Posts from the Fantasy Football 1 Category at FanHouse - AOL Sports Blog

Coming into the season, the Tigers were everyone's darlings. Why not? They had a ridiculous offense and a starting rotation capable of piling up the wins with the large expected run support. The problems that most overlooked were that the bullpen is awful (with injuries to Fernando Rodney and Joel Zumaya the main benefactors), Dontrelle Willis sucks, and Kenny Rogers is ancient. Personally, I didn't like them as much as others because of all this. Still, though, no one expected Justin Verlander and Jeremy Bonderman to struggle this mightily. Both should have been armed and ready for a big season.

Bonderman is still only 25 -- doesn't it seem like he's been around forever? -- and has shown the ability to strikeout hitters (202 K in '07) and control his pitches (only averaged 56 BB/season from '05-'07) with the best. His ERA has never been stellar, but with a natural progression and the bashers supporting him you had to expect he'd be able to garner the victories in '08.

Verlander is also 25, and he's a phenom. He won 35 games in the past two years while upping his punchouts to 183 last year in just over 200 innings. With a triple digit heater and some filthy off-speeders, you'd figure him for the Cy Young race this season.

Instead, something is wrong. With both of them.

Milwaukee Brewers third baseman Bill Hall is the kind of player that drives fans – and fantasy owners – crazy. Is he the guy who cranked 35 HR in 2006, or the one who never hit more than 17 HR in any other season? Is he the crusher who swatted four HR by April 9, or the player who has only hit three more since then?

Moving back to third base gave Hall more fantasy value this year – in theory, at least. It turns out that, at least for NL-only leagues, the outfield is possibly shallower than third base. Regardless, owners who cackled with glee at the way Hall burst out of the gates are singing a decidedly different tune right now. Hall is batting just .217 and has not shown much plate discipline, adding only 12 walks the whole season.

So, what's the story here? Is Hall going to be a drag on your batting and/or on-base average, and even if that's the case, is he going to be able to justify it with quality power statistics?

Dynasty Diaries takes a look at keeper leagues for fantasy football as the season quickly approaches.

With the retirement (finally) of Brett Favre, the Packers now have a new face to the franchise ... only we can't yet be 100% sure whose face it is just yet at the QB position. To me, the real face of the Packers franchise for the next few years is going to be Ryan Grant. I firmly believe the running game is going to take center stage and Grant is going to be an elite back. He's a solid first round pick in yearly fantasy drafts as far as I'm concerned (comparable value to Willie Parker) and houses even more value in keeper leagues -- being that he's only 25 years old and doesn't have much tread on his tires.

Once Brettfavre (I say it as one word because I'm trying to blend in with the rest of the media that refuse to either call him "Brett" or "Favre") called it quits, the reins of QB up in Lambeau Field were handed to Aaron Rodgers.

Or were they?

Fantasy Felony tells you how to melt other owners' faces via swindling them in trades.

Aaron Harang is a bonafide upper-echelon fantasy pitcher, and when owners get through the first week of May with a 1-5 pitcher whom they landed in the early rounds ... well, they start to get angry and impatient. A desperate, disillusioned owner is a vulnerable owner in the trade market, so it's time to swoop in. Pull all your usual smooth-talking tricks. You don't have to pull a George Costanza ("do that thing you do, where you lie to everybody," says Jerry), but you can allow emphasis on cons while conveniently forgetting about the pros if the owner is complaining.

As I said, he's 1-5. His team sucks, and the run support he's receiving is embarrassing. After Tuesday night's eighth outing, Harang had surrendered 19 earned runs, while his team had only scored 23 (five of which were in one game which happened to be his only bad outing, so you can see there's bad luck at play as well).

Bet on the luck changing -- thus altering his record positively -- and everything else to remain the same.

Dynasty Diaries takes a look at keeper leagues for fantasy football as the season quickly approaches.

When the Steelers had Rashard Mendenhall fall into their lap during the draft a few weekends ago, some major fantasy implications were brought forth. For this upcoming season things may not be changing much, but in Dynasty Diaries we like to look ahead a bit.

Obviously the job belongs to Willie Parker in Pittsburgh as long as he's still there. Of course, Mendenhall should begin to steal many short-yardage vulture-type carries this season and could be banging between the tackles in order to keep Fast Willie fresh. Parker has taken a nice little beating on his diminutive frame the past three seasons. I still believe, as I alluded to earlier, that Fast Willie's a strong late-first-rounder in yearly fantasy drafts this season with Mendenhall playing the Jerome Bettis of 2005 role ... and serving as a must-have handcuff for Parker owners.

As for the future, that's a different matter altogether. I'm of the belief that you can win some keeper leagues simply by trading perceived future stars for older studs in order to win almost annually because too many owners get caught up in the "keeper" aspect and lose sight of the winning games aspect. Assuming you don't play with a bunch of hacks like that, Mendenhall is a very enticing keeper prospect.

New Studs takes a look at players ready to make the leap from "possibly productive fantasy player" to "must-have fantasy stud." This is not a "you've never heard of this dude, but ... " series -- these should be names you already know.

