FanHouse Mitch Talbot

From now until the regular season begins, Fantasy Flings is where you'll find interesting story lines about your favorite teams from Spring Training. If there is a position battle, a nagging injury, a comeback story or a youngster making a surge for the "big club" we'll let you know the fantasy implications.

Boston Red Sox
What's the strength of this Red Sox club so far in spring? By looking at the numbers, it's their bullpen. The seven projected relievers in the bullpen (Jonathan Papelbon, Takashi Saito, Ramon Ramirez, Justin Masterson, Manny Delcarmen, Hideki Okajima and Javier Lopez) have combined to give up only one run on six hits in 13 innings of work. Last season the Red Sox bullpen produced 34 wins and these seven pitchers struck out 456 batters. What does all of this mean for your fantasy club? It means that Paps is still a solid, lock down closer. It also means that if you're looking for cheap wins, strikeouts, low ERA's and WHIP's you should start by scouring the Red Sox pen. And if your fantasy league uses holds, the value from this list just went up.

While the Tampa Bay Rays have caught everybody by surprise this season (most expected them to improve in 2008, but nobody had them having the best record in baseball on July 2nd), one of the biggest surprises on the team has been the performance of closer Troy Percival. Percival had been out of baseball for a year and a half before joining the Cardinals bullpen last season, and signed with the Rays to be their closer this season.

Personally, I didn't think the 38-year old would be all that helpful to the Rays but it turns out that I'm an idiot, and Percival has been a big reason why the Rays are in first place. He already has 19 saves in 21 chances for Tampa this season, even though he missed a few weeks on the disabled list at the beginning of June. Well, it's going to be a while until he gets his next save, because he's making a return trip.

As expected, closer Troy Percival landed on the 15-day disabled list due to his left hamstring strain.

What was somewhat surprising was what the Rays did to take his place, calling up RHP Mitch Talbot from Triple-A Durham and planning to move RHP Jason Hammel into a more significant bullpen role.

Percival was on the DL earlier thanks to the same hamstring, and had to be removed from Monday's game (much to his chagrin) when it acted up on him again. Tampa is hoping that this time his two weeks off, combined with the All-Star break, will be enough for the hammy to fully heal.

The Rays will use a closer by committee in his absence, using Dan Wheeler, Trever Miller, Grant Balfour, and J.P. Howell as they see fit.