FanHouse DallasBraden

Starting Five is our wrapup of the previous day's baseball action with a quick nod to what is ahead.

You Oughta Know ...
The New York Yankees started the season 0-8 against their despised rival Boston Red Sox. After a 5-0 win Saturday, the Yankees have now won three straight against Boston and six straight overall. They have built a commanding 5-1/2 game lead in the vaunted AL East. As much as the games count, the mental gain made this series for the Bronx Bombers has to be immense.

As for the Red Sox, talk about a role reversal. They went from owning the Yanks to not being able to score a run. In fact, they've now gone 24 innings without crossing the plate.

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Poppin' out the box scores and right into your cubicle, the Roto Rush is your double espresso shot of fantasy baseball advice every weekday.

In 2005, Tom Gorzelanny pitched in the majors for the first time. He was just 22. Two years later, he went 14-10 with a 3.88 ERA -- logging more than 200 innings in 32 starts for the hapless Pittsburgh Pirates. He did allow too many hits, but he was only 25 years old, so it appeared he would settle in as an anchor for the ever-rebuilding Pirates.

Instead, he had a disastrous past two seasons and had been relegated to the minors. Last week, Gorzelanny was traded to the Cubs, and Tuesday night he passed his Cubs debut with flying colors.

OAKLAND -- The future has arrived a little early for the A's pitching staff.

A team that looked awful as recently as a few weeks ago is suddenly on a roll, having won six games in a row, largely on the strength of the youngest rotation in the majors.

"It's extremely exciting, not just as a player, but as a fan of the game, to watch what these young guys are doing, " 25-year-old lefty Dallas Braden, the senior member of the group, told FanHouse.

And that was before 22-year-old Vin Mazzaro, the most recent addition to the rotation, pitched 7 1/3 scoreless innings on Sunday. Mazzaro, who pitched 6 1/3 innings to beat the White Sox on Tuesday, is the first pitcher in Oakland history to start his career with consecutive scoreless starts.

Poppin' out the box scores and right into your cubicle, the Roto Rush is your double espresso shot of fantasy baseball advice every weekday.

Ben Zobrist has transformed from a run-of-the-mill slap hitter into one of the most powerful middle infielders in baseball. Right when you thought he might be cooling off, SMASH! -- a grand slam against Kansas City for his 10th home run of the year. He's slugging .659 with a 1.073 OPS for crying out loud. And he's somehow still available in over 35 percent of mixed leagues. So the question becomes: Is it time for you to believe in the man Joe Maddon nicknamed "Zorilla" or will his power eventually fade just like Marco Scutaro's did?

Maybe I'm being a bit hard on these guys, but almost 59 percent of the 41 pitchers who are starting twice this week are being placed in the "Risky Business" category.

There are a couple of touted rookies who make up the 59 percent like the Rays' David Price and Atlanta's Kris Medlen. There are also some big-named pitchers who should never be placed among the "Risky Business" pitchers who just are throwing well, or their teams aren't winning behind them. Jon Lester and Francisco Liriano come to mind immediately.

Like I said, in all there are 41 two-start pitchers this week. Make sure that you get your lineups locked early today as there are a bunch of afternoon games. The first is 1:10 PM ET when Houston plays Cincinnati.

MLB Power Rankings: Where MLB FanHouse's editors, writers and bloggers team up to break down the who's who and the what's what in the baseball world.

While it's entirely possible the Blue Jays do hit a snag, isn't it about time columnists across the internet stopped doing Can the Blue Jays Really Keep This Up? pieces by now? I've seen at least 10 in the past three weeks. There are almost as many The Rangers Are For Real posts. The discrepancy in the media's faith in those two is likely due to the divisions in which the teams reside, but seven weeks isn't a small sample. At some point, you have to start giving credit where it's due.

OAKLAND -- Dallas Braden was a punch-line: "All you need to know about the A's rotation is that Dallas Braden is the Opening Day starter."

A month into the season, it doesn't seem like such a joke anymore. Although he's got little attention on the injury-ravaged A's, Braden is off to one of the best starts in the American League.

Braden, who starts on Tuesday night against the Angels, has a 2.10 earned run average, second in the league to Zack Greinke.

There are a plethora of two-start pitchers hurling in week five (Monday, May 4th - Sunday May 10th) of the fantasy baseball season. There are 58 total this week and you late sleepers are luck that all of the Monday games are night games. You won't need to set you lineups until 7:05 PM ET.

[Update: 7:48 AM ET] : Two games were rained out yesterday. The Mets and Phillies did not play and the Angels and Yankees were rained out as well. Here is the fallout from those two postponed games as it relates to two-start pitchers.

Poppin' out the box scores and right into your cubicle, the Roto Rush is your double espresso shot of fantasy baseball advice every weekday.

Matt Garza is one of those talented pitchers that novice owners probably lost patience with quickly. And if they did, they were watching Thursday's spectacular performance kicking themselves. Garza, who had struggled with his command through his first four starts, took a perfect game bid into the seventh inning against the Red Sox and finished with a line worthy of adulation: 7 2/3 innings, 10 strikeouts, 1 hit, 1 walk, no runs. Has he turned the corner that quickly?