This Week in Fantasy Baseball

With Fantasy Hockey in the books for another season, it’s time to finally focus 100% on Fantasy Baseball leagues. The first week of play is always tough to gauge because you don’t want an itchy trigger-finger to influence you to drop a player after one bad outing, but you also don’t want to risk a roster spot for players that have an amazing start right out of the gate. Here are some interesting trends I noticed this week that could hopefully help your team.

Aces get burned

This week was not very kind to many of MLB’s #1 starters. Pitchers like Cliff Lee, C.C. Sabathia, Tim Lincecum, Brandon Webb, and Justin Verlander were all knocked around in at least one of their starts this week. In most cases, it’s not time to hit the panic button just yet on any of these guys. Sabathia and Verlander have already bounced back with better second starts, but keep a close eye on your struggling aces.

Business as usual

We go from players who have failed to live up to expectations, to players who constantly meet expectations and surpass them. The best example of course is Roy Halladay; he is off to a torrent 2-0 start, with a respectable 3.86 ERA. Jake Peavy is also mowing down the competition, with a 1-1 record and has already racked up 18 K’s. Albert Puljos is living up to his NL MVP status by knocking in 7 RBI’s with 2 HR’s in a single game on Saturday.

What’s in the water in Toronto?

At this point, you can’t really go wrong with any of the Blue Jays hitters near the top of the lineup. Adam Lind just had probably the best week of play in his entire career with 12 RBI’s and 3 HR’s. The Blue Jays 1 and 2 hitters (Scutaro and Hill) are also off to a great start, combining for 5 HR’s and 10 RBI’s between the two of them. I think it’s safe to say Scutaro will drop off a bit in the coming weeks, but Aaron Hill is here to stay. Adam Lind has skyrocketed up to the #2 spot on Yahoo, and is now owned by 75 % of teams Yahoo leagues. Go and get him off the waiver wire if for some reason he’s still out there.

Injury bug gets squashed

Initially, I was very weary about drafting Troy Tulowitzski because I was very afraid that his sophomore curse would continue into this year. So far he is proving me (and many critics) completely wrong with 3 HR’s and 5 RBI’s through 6 games. Chris Carpenter was back to his Cy Young former-self and no-hit the Pirates through 7 innings earlier this week.

Leftovers

If you’re like me and have more Fantasy Baseball teams than you can handle, there are probably a few players you share across different leagues – for me it’s Evan Longoria who is my starting third baseman on all 3 of my teams. So far it’s paying off – 5 HR’s, 10 RBI’s and a .421 average has him next to Adam Lind for MVP candidate of the week. Other fantasy players that you may have snagged in late rounds like Derek Lowe, Kyle Losche or Aaron Harang are paying dividends for you. All three pitched shutout games this week, and have sparklingly-low ERA’s.