Howard Chen AKA Mr. Fantasy's Blog

My heart definitely skipped a beat when I saw Alfonso Soriano was hit in the hand by a pitch.

Translation: my 1st-round pick in one of my leagues is gonna be out about 6 weeks.

2nd Translation: Uh oh.

This comes right after the same team lost Adam Wainwright and Jerry Hairston, Jr. to recent injuries with Chris Young the pitcher already filling my 1 DL spot and Troy Percival also hurt.

What to do, what to do.

Thank goodness, Jorge Cantu was still available.  I chose him over David Murphy (this is an 8-team league) because Murphy dominates righties, but not lefties, and this league stresses pitching, and so my offense has the bare minimum of players, with no bench.  Basically, I need a guy who can play for me everyday, not a guy I need to bench once in awhile, no offense to Murphy, who has been outstanding, but again, against righties, not lefties.

On the downside, in the same league, I faced a team that had King Felix, Shawn Marcum, Tim Lincecum, Ryan Dempster all on the same night.  They were awesome.

I did have Justin Verlander and Justin Duchscherer, both of whom came away with wins, so I stay close in that category.

Other thoughts from tonight's boxscores...

-Pittsburgh's Ryan Doumit is begging to be picked up.  7 hits, 3 home runs in his last 8 at bats.  This, after slumping his first few games off the DL and getting dropped by yours truly in another league of mine because I opted to keep Tampa's Dioner Navarro.

-Seattle's Brandon Morrow will do well as a Seattle closer in place of J. J. Putz until Putz comes back.  Morrow will also get a good number of K's.

-I'm on the Moises Alou lookout.  He had a hit in his first game back from the DL, but didn't play tonight.  I suspect that he got hurt... AGAIN.

-Jay Bruce is becoming more and more sporadic with his good performances.  His average is still about .370, but look for his numbers to continue dropping to about .305 or so.

-Carlos Quentin is also coming down to earth a little bit.