which shouldn’t be completely written off due to the Asstros caveat. Erick Sermon would tell you Redmond will blow your mind, but Erick’s been listening to Redmond on how to roll a blunt. Redmond’s solid for Ks, but not a whole lot else. His next two starts will be the Rays and Asstros again. I think the Rays start could go either way, but if you’re in a deep league and trolling for Ks, Redmond could be a guy I’d rock, fella.
J.P. Arencibia – 2-for-4, 2 RBIs and his 18th homer. This broke his o-for-August streak and his first mult-hit game since July 23rd. He only has 3 multi-hit games dating back to June 24th. Just Peachy, you are not.
Bryce Harper – Out with the flu. That reminds me of something, did the dwarf, Sneezy, have the flu? Allergies? Maybe dwarf, Doc, should’ve looked at him.
