Given the plum matchup of the Nationals for his first Sawx start, John Smoltz turned the opportunity into prunes with a 4-run 1st inning. But then he started shaking off the rust and gave up only 1 ER and 3 hits in the next 4 innings. So what can be expect from Ol’ Smoltzy? His move to the AL is a blessing and a curse – a blessing in that many of the hitters haven’t faced him and a curse in that it’s the tougher league. His velocity was good given it was his first start (hitting 93+ MPH on the fastball) and his slider and split-finger had some bite. If he stays healthy, he’s definitely worth rolling the dice on. But you may want to sit him during bad matchups until he has a couple good starts under his belt. Anyway, here’s what else we saw in fantasy baseball:

Geovany Soto – Was reported that he tested positive for marijuana in the WBC. Going, Going, Ganja! To be blunt, Soto had an awful start. He stunk up the joint. He left his owners hungry. Now, he’s smoking like he’s hitting .420.

Jake Fox – HR yesterday. Fox is worth owning while DH’ing. He’s crazy like a fox, which is much better than crazy like a Milton Bradley.

Magglio Ordonez – HR yesterday after he shaved his head. Hey, it worked for Bruce Willis.

Ted Lilly – 6 IP, 6 ER. Did show up on the list of pitchers who may be in for a correction. I think he’ll be okay, but he’s not an under 4 ERA pitcher. You knew that, I knew that. Let’s move on, shall we?

Casey McGehee – HR yesterday as he bats .389 in the last week. After the game, Zobrist tossed him his jersey as he cracked open a Coke.

Denard Span – Returned from the Dizzabled List with a 1-for-2 game and 3 runs scored.

Hanley Ramirez – It’s been a tough year for NL East shorstops and Hanley came out of the gates quite slow (9/2/12/3/.289). After a typical Hanley May (21/6/11/5/.359), the first 20 games in June netted 0 HR and 1 SB (despite hitting for average and RBI). So what’s he done in the past 4 games…just 3 HR, 13 RBI, and a SB! Now at .335 and on pace for about 25/25, he’s back to his rightful place as the 2nd best fantasy hitter after Pujols.

Wladimir Balentien – Welcome back to, “Who’s your -laddy!” Vladimir has two homers, but Wladimir hit his third yesterday. Right now, Wladdy is your -laddy!

Lance Berkman – 2 HRs, 4 RBIs and 1 steal. With three hits yesterday, he equaled his total for the last week. Hopefully he has a solid 2nd half. The numbers say he should.

Derek Lowe – 3 IP, 6 ER. Sure would’ve been easier to call this one if he was hit hard against the Red Sox last time out. Since I said two weeks that he hadn’t given up more than 3 runs in over a month, he’s been rocked twice in three starts. Lesson learned? Keep big trap shut.

Jimmy Rollins – Benched for two games because of his .218 BABIP. Funny that the Phillies are saying it’s a mental break when they’re the ones over thinking things.

Alex Rodriguez – After battling “fatigue” early in the week, he rested for two days. Yesterday, he hit his tenth homer. Now that’s what I call a power nap!

Jordan Zimmermann – 7 IP, 1 ER. You deserved this line if you had the cojones to start him against the Sawx. For those playing at home, and I’m assuming besides our incarcerated readers that’s true of most of you, Zimmermann has 69 Ks and 69 2/3 IP. Hello, beautiful.

Cliff Lee – 7 IP, 2 ER. Not my style to point out the positive with Lee, but all his Win Karma from last year as gone out the window somewhere on I-90.

Eric Byrnes – Out for two months with a fractured hand. The hand must’ve felt guilty for signing those checks the past year and a half.

yes i tried my luck with zimm against the sax,but bedards 1st start off d.l against them,vazquez and hanson all get the sax,start vaz only you think??i was wandering what kind of fun youd have with soto,good shit there,,whats body part is mentioned the most while indulging in the wacky tobacky?ear,meant to be pronounced hear but while holding in a hit and passing the joint it comes out ear.So ive heard anyways

I’m in a points league where pitching is about 20% more valuable than normal. I just got offered Johan for Bay and Cain. I want to counteroffer with Price and Johan for Bay and Cain. Are either of these deals fair, and is Johan healthy? Thanks

Wladdy is your -laddy!- Ha
Perhaps we can name him the Terror from Transylvania…when he goes into a slump, we can then say that the Terror is a fantasy bloodsucker.

