Poppin' out of the box scores and right into your cubicle, the Roto Rush is your double espresso shot of fantasy baseball advice every weekday.
John Lackey threw eight innings on Sunday, striking out six and not surrendering an earned run. It was his 100th career victory. He should have been the man of the hour, right?
That would have been the case had Kendry Morales not jacked his 30th home run of the season and stolen the show. At least among fantasy circles, anyway.
Morales had twelve career home runs entering the 2009 season and big shoes to fill as the Angels handed him the keys to the kingdom at first base as Mark Teixeira left for the Yankees. He's handled the task admirably batting .311 and is fast approaching the 100-RBI mark. He's also leading the league in RBI since the all-star break with 45.
From the Windup is Matt Snyder's extended look at some aspect of America's pastime each Thursday.
Every Hot Stove season, each team reshapes its roster in an attempt to better themselves. After each transaction, whether a free agent acquisition, trade or something else, writers and bloggers everywhere provide knee-jerk reactions on each particular move. Though the majority of the analysis is educated, it's still just conjecture. Today, we'll take the long view and look back at some of the maneuvering this past offseason and see how it played out on the field.
Eight months later, Jackson is second in the AL with a 2.62 ERA and leads the league with a .217 opponents' average. Ignore his 8-5 record; Detroit has scored three runs or fewer in 10 of his 22 starts, and more than five runs just twice.
Wednesday morning, it seemed a little crazy when the New York Daily News broke a story about the Mets' VP for Player Development Tony Bernazard flipping out on the Double-A Binghamton Mets, reportedly removing his shirt, challenging the players to a fight, and calling shortstop prospect Jose Coronado, "a slang term associated with a woman's anatomy." Surely, every farm director gets a little fired up from time to time when his prospects are disappointing, but this seemed over the top.
For Bernazard, though, it seems like this type of behavior may be par for the course. The New York Post ran a story Wednesday afternoon reporting that Bernazard also recently tried to pick a fight with the big-league club's closer, Francisco Rodriguez. They quoted an anonymous player as saying Bernazard is "crazy."
Yorvit Torrealba of the Colorado Rockies is thankful for the return of his 11-year old son and the child's uncle after they were kidnapped in Venezuela. The story was largely kept out of the public eye until the abducted were returned safely to their homes, and the perpetrators were apprehended. The situation resolved itself without tragedy, and we learned an important lesson: that this is way, way less important than two unassociated, relief-pitching strangers having beef.
NEW YORK -- For the most part, New York's interleague rivalry is for the fans. There's little animosity between opposing players, or at least not since Roger Clemens and Mike Piazza moved on.
That all changed Saturday.
About 60 miles southwest of Yankee Stadium, injured Yankees reliever Brian Bruney pitched in a Double-A day game on a rehabilitation assignment. And then after his inning of work, he set off a powder keg in talking about Friday's bizarre game and Mets closer Francisco Rodriguez:
NEW YORK -- Blasphemy, you'll say, but think about it. What are you going to remember about Tuesday night's Yankees-Red Sox game? David Ortiz's third home run of the year? Nick Green's second? Maybe Josh Beckett, fine, but the fact is this isn't 2003-04 anymore, the Red Sox own the Yankees now and they're both probably making the playoffs anyway, what with the Rays looking like World Series-hangover-roadkill.
No, this here is where it's at for big-time baseball rivalries circa 2009. Mets-Phillies has morphed from spring training trash talk to nailbiting, in-season theater, complete with all the subplots, drama and good, intense baseball you can take. Tuesday night had everything anybody could ask of a midseason rivalry game, and in the end it was the battered-underdog Mets who came away with a 6-5 victory that was in no way easy but in all ways satisfying.
Starting Five is our wrapup of the previous day's baseball action, with a quick nod to what's ahead. You Oughta Know ... That it's awfully hard for K-Rod to earn his money if J.J. Putz isn't doing his job ahead of Rodriguez. For the second straight day, Putz had a rocky outing. He surrendered two runs in a touch and go eighth inning Sunday against the Marlins (the Mets still won the game) and followed that Monday by allowing four runs and taking the loss against the Pirates.
Putz gave up four consecutive singles during Pittsburgh's rally, and attributed much of his performance to misfortune.
"A couple hoppers up the middle," Putz said. "They hit groundballs; they just hit them to the right spot.
"There's not much you can say about that. There's a little bit of bad luck involved."
"The Mets injury woes are becoming so comical that from now on I'm just going to imagine that Snoop and Chris Partlow are bringing starters one by one into vacant homes and shooting them in the head." - Matt W., on the Progressive Boink forums
The important thing to remember here is that now is when the Mets are supposed to be great. They don't start getting bad until the middle of September. If they can hurry up and be bad NOW, maybe they will be good at the END of the season. Or they will be so bad that Major League Baseball demotes them to AAA.
Every Sunday, 
Wednesday morning, it seemed a little crazy when 
NEW YORK -- For the most part, New York's interleague rivalry is for the fans. There's little animosity between opposing players, or at least not since 
NEW YORK -- Blasphemy, you'll say, but think about it. What are you going to remember about Tuesday night's Yankees-Red Sox game? 
Starting Five
"The Mets injury woes are becoming so comical that from now on I'm just going to imagine that Snoop and Chris Partlow are bringing starters one by one into vacant homes and shooting them in the head." - Matt W., on the 
