My matchup was a lot closer than it looked- after a hot start by my hitters, they tanked over the weekend- OB% and BA were both decided by less than 15 points.  But this was the week my starting pitching finally came around- after getting something like 1 win the first two weeks, I got 5 in week 3, along with a 2.62 ERA and a 1.02 WHIP.  I've got a lot riding on the Braves and Pirates starting pitching, and every Braves starter sucked the first couple of weeks.

The big story is Brandon Phillips- picked him over several passable 2B options, and he did this for me: .407/.407/..852 5 R 13 RBI.  He actually had a 4 RBI game before I grabbed him, giving him 17 for the week...!  Josh Barfield continued to be an unexpected source of speed, stealing 3 bases.  This is looking like a trend, maybe it happens every year, but this year it seems like there are a lot of unlikely guys running.  Beltre has 6, Gary Sheffield has 3, David Wright, Jason Repko Derrick Lee and the immortal Omar Vizquel have 5.

Pitchers- as a Mets fan, I have mixed feelings about pulling for the Braves.  Against the Mets, Tim Hudson, who has sucked this year, went 9 innings with a .44 WHIP and a 6 K:BB.  Kyle Davies had the same line, also against the Mets. 

Guys who are not good:
Justin Morneau- .056/.190/.056, 1 R
Kenji Johjima- started off really hot, .182/.250/.227, 2 R
Corey Patterson has sucked, but they're using him as a pinch runner so he's stealing bases and scoring runs- an Otis Nixon line from his Expo days: 5 hits, no walks, 8 runs, 4 steals on the season.

My pitchers were all good- even Haren, who had a  6.14 ERA, had a 1.23 WHIP and K ratio of 4.

This week, I'm sure my boys will come back to earth against Homer J.  But I think this is the first time I've been tied with the Walrus after week 1...

How about the early powerhouses Mebion and WAMCO???  Mebion steamrolled me in week 2 and has a great looking team.

The Laws of Physics applied to Fantasy Baseball: For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction...

The team from the North posted a HUGE come from behind victory last week against the Papayas only to fall in a big weekend comeback at the hands of the Sweaty Guys...

Pitching proved to be the difference in a very tight matchup (not reflected in the 8-3-1 drubbing) - 2.2 innings, 0.05 ERA, 0.10 WHIP was the difference between a winning and losing week for my team.  I did manage to eek out a win in SLG by .001 so I guess I can't complain that much...although it was my decision to start Byrd and Cabrera on Saturday in an attempt to win the IP and W categories - both starters blew up and ended up costing me the week...

On to the awards!

MVH - Going Going Gonzo for Gonzalez - 4R, 11RBI, .308AVG, .375OBP, .731SLG

LVH - Soon to be renamed the Dan Johnson award...the winner this week was (big surprise) Dan Johnson who had zeros across the board except for a .200OBP! 

*To my fellow Barfielders - I congratulate your trade efforts following my post...I posted more for jokes than anything and I'm not about to pull the trigger on a sub-par deal - this isn't exactly sell high territory and I do think Dan has the tools to turn his season around...with this in mind I'm still entertaining offers

MVP - Billy Wagner gets the nod - 3IP, 1SV, 0.00ERA, 0.33WHIP, 5K/BB - really my only pitcher pulling his weight

LVP - Since I can't give myself the award for poor managing I'll give it to the guys who let me down on Saturday - Byrd/Cabrera who combined for 8IP, 13R, WHIP over 2.00 and a K/BB ratio under 1.00 - just enough to cost me the week...

On Deck - The battle of 2 teams trying to get above .500

For the second week in a row, Papayas blew four cateogries on the final day of the week, though this time the manager deserves much of the blame as he overrated his leads, benched his entire team and ended up losing a couple of categories he would have won if he just believed in his MVP. This is not a trend that I am looking forward to. Up this week is a battle with Dr. Z and a team that clobbered the Carter version of the Papayas so bad that the Papayas entered the draft with the goal of building  an offense that could at least be luke warm to the Hot Men.

MVH: Again several worthy candidates highlighted by Luis Castillo's .643 OBP and Carlos Lee's .810 SLG but the award goes to Phil Nevin who has re-emerged in Texas (kudos to Eric Karabell) and put-up a .308/.438./.769 with a pair of 7's in the counting stats.

LVH: Sometimes you have so low expectations for a player, that the player can't help but exceed those expectations. Juan Encarnacion is proving to be the exception. A season line of .203/.236/.217 with one RBI and 14/1 K/BB ratio despite hitting directly in front of a scorching hot Pujols is made worse by the fact that I am still inserting him into the lineup everyday with the belief that today is the day he will commence his progress back to a projected mean of .260/.320/.400.

MVP: No surprise here as Greg Maddux is one of the feel good stories of the season. John Smoltz put it best when he said that Maddux gets the most joy from the fact that opposing teams are checking his ball for scuff marks.

LVP: Ryan Madson. Simply one of the worst pitching lines ever: 11 base runners, 9 earned runs, 4 walks on only 3 outs. Worse still he did it at home against the Nationals after two strong outings to open the season.  Hopefully, he got it all out of his system and will return to pitching like he had in the past two years.

The Trembling Wilburys were indeed trembling all last week.  After a hot start to shoot up to 2nd in the division they were dominated all week in their matchup by the Blocked Youngsters and were lucky to come back on the last day and only lose 8-4.

MVH:  After a slow start Kevin Mench pounded in 12 RBIs last week. David Wright's bat has been colder lately but he was getting it done on the basepaths stealing 4.

