Week Sixteen

When you have middle relievers on your fantasy roster, the intent is to help your ERA/WHIP numbers and also chip in a few K's and the occasional vulture win. In the Sixteenth week of the 2007 Fantasy season my two middle relievers did precisely the opposite. Rafael Soriano and Scot Shields combined to throw 4.2 innings. In those innings, they donated 2 K's to my cause. They also murdered my ERA/WHIP by allowing 10 Hits, 3 Walks and 8 Runs. Unfortunately, this led to me losing ERA and WHIP by very small margins, en route to losing the week entirely.

My recent acquisition of a slumping Jason Bay was immediately put to the test this week. And the immediate returns were not good. Bay went 4-20 with 1 run and 4 RBI. Those numbers narrowly eclipsed Ryan Doumit, my final fill in at catcher until Piazza is back and ready (which should hopefully be in a week). Doumit also went 4-20, but managed only 3 RBI.

Those two put my offense in an hole, a hole that Kazuo Matsui seemed more than happy to fill with dead hookers - and this time, I mean that as a bad thing. Matsui, once a revelation to my team, went 1-19 for the week. He scored 1 run and had an OPS well under .200. This was his last week on my team. I replaced him with Ryan Theriot for next week, so we'll see how that goes.

One of my bright spots (I did manage to win HR, RBI and Runs for the week, but somehow lost OPS) was Hideki Matsui, who had 14 hits, 4 homers, 8 RBI and 8 Runs.

The worst part about the week was the fact that I lost to a guy whose team name is Boner and whose team is accompanied by a photo of the actor who played the eponymous character on Growing Pains. That hurts. That's not a team you want to lose to. His team is led by his infield of Morneau, Utley and Aramis Ramirez. These three are the heart of his team and they all had big weeks. The biggest pain in my ass, though, was Eric Byrnes. Why? Because Byrnes went ahead and stole 7 (SEVEN) of his team's 9 bases this week. That's a lot of fucking bases. It's basically half of what Byrnes had on the season going into the week. Byrnes singlehandedly beat my team at steals, as I stole 6. What are the fucking odds of that?

Is Hafner going to wake up fully? Will we ever see then 2006 Hafner again? God, I hope so. But we sure aren't know. Another week of an OPS under .800 goes by and the list of players I could have drafted instead of him (in all 3 leagues) keeps playing in my mind.

Even worse, this loss (8-4) knocks me into second place in my division. Fucking Byrnes.

For next week, I'm expecting good things. I'm playing the league's worst team, and I'm getting two starts from Smoltz, Bondermand and Andrew Miller (Blanton's time has passed, apparently), as well as Jorge Sosa at home vs. Washington. Should be a good pitching week.

I'm benching Bay, whose slump seems endless right now. In his place, I'm starting JD Drew, who had a great weekend series at Fenway against Chicago. Piazza is back, but I'm going to give Doumit one more week to be sure Piazza is playing every day and hitting well.