FanHouse Ty Wigginton

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

No, I didn't lose a bet to Matt Snyder (although he is running roughshod over our fantasy league right now) and he hasn't stolen my log in information to write favorable posts about the Chicago Cubs. I feel it's just necessary to expound a bit about what's been happening on the north side lately.

The Cubs won their second game in a row and made it back to .500 on Thursday. They did so with a scoring barrage led by Derrek Lee. If Lee's two home runs on Thursday weren't enough foreshadowing for a breakout, imagine that we're only two games into July and Lee already has three homers and nine RBI. He had six homers and 20 RBI in June. Is Lee a 30-home run player again?

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

Heading into 2009, here's what we thought we knew about Rich Harden: Absolutely lights out stuff, but can't be counted on to stay healthy consistently. In 2008, he went 10-2 with a 2.07 ERA, a 1.06 WHIP and 181 strikeouts in 148 innings. Those are elite numbers on a per-start basis. The problem, of course, is that he only made 25 starts. In 2007, he had a 2.45 ERA, but only pitched 25 2/3 innings.

Until Monday night, 2009 had been quite surprising from the 27-year-old right-hander.

Fantasy baseball draft season is coming, so you best be prepared by delving through every major player on each team. Fantasy FanHouse is here to help with a quick once-over.

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Team who just can't buy a break. They can't get any big names to sign with them (Mark Teixeira, A.J. Burnett), they are getting majorly outspent by the two big boys in the division, and the Rays skyrocketed past them last season due to an impressive franchise turnaround. I've seen people tout these guys as the "2009 version of the Rays." My reply? You have got to be kidding me. There's not near enough here for a run at .500, much less the World Series.

You probably don't need me to point Ed Wade's failings as a general manager out to you continuously, but given that some people still attribute their near-playoff run last year to some kind of genius on his part, I feel like it's important to point out why that's just not true. Today, the Astros inked an $8 million deal with closer Jose Valverde, avoiding arbitration.

That seems like a decent deal for a decent closer, but consider that it basically comes at the expense of Ty Wigginton. Wigginton was non-tendered rather than being given a similar contract by Houston after a career year last year when he hit . So the Astros will now play Geoff Blum at third base, who's probably a considerable downgrade from Wigginton, and instead have a guy that will pitch 70 innings this year, if the Astros are lucky.

Really, Houston could've kept Wigginton at third and dealt Valverde, who's led the NL in saves the past two seasons. He's not a bad closer, but a position player is always going to be more valuable, especially for a team that doesn't have much pop to back Lance Berkman and Carlos Lee. If the Astros are trying to keep pace with the Cardinals, Cubs, and Brewers, this isn't the way to do it.

Remember when the Astros made a crazy run at the playoffs just a few months ago? In the absence of Carlos Lee, one of the players that sparked that run was Ty Wigginton, as he thumped along to a .379/.394/.804 line in August, when the 'Stros were making their run. He fell off in September, but he still had a career year in 2008. In line with Ed Wade's mad scientist plan to contend, the Astros decided last night to non-tender Wigginton.

The official reason for the move is simply that the Astros thought that Wigginton would be too expensive. Based on his $4.35 million salary last year he likely would've made in the neighborhood of $6 or $7 million in 2009. How Wigginton isn't worth that when the alternative is Geoff Blum, I don't know. They tendered Jose Valverde and he's likely to make a similar amount of money next year. This is just a poorly thought out move by the Astros, but what else is new?

WIgginton was the biggest name to be non-tendered but he wasn't the only one. Daniel Cabrera, Tim Redding, Chris Capuano, and Willy Taveras were also among the 30+ players that weren't offered contracts by midnight last night, making all of them free agents.

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A strange thing is happening in the National League wild-card race this year. The Brewers, who had a stranglehold on the race as recently as about a week ago, have fallen apart and opened the door up for a number of teams who seemed to be as good as done. One team who's had the door opened for them is the Houston Astros. They've spent most of the season well out of contention, but a well-timed hot streak has them contending, much like the Rockies did last year.

What makes this hot streak even more interesting is that the man behind it, general manager Ed Wade, has made a string of nearly inexplicable, almost indefensible, moves to try and improve the team. They are making a run at things, but it's been mostly lead by Lance Berkman, Roy Oswalt, and Ty Wigginton. All of them were Astros before Wade's hiring. What, exactly, is going on in Houston?

Everyone in Pittsburgh has a favorite "Why Dave Littlefield should be fired" story. There's tons of them. I mean, the guy's been on the job since mid-2001 and he's managed to not improve the Pirates at all since he took the helm. My favorite Littlefield story? The one chronicled in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette today, the one about how he turned down Ryan Howard in a trade for Kris Benson in the summer of 2004 because the Pirates already had Brad Eldred.

Yeah, you read that right. The Pirates, who have been searching for a left-handed power bat since PNC Park and its 320 foot right field porch opened in 2001, turned down a trade for the left-handed first baseman that has thumped 91 homers in his last 250 or so games. Eldred? He's got fourteen bombs in his career.

This is why speculation that Littlefield will be canned after the season is so rampant, because it's insane that he's still employed. Instead of pulling in Howard as a return for Benson, he pulled off a three way traded that netted him Ty Wigginton (who the Pirates waived after the 2005 season), and Jose Bautista (a player the Pirates had in their own organization but lost when Littlefield failed to protect him in the Rule 5 draft) while also giving up Jeff Keppinger, who's killing the ball in Cincinnati right now. Howard is, of course, the reigning NL MVP.

And we have yet another thrilling near-deadline trade to talk about. The non-contender Houston Astros sent struggling reliever Dan Wheeler to Tampa Bay for utility-man extraordinaire Ty Wigginton. Tampa's pen is terrible so this move makes sense for them, but I don't really see how this is helping the Astros a whole ton. This is how Tim Purpura explained it:

``All trades hurt in one way or the other, and certainly losing Wheeler, a big piece of our bullpen for a long time, hurts,'' Astros general manager Tim Purpura said. ``But we also have been looking forward to refill some of our position-player needs, and this gives us a player in Ty Wigginton who can pay third base for us for the next several seasons.''

This, of course, coming from the guy who made essentially the same move at the deadline last year, trading for Aubrey Huff. The way Purpura talks about Wigginton, you'd think he's a 24-year old super prospect and not a 30-year old utility man. This would seem to necessitate a trade of Mike Lamb or Morgan Ensberg, but you never can tell with these things. It does put Lance Berkman, Carlos Lee, and Wigginton all in the same lineup. Now there's some speed.