Breaking Bad For Fantasy Finalists

As if the Rays weren’t having a bad enough September, Carlos Pena took a CC Sabathia pitch off his fingers in the first game of a doubleheader on Monday and broke two of them.  He will miss the remainder of the season.  This is sure to be a crushing blow for a few fantasy teams.  Pena was as hot as a pistol, hitting a bushel of home runs lately.  From a fantasy player’s perspective, what makes things even worse is that his injury happened on a Monday, which means in weekly lineup leagues you will have to take a zero in his spot.  Some good news for the Rays was the season debut of Wade Davis.  He held the Detroit Tigers to one run in seven innings on Sunday.  Davis looks like the leading candidate to take the traded Scott Kazmir’s spot in the rotation next spring.  Davis may not be in the category of David Price as far as potential, but he is not that far off either.

 The closer situation in Philadelphia is going to come to a head shortly.  The Phillies have a comfortable lead in the NL East, and are certainly headed to the playoffs, but as perfect as Lidge was in 2008, is as bad as he is in 2009.  Lidge may only be another blown save or two away from losing his job to Brett Myers.  Problem for Phillies manager Charlie Manuel is what to do with Lidge if you take the closer’s role away from him.  Do you make him the setup guy?    What if his heart just isn’t in it?  If Lidge can turn it around, the Phillies would have a dominating bullpen with Myers and Ryan Madson manning the eighth and ninth innings.  More news out of Philly was the oblique injury suffered by JA Happ that forced him to miss his start on Monday.  This also hurts fantasy owners as Happ was to have two starts this week and one has to wonder if Philly will shut Happ down for a week or two so that he can be fully rested for the playoffs.

 Brett Gardner returned to the Yankee lineup on Monday which is sure to mean a little less playing time for Melky Cabrera.  Gardner didn’t do anything offensively in game one of the doubleheader versus the Rays, but showed his value in the outfield with a terrific running catch that would’ve led to a run for the Rays had he not made it.  Melky will probably still play two of every three games, but he will no longer be an automatic start with Gardner back.

 One has to wonder why teams like the New York Mets, Chicago White Sox, and Chicago Cubs are so anxious to bring back players that have been hurt at this point in the season.  Carlos Beltran is said to be returning to the Mets lineup this week.  His bone bruise has diminished, but is still there.  Why take a chance that while diving for a ball in the outfield, chasing a fly ball into the wall, or getting hit by a pitch, that he were to re-injure the bruise and therefore be forced to rehab all off-season in order to be ready for spring training.  Same goes for Jake Peavy.  Just as he recovered from an ankle injury, he developed tightness in his elbow.  He hasn’t pitched since May, yet the White Sox have him on a throwing program that will allow him to make a couple of starts late this season.  The Cubs are delaying Alfonso Soriano’s knee surgery so that he can continue to play.  In all three of these cases, the teams aren’t going anywhere, they are out of playoff contention and should be preparing for next season rather than trying to win a couple of extra games this season.  Notice how Cleveland shut down Grady Sizemore so that he could undergo his surgeries now and be 100% ready to start the 2010 season.

 It looks like the gods have conspired against the Texas Rangers and their bid to make the playoffs.  First Michael Young suffers a hamstring injury that will cost him a couple of weeks, then Josh Hamilton with a pinched nerve in his back.  The earliest Hamilton will return is this weekend.

 The Rangers are trying to catch another team the gods don’t seem to be happy with in the Boston Red Sox.  Someone has a voodoo doll somewhere and is just picking off Boston’s starting rotation.  Jon Lester has been great, but after that, things seem to be going downhill.  Josh Beckett is throwing as hard as ever, but is giving up a ton of long balls.  Tim Wakefield’s back has flared up again and he won’t pitch again until September 17, Daisuke Matsuzaka will not return until next week at the earliest, and no one know what he will give them.  Clay Buchholz would need to mature in a big hurry to help out the nation during a pennant race, and please, are you kidding me with Paul Byrd?

 

This post was written by George Kurtz