The only problem with Santana is that he hasn’t thrown more then 3 K’s in the last four starts. I didn’t take him 2nd round to wind up with Nick Blackburn.

For all you fans of Mr. B, Mitch Setter had his consecutive K streak ended at 15; I don’t know if this is a ML record, but it was good enough for me to grab him in every league where he was available. For those in leagues which count holds, he has five in the last month, 21 K’s in 10 innings, an ERA of 0.00, a WHIP of 0.56, and a 7-1 K/BB ration. Doesn’t get much better then that.

Finally had the cajones to cut Maggs; offered him around the league, no bites; then he hits a dinger. #3, tied with the Translyvanian Terror. I didn’t use a 5th round pick to to garner the stats of a Sparky Anklebiter.

@AL KOHOLIC: what would you know about whacky tobacky. Thought that your D.O.C. was found in bottles…

Thanks, as always for being both informative and entertaining. Is there any other fantasy guru out there who was remotely as high on min-donkey as you were? Without your recommendation, I wouldn’t have owned him in 2 leagues

@Grey: Someone just dropped Liriano in my league. I have Beckett, Carpenter, Lilly, E. Jax, Bedard and Oswalt (and just dropped Webb since it looks more and more like he is done for the year). Would you drop any of those guys to pick up Liriano? I’ve got a coulpe of bench hitter spots that I’ve been floating too, so I guess I could use one of those to just pick up and bench Liriano until he looks good again (if he ever does.

BEST was on ESPN (can’t remember if it was PTI or around the horn?) but they pretty much put a “W” in smoltz’s column before the game hahahahha…. The one guy 99% guaranteed Smoltz would get a win comparing the Nats to the 62? METS? THe team that lost the most games of all time…. LOL

You’ve been hitting the sell button on Cain for a while. I got lucky and held off but I finally just moved him for Adam Dunn 1×1. I had plenty of pitching (Gallardo, J. Shields, Wainwright, Ubaldo, Zimmerman and Smoltz) but zero offense (all kinds of Grady, Berkman and Votto on my team) in a 15-team mixed league. Good or bad trade for me?

reports from florida say once nunez checks out he’s gonna be the closer in for the marlins.
i dont get why they wouldnt be more inclined to give meyer more of a shot since hes having a better year.
so i guess im gonna drop meyer and try to pick up nunez.

RE: Smoltz and “But you may want to sit him during bad matchups until he has a couple good starts under his belt.” Looks as if his next 3 matchups before the break are:
@BAL–Hill, 7.20 ERA over last 3
HOAK–G. Gonzalez, 8.03
HKC–Meche, 4.19

@knighttown: Don’t talk to me about Justin Upton! I DROPPED JUSTIN UPTON TO PICK UP FOWLER AFTER FOWLER’S 5-STEAL GAME.

This was the biggest mistake of my season thus far.

Let me explain: At the time, I’d dropped Maybin for Upton, on upside alone. Upton was still scuffling, and my biggest need was steals. I figured that, if Upton turned out to be .280/25/85/10 (a fair projection, given the Ken Griffey-growth curve model, as proposed by Baseball Prospectus) and Fowler turned out to be .285 (he was at .300 at the time) with, say, 90/10/50/40, then Fowler would actually be more valuable to me.

Of course, Fowler turned out to be useless and Upton decided to arrive a year ahead of schedule.

I guess the moral here is never dump upside early in the year. That said, at the time, Fowler, Upton and Maybin seemed roughly interchangeable given skills and situation.

I’m still not convinced that Upton won’t, at some point, go through one of his 21-year-old oh-for-35 with 20 Ks streaks — I mean, I still don’t see him putting up MVP numbers this year. Next year, yes. This year? Not sold.

But the guy who originally drafted him, then dumped him, scooped him up again (so there’s some karmic justice here, I guess) and the chances of me prying him away are about the same as prying a newborn cub off the teat of a Mama grizzly bear.

re: My overall talent — I know what you mean, which confounds me, given my goal this year was to draft offense, offense, and offense.