Coming into the season, I was as skeptical as anyone -- being a Cubs fan -- concerning Geovany Soto's breakthrough 2007 campaign. Prior to 2007, Soto had only 25 career jacks in nearly 1600 at-bats in the minors. He never OPSed higher than 750, and his career minor league batting average was .262.

Of course, in 2007 he absolutely destroyed the Pacific Coast League with a .353 average, 1076 OPS, 26 HRs, and 109 RBIs in only 110 games. He even crushed the ball in the show once he was recalled to the tune of a 1048 OPS with five bombs and 23 RBI in only 28 games.

So we knew he was capable, but what about consistency (you know Joe Morgan was worried about it)? 2007, after all, could easily have been an outlier instead of a breakthrough campaign. We've seen fluky seasons before.

It wasn't one of those, though. It was a beginning.

Dynasty Diaries takes a look at keeper leagues for fantasy football as the season quickly approaches.

Whether or not you believe Benson in the face of the recent allegations -- and for the record I don't -- this incident is simply the continuation in a march to the end of the Ced Benson era in the Bears backfield. You can pile up on or off-field pieces of evidence, but the conclusion is the same: the point is coming where the Bears just cut their losses and admit the fourth overall pick from just three drafts ago was a colossal bust.

Consider:

1. Benson is a bad guy. On the surface at least, and that's all that matters with PR. This arrest was his third. He appears to be indifferent at best and annoyed at worst when he's playing football or standing on the sidelines. I can't think of one situation where he ever came across as likable, but I do have a story that makes him hateable.

You can read it after the jump ... it's really telling about his personality.

Cheap Yard Work takes a look at unheralded hitters who are raking and helps you plan your starting lineup each week.

Jose Bautista, 3B, PIT
Stats: .417/.444/.875, 3HR, 7RBI, 2BB, 1SB

I was going to make a Pirates joke, but you know, they haven't been that bad this year, at least from a fantasy perspective. Bautista has accrued almost all of those above stats over the weekend, so he might seem like too aggressive of a start. How-EVA, he's killing lefties this year, hitting .346/.419/.808. And given that four of the six guys the Pirates will face this week are lefties, he makes a pretty nice spot start in deep leagues.

Juan Pierre, OF, LAD
Stats: .563/.611/.688, 0HR, 3RBI, 1BB, 3SB

Okay, I dislike Pierre as much as anyone, but someone drafted him looking for those elusive steals. And have probably dropped him since. But he's getting decent AB's (16 over the last week) and producing big time with them. If he gets on base over 60% of the time, Joe Torre will play him, especially with Andruw Jones stink-bombing it up. (Although it's worth noting that Matt Kemp is even hotter right now). But if you're ever gonna use him to get those swipes, now is the time.

Spot Jobs is the bizarro obvious fantasy pitcher column for the week ... giving five names for good fill-in starters and five names for normally startable guys to sit. Most will be gambles, but we love gambling.

Five Up

Kevin Slowey, Twins -- Returns to the rotation from a rehab assignment this week and gets to face a White Sox team that is really struggling offensively at this point. You have to like the Sox chances to start getting the bats going again eventually, but Slowey is a solid K/BB ratio guy and will be able to come back with a bang.

Kei Igawa, Yankees -- This is my deeeeeeep sleeper option for the week. Igawa will probably be plugged in the Yankees rotation to replace the struggling Ian Kennedy (who has been optioned to Triple-A). Igawa's a gamble, but ... you know.

Kason Gabbard, Rangers -- He's ready to re-join the Rangers rotation after a very successful rehab stint and is on track to get the nod Thursday in spacious Safeco Field. The caveat is that you can only look for ERA and WHIP help, because he's not really a strikeout pitcher and his counterpart on the hill in that game would be King Felix.

There are very few technically "elite" two start options this week, but that means there are some pretty nice up and coming options. Standing out is Max Scherzer, newly rotationed with the Arizona Diamondbacks and a potential K goldmine. Don't worry about benching him against Philly -- the Phils whiff a lot, even if they have tons of power and he could end up with 10+ strikeouts.

Garrett Olson is actually a better start than Scott Olsen, in my mind, and a tremendous sleeper this week. Scott has been pretty lucky this season and has a nice pair of starts but I expect him to come back to earth. Expect similar bouncebacks from Gavin Floyd and Braden Looper. Actually Looper already landed. Don't start him.

Jonathan Sanchez is another great two start option for K's galore as well. Ubaldo Jimenez represents a ton of upside, but I just can't see using him until he gets his control back; a dangerous start if he's unable to find the strike zone.

Jeremy Bonderman apparently isn't "must start" anymore, and with the Red Sox and Yankees on the schedule, that's kind of a reasonable attitude to take. Still, I'm running him out there in most leagues with the Tigers offense and the shutdown job he did on Boston recently. If he cut back on the walks, he'll get back to dominant.

Pitcher	Team	First Start	Second Start
Daisuke Matsuzaka	BOS	at DET, Bonderman	at MIN, Slowey
Chris Young	SD	at ATL, Jurrjens	v. COL, Redman
Fausto Carmona	CLE	at NYY, Pettitte	v. TOR, Burnett
Javier Vazquez	CHW	at TOR, McGowan	at SEA, Washburn
A.J. Burnett	TOR	v. TB, Sonnanstine	at CLE, Carmona