Main Event Musings - Part Four

[Edwards Kings]

Week Four Results – What an up-and-down week. Beginning the previous week-end, my team went into an offensive funk of epic proportions. Saturday a week ago, I was sitting in first place in my league and in the Top Ten overall. By last Friday night, I was in third and being chased hard by the fourth place team in my league and in the 80’s overall. My team hit 0.258 on Monday and didn’t sniff that high a BA again until Friday (0.226). Through the first four days of the week, I had a 0.199 BA with 11 Runs, 2 Homers, and 13 RBI’s. Through that time, Andruw Jones had only six AB, Rafael Furcal four, and Alex Gordon was absolutely lost. I finally had a strong week end which saved most of my counting stats, but in the end, Week Four will go down as a poor week with a 0.2463 BA, with 37 Runs, 12 HR (thanks to Mr.s Either, Victorino, and Jones), 40 RBI’s, and 3 SB. For the year, I am still ahead of targets (though barely) in HR, RBI, and SB. My BA sits at an anemic 0.2679 and I am short seven runs scored. With Raffy Furcal nursing a sore ankle, I am hoping another one of my team picks up the Runs and SB slack.



Pitching was also a mixed bag. Garza and Shields (9 and 12 K’s in their lone starts respectively) were awesome. “Snake” Danks escaped from New York without too much damage even though he did not have his best stuff (three walks to one K). Weaver was awesome in his first start and thankfully got pulled in the fifth after giving up four runs in the game to that point thereby limiting the damage. Cook, Bush and Lowe combine for two OK and two weak (but not crushingly bad) starts. Bush held the Padres to one run through six, but gave up two more in the seventh. Cook managed to give up five runs to the Giants through five innings (though he went on to pitch a scoreless sixth) giving up only two doubles though he did have five walks. That has been Cook’s issue all year, control. Heretofore he has shown better command during his career, so I am hoping he can turn it around as he has given up four or more walks in three of his last four games. Lowe is giving me the ground balls I expected, but he too is having control issues. However, my biggest concern with Lowe is he is not making it deep in the games and his having BIG trouble the third time through line-ups. Against St. Louis, he was literally cruising through five. Then ,between the first and second outs of the sixth inning, he gets SMOKED. His second start of the week was against the limp Astros, but even still he was pulled after 84 pitches after completing the fifth inning. He was not pitching bad (six hits including two doubles, and only one walk), but they pulled him anyway. Maybe Cox was “resting” him as he has the Phillies next week? I need Lowe to be a solid back-end of the rotation horse for me and needless to say I am concerned.



For the Year, I am up a week on Wins (I have posted on these boards before the unusual situation in my league as now FIVE teams have 20 or more wins….amazing), a little more than half a week ahead on K’s, and I would be at my ERA target with one less earned run in any of the starts so far. The walks are hurting my WHIP so that I am at 1.333 and I need to be below 1.300. These ERA/WHIP numbers do not look too sexy now, but as Shawn wrote in his blog, the pretenders will start dropping and maintaining these levels will rise in the point standings. I am almost two weeks behind in saves. There haven’t been any great options available on the FA pool yet (BTW, no one in Baltimore is going to provide any relief in saves), but I have placed a couple of gambles.



Week Five Free Agents – With Gordon being sent down (and you cannot tell me that Chris Getz nor Alberto Callaspo have more on the ball offensively than Gordon) to “find” his swing, I am hard up for some help. With Tejada (who has been respectable given he missed some time early) now eligible for third, that help could come from either a CM or a MI. I am choosing to hold onto Gordon for a while, so I released failed-experiment Atkins and picked up Blake DeWitt for a modest $21 investment. DeWitt is not gonna make anyone forget Utley, be I hope he will be serviceable.



I admit I place a healthy bid on Simon, but fell short by more than half as the winning bid was $256. To each his own, but I cannot justify 25% of my FA budget on such an iffy prospect who has the job for at best three weeks until Gonzalez comes back. My conditional bid on Meek was way too low, but again I am not going to go all out for a Pirate closer either (at least until I get more desperate). I did win with my bid on Juan Gutierrez, ARI for something like $9 or $11 and I dropped David Bush (who gave me one good, one OK, and one terrible start while I had him). With Gutierrez and Villanueva now on my roster, I hope one will end up a closer soon. If not, the rotating door will continue to swing as there are at least six or eight more pitchers available on the waiver wire that have the potential to hold the closers job for at least a short stretch. My goal is to have them before they get anointed. I also placed what turned out to be a second place bid on Chacin.



Week Five Planning – With so much of my bench hurt (Webb, Roberts, Guillen) or in the minors (Gordon), I really do not have many options as far as line-up goes this week. Blake DeWitt will be in and probably Luis Valbuena as well since Raffy Furcal may be put on the DL. Two pitchers will ride the pine, and one will be Derek Lowe. He will pitch in Philly against Hamels (who for some reason seems to love home-cooking) and I do not like the odds (which means of course he will throw a complete game shut-out no-hitter). The first four will go (Garza, Shields, Weaver, Danks) and of course Soria. That leaves four to choose from between Villanueva, Gutierrez, Cook, Bonderman, and Cecil. Cook has been reasonably ok (how is that for a rousing endorsement) in three of his five starts and this week he goes to Petco, so he will be one. Bonderman strangely enough has also been ok in three of five starts and gets an away game against Cleveland. Cecil has two starts, both away, one in Cleveland and one in Chicago. In short, I think I am going with those three and Villanueva. I could de-risk myself a little bit and sit one questionable starter in favor of Gutierrez, but with nine total starts including three in Seattle, two in Cleveland and one each in Oakland and San Diego, I am confident this will be a good pitching week, so there SHOULD not be any reason to go with the extra reliever. With my team being short on saves, save opportunities, and save candidates, it would be good to run up Wins and K’s as much as possible. If Lowe had a decent match-up, I would probably go with eight starters.