I wavered and took Peavy in the 4th (nice pick, genius!) but otherwise tried to load up on firepower. But once again I fell for my usual speedy whippets, taking Brandon in the 3rd and Alexei in the 5th. So I lack the usual beefy bashers. (Would have taken Manny in the 3rd if he’s lasted another pick; probably should have taken Bay.) I did manage to turn Prince Fielder into Miguel Cabrera, so…

IF Wright remembers how to hit HRs, and IF Miggy goes on a second-half tear like last year, and IF Bruce gets back up to about .250, and IF Holliday gets traded away from Death Valley, and IF Votto doesn’t relapse into anxious dizziness, and IF Alexei keeps up his current hot hitting for another two-three months…

my offense may well right itself.

The good news is that no one — NO ONE — on my team is playing over his head, Ibanez-style. SECOND-HALF, BABY! HERE I COME!

Two years ago it seemed like no one was really using BABIP in fantasy. Now, it seems like no one really interprets it correctly. BABIP for batters isn’t just luck. Hit type has been shown to significantly predict babip variation. Rollins is 8 points off his LD% from last year. As a phils fan, I’m not totally mollified by the .218 babip (but i am a little), and I’m not sure the management is over thinking things. He’s just not hitting the ball well. cust kayin.

@SRM: I’d say the same, but I got spooked (I’d be getting Wright) by Wright’s .474 (!!!!!) BABIP and increased strike out rate (26% this year vs. about 19% for his career), as well as his bizarre power outage.

@Baron Von Vulturewins: Misery loves company. I dropped Justin early on as well, in a keeper league, no less. But I was able to pick him up in another league, when another owner made the same mistake that I did, so it evened up a bit. It’s things like that which drive me crazy. I still obsess over cutting Ludwick last year, when I grew impatient when he was being platooned. Same thing with Baker – dropped him in Razzball, picked him up in another league. I also picked up Nolasco and Danks off the waiver wire. Sometimes it’s hard to think objectively when a player is crapping out on your own team.

@Grey:
multiple sources reporting soto banned from international competition for 2 years .
the wbc is played every 3 years .

so that leaves only the “series del caribe” … which is too bad , cuz everybody’s getting high at those games .
if you looked closely enough , and believe me , i did , you could see the joints being passed around in the stands down at the games in mexico .

@Paulie Allnuts: When Hanley was a rookie, I picked him up early then dropped him during a slump b/c JULIO LUGO WAS COMING OFF THE DL.

Two years ago, as penance, I picked up every fat-ass hotshot rookie that got called up, from Hunter Pence to Billy Butler to some other lardos, until I finally got sick of it and decided to pass on the latest prospect du jour, RYAN BRAUN.

Dealing with rookies/prospects is, to me, the most aggravating/least enjoyable part of the game.

Although, of late, I’ve been trying to remember what the most enjoyable part is.

why would anyone still recommend davis? especially over konerko. he strikes out in nearly half his ABs. he is a bigger BA killer than any of the high K guys like cust, dunn, and pena…..i wouldn’t touch the guy. color me confused, but i just don’t see any reason to have someone who stumbles into contact every 30 ABs for a few home runs and a .190 average.

I want to make a spot to put Ricky Nolasco back in my rotation. Which one of my current starters should I try to move and what kind of batter could I expect for him? It’s a 10 man league with standard 5×5 roto rules.

@airlifting: Cause Davis could get hot for a month and his value will skyrocket. Konerko could get hot and he’ll still be Konerko. It’s not a slam dunk and I could see Konerko actually helping a team more, but, at the end of the day, everyone knows who Konerko is.

@PJTres: So you can bench Ethier? Eh, it’s not great. But Hardy sitting on your bench isn’t helping matters either. Can lose him for Krispie. Assuming you have a solid SS.

@PJTres: yep and i dont even think eithier was batting ahead of manny, but just the fact he’s in that line up helps alot of players… they’ve done well without manny, he’s only gonna make them stronger… Maybe eitheir and manny were buddies and he just wants his friend back? LOL