Well, it’s spring and thank heavens that all those cute bunnies are still around. Crazy little fuzzy guys!
What’s nice about 2007 is that no one noticed that the year came and went. I mean, for real. 2007 was the Lamest Year Ever!!! Nothing important happened. It’s like the year didn’t even count. No one remembers anything that happened in 2007. Let me give you an example: Name one time you put too much salt on your pizza. Boom. Exactly. No 2007.
But two things you need to know about Fantasy 2008. First, Riots owner, Georg, is picking up THIS guy for two starts in Week Three:
John Patterson surprisingly was cut by the Nationals on Thursday. “We spent spring training evaluating him, and we came to the conclusion it was better to give our younger kids a chance to start,” Nationals manager Manny Acta said.
Totally good call, Georg. I won’t be able to get him because I’m too far down on the waiver wire. TOP GUY, really. Nasty stuff!
OK, now second. This is the Official Thing You Need To Know About 2008. True and honest fantasy recommendation to pass along. I live and breathe this guy, and since we’ve already done our draft, I can pass this along without compromising my position. For real, this guy is going to knock your socks off if you’ve never heard of him. No joke, he’s from Venezuela. He’s six foot NOTHING, but this guy can pitch LIGHTS OUT. Pick him up late if he’s there. His name is Johan Santana: Tiny little nothing pitcher with, what, a modicum of talent. Apparently he’s going to pitch for the Mets and rock in Queens if the offense can finally pull it together.
I’ll have another sleeper in my next installment. In the meantime, keep trading for and drafting top headliners Cust and B. Hall in the early rounds. Wish I could do it over and grab those same guys five rounds earlier. THAT would be a score!!!
And wake up Rip! It’s 2008! Where have you been since 2006? Welcome to a year that counts!
One of the more shocking events yet to unfold in this young century came to pass at the end of the Milwaukee Brewers - Florida Marlins game yesterday. Once the dust had settled on J.J. Hardy’s game winning single, the seemingly unimportant fact that the clubhouse homerun race for the month had gone to Prince Fielder instead of everyone’s favorite J.J. Hardy did not go unnoticed by one Georg Pederson of some area of Brooklyn that no one goes to. The reason for his close attention to this trivial and meaningless detail is that he can now claim a victory against the smarter, younger looking, better fantasy playing, dart playing, ping-pong playing, better drinker, studlier, more talented, tanner arch-rival of his, me. You can quote me, quoting myself thusly: “It’s exciting for Georg, to get a win once in a while. It’s really very rare. I gave JJ a call and I asked him to lay down as a personal favor. Hey, I was going to buy Georg a beer anyway. I figured – give him a little excitement. It really made his week. Month really. Well, year. Ok, it’s the biggest thing ever to happen to Georg.” He can be seen around his neighborhood, by no one really, grinning ear to ear. As for me, I feel pretty good about that. For some people it’s working in a soup kitchen on Thanksgiving. For me, seeing that grin on Georg’s face, it’s really gratifying. Yeah, I’ve done my good deed for the year.
 John Patterson is a dirt dog. He’s a greasy guy with long hair who likes to hunt. His nickname is Big Nasty. He uses a red glove with the word “Nasty” stitched in blue. He is engaged to former 2005 Miss DC, Shannon Schambeau who was 4th runner-up in the 2006 Miss USA pageant. He was the fifth overall pick in the 1996 draft. He features a mid-90’s fastball, big curve and nasty slider. In 2005, he had a 3.13 ERA over 198 1/3 innings over 31 starts, posting 185 K’s. After posting 4 straight quality from April 10 – June 23rd last year with just 8 ER in 27 2/3 innings (2.60 ERA), he had season ending elbow surgery. The surgery was called an unqualified success. He lost an arbitration battle this spring with the Nationals, asking for $1.85 million but receiving just $850,000.
Now he’s sitting on a 7.00 ERA in 4 starts with a 0-3 record. His fastball is hitting the high eighties only. He doesn’t like pitching in the cold. Two of his four starts saw temperatures in the low forties and one in the low fifties. He says now that he has been trying to get ground ball outs rather than strikeouts to keep pitch count low, which hasn’t gotten out of the eighties yet. Most recently, he described what he has as a dead arm. His spring was confidence-inspiring, but it appears he could have used more innings. What do we have here? First off we have a guy who plays for the Triple-A Nationals. Video of Nationals spring training looks like little league practice. Best case scenario for Nasty is that he’ll end up with 12-13 wins, the equivalent of 20 for a contender. At the Nationals, he does not have a veteran mentor or a pitching coach wizard to help him along. He’s seems smart but he’s got a battle here that he’s attacking on his own.
First the hedge: It’s going to go one of two ways. These next few starts will be telling. His injury may be cropping back up, in which case, his starts will get progressively shorter and rougher. The added strain of the innings every five days could throw him back on the DL by mid-May. Alternatively, he may be in a glorified, extended spring training, getting his arm conditioned finally from the surgery last July. If this is the case, we’ll see longer outings, more k’s and fewer walks over the coming weeks.
Now the verdict: Tonight he takes on the Phillies. His last start was against the Phillies, where he coughed up 7H, 4BB, 3ER with just 1K in 4+ innings. The heavily favored Phillies are finally hot right now as well. It’s a stacked deck. But game time temperature will be in the low sixties. Forecast? 5 2/3 innings, 6 hits, 3 ER, 3BB and 4 K’s. More importantly, we’ll see a pitch count of about 90 and a fastball touching that as well. His spring training is winding down. He’ll get the slider going, the pitch count and K’s up, and 12-13 wins by the end of the season. Silly rabbit, it’s not the injury.
“Yo Fuzz, why not wait until after the game so you could be smarter?”
Why start now?!
Dizzying heights of baseball frenzy were reached as opening day of baseball 2007 finally arrived. It’s that wonderful time of year when you get to enjoy the great outdoors, smell the cut grass, get that long awaited first sunburn at the game and hear those two magical words: “Play ball!” Well, that is, unless you live in the 99.7% of the country that’s in a deep freeze with no sign of melting. Baseball has become the national winter sport this year. Certainly no one is getting out to actually play some ball without a $493,721,111,111 nineteen year contract. So what’s an antsy Little Leaguer like you going to do with those precious extra hours awaiting the August thaw? Join that Fantasy League!!! Oh I know. Your mom won’t let you on those sites. Don’t worry, we won’t tell. We’ve unblocked the site for you too.
Yes it’s true. Fantasy Baseball is the worst name for an activity since the breast stroke. It gives the impression that we sit alone in a dark room and imagine hanging out with Derek Jeter and his bevy of hot ladies at Applebee’s. In reality however, it’s a much better use of our time than that. We pick a team and then we order life-sized cardboard cutouts of the players to have in our apartment. Some team owners don’t actually get the cutouts, but they don’t win either. Then we pick team names. This is the important part. A bad team name relegates you to the bottom of the standings for sure. That’s why my team name is the Fuzzy Bunnies. And that’s pretty much it. Some team owners make “roster moves” and count “pitching starts” and mundane useless, lame-team activities like that. That’s fine and all, but they better not come crying to me when they lose. Stay tuned - I’ll let you know if they do so we can make fun of them together.
I’d love to stay and chat but Derek’s at the door. We’re heading out for a bite. His treat.
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