On the evening of Tuesday May 15 at 7:33 p.m, too late for roster changes to take effect for games of that night -meaning they'd take effect for games on Wednesday- the following transaction took place in my fantasy baseball league:
Scrapheap signed J. Cust (SD -LF) and released B. Hawpe (Col-RF)
and thus, Bradley Hawpe was released from the curse of Rox Girl's fantasy squad just in time to take the Rockies to victory yesterday. If you don't believe this curse exists, consider the performance of several players still on my squad this season compared to their career norms:
Manny Ramirez
Carlos Delgado
Ryan Howard
Garrett Atkins
Miguel Tejada
I swear I'm going to release Garrett Atkins this morning as soon as I figure out which Royal I'd rather curse next, Mark Teahen or Alex Gordon.
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Troy E. Renck makes a bid to be the voice of reason among all us internet using Rockies fans. I take it that he's seen wolf213's diary on the right. Unfortunately, patience doesn't help bad teams get better, and there are many signs that the Rockies need to make some changes. Scroll down to the standings in the Hardball Times' THT Daily and notice the sparklines on the right and count how many black bars the Rockies have going down after their record versus how many they have going up. These represent the games decided by more than two runs, and you'll notice that we've got a 3-13 record in those contests. This is far from good -far even from mediocre- and it's a sign of a real problem with the caliber of the squad we've been putting out on the field. The question is whether these ongoing injury comebacks will be enough to change that fact. I'm of the opinion that they'll only go so far, and that our bench still needs an overhaul to insure we become competitive. We can absolutely not afford to carry four or five offensive liabilities on the bench and expect to be in the divisional race. Jamey Carroll, John Mabry and Steve Finley have had ample time to show they can give consistent meaningful contributions at the plate to the team this year, and thus far they haven't come close. Jeff Baker's been up and down, but at least he's been in the range of acceptable. I understand why we'd want to keep Carroll, but that ties our hands in regards to the other two, particularly since our catchers are only so-so at the plate also. Make the right decision here and now, people.
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Marc Normandin at Baseball Prospectus profiled Matt Holliday, in an article for subscribers of the website. The missed call by the BP projections based on Matt's middling minor league career warns of the importance of taking scouting as seriously as statistical achievement in the minor leagues. Ian Stewart seems to be in a similar boat, in that many people are writing him off and his impressive toolbox too early for not living up to expectations yet.