LVH:  While Mench was improving on his slow start Kenji Johjima went the opposite direction last week posting a sub .450 OPS for the week.  Jimmy Rollins numbers were an even worse 118/250/118 but contributed 2 SB.

MVP:  Kelvim Escobar had a nice week posting the team's lone Win (how sad) with pretty good numbers besides.  Honourable mention to Ben Sheets who had excellent numbers but couldnt pickup a W.

LVP:  Yowch, an awful week for the Wilburys as six pitchers on the team posted ERAs of 7.36+.  The absolute worst of that bunch though has to be Matt Morris who also completely wasted a 2 start week by getting ejected in the first inning on Sunday.

As for the real reason the Carter Division standings are not shown above is the fact that Sexy underpants are on top. Im sure Scott doesn't want the guys in the Carter division to get used to that sight because it wont last long.

Sexy underpants jumped out to a big lead and had Garth Iorg by the neck at 12 to 0 after saturday's games...However sunday wasn't too nice to Sexy underpants as his hitters went a combined 6 for 47. Rafeal Furcal continues to struggle putting up a .222/.250/.259 line last week, however his two stolen bases provided a SB win (5-4). Sexy underpants continues to get decent production from waiver pickup J. Repko who had a line of .333/.455/.778 in part time duty while also swipping another bag. Adam Kennedy continues to cruise, helping pick up the slack for a Ricky Weeks not so hot start to the season.

I am considering myself rather lucky to have come out with an 8-2 victory over Garth Iorg Gremlins who has quite the stacked lineup and got some stellar pitching through the weekend. I would like to thank Kyle Davies for a great start last week and a decent start yesterday, Nomar for his grand-slam welcome back, and last but not least my 14th round pick Jonathon Papelbon for helping me dominate in the saves category(although i still hate you and your team).

Sexy Underpants On top forever!

Buehrle for Hafner did not work out so great this week for the Cooney Islanders (Barfield).  Hafner went stone cold, and Buehrle pitched a gem for his 3rd win on Gitz's Euro Wannabe's squad.  In fact, the score would have been a far more respectable 7-4 had I not made the deal.  Hopefully big Travis will come back strong in week 4 (and the rest of my pitchers pick up the slack).

Bonds: Brandon "born again" Phillips, 444/444/1056, 4 runs, 10 RBI
Neifi: Casey "where's my bat?" Kotchman, 120/154/120, 3 R, 3 RBI
Johan: Verlander's double start goodness of 14 IP, 1 W, and 1.00 WHIP, and K/BB of 2.00
Lima: Duchsherer's meltdown in his first save opp led to a 8.10 ERA and 3.00 WHIP

jc

Just a nice week all around for the Hot Men. The 4 categories I lost were all incredibly tight. My whole offense gets the MVH award, with my line of 332/.404/.650 . Special mention to Morgan Ensberg and his 5 HR's, 9R, 1 RBI's, and Craig Biggio with .615/.607/1.11 (who needs walks with that line!).

If it weren't for the Mazster's nice pitching line, I'd have just about swept it, with my ERA under 3, WHIP of 1.11, which both lost.

Big week vs. the Papayas coming up, and Monday already put me in an offensive hole.

And I think there was a record set...my .650 slugging. And Ensberg had 11 RBI's, clearly not 1 on 5 HR's, sorry.

Great week for the Edmonton Decepticons.  Unlikely hero Brad Winchester gets a game winning goal in Detroit and the team comes back to Edmonton with a crucial split of the first two games of the series. 

Sorry, wrong Edmonton team.  The Edmonton Decepticons rode solid pitching and a voodoo hex of Fish Candy hitters to an 8-4 victory.  Unfortunately, the voodoo hex doesn't seem to be affecting the Commish's Austin Senators this week.  He's thrown down the gauntlet in Week 4 with Monday hitting clinic.  Can the Decepticons fight back?  Let's hope so.  There won't be able to pull off many more victories slugging .394

MVH: No one was lights out this week so the award goes to JD Drew who has been solid and healthy.  The fact that he's healthy is a shocker considering he plays for the Dodgers and he's JD Drew.  Oh no.  I hope I didn't jinx him.

LVH:  Frank Thomas and Mike Piazza are giving me very little from my utility slots.  What?  This isn't 1995?  It was silly of me to expect any better of them?

MVP:  Tyler Bucholz.  14.1 innings, 1.23 era and a win in a masterful pitching performance I was able to watch on MLB.tv.  It's extra sweet to get a performance like that from a waiver wire pickup.

The Jose Lima Award: Fausto Carmona.  I guess it's too much to expect every waiver wire pickup to work out.

Well last week left me with some mixed feelings. Be that as it may...

MVH: Josh Barfield, without a doubt. Even without the 3 SB, his slugging % was higher than Varitek's, Jackson's and Navarro's combined!

LVH: Varitek. Even though Lawton did nothing, and Gonzalez continued in his golden-sombrero ways, I expect more from captain BoSock.

MVP: Tough call, nobody really shined, but King Felix and his 9.0 K/BB ratio certainly looks good.

LVP: This one is quite easy: Juan Cruz. Wasn't this guy supposed to be good?

The Edmonton Decepticons rode solid pitching and a voodoo hex of Fish Candy hitters to an 8-4 victory.

I'm not sure what happened to my team.  My whole BBFL week can be summed up as:

"You know it's funny... People go to sleep, they think everything's fine, everything's good. They wake up the next day and they're on fire."

The Fish Candy were fine and everything was going well.  Then one day they forgot how to get on base, despite the fact they slugged .500.  It was like my team was haunted by the ghost of Bob Hamelin, which is doubly surprising since Mr. Hamelin is still with us.