Another day, another big time prospect comes to the majors. Today it is Carlos Santana of the Cleveland Indians who was perhaps the best hitting prospect left down in the farm. I wont start gushing too much about him, you will have to read the article to see the rest. There is some injury news on one of the best players in the game, and also some of the more interesting pitchers of the night.
Carlos Santana was FINALLY called to the major leagues by the Cleveland Indians and was third in the batting order in his first game. He was 0-for-3 with a walk in his first action, but there is no doubt that the team has nothing but confidence in him and he will be their everyday catcher or at least DH if they think he needs a day off from behind the plate.
There is absolutely nothing not to like about this kid. He is just 24 years old and has hit at every level of the minors. In 57 games in AAA in 2010, Santana was hitting .316 with 13 homers and 51 RBI.
I think that he will have similar numbers to that of Buster Posey, but I think that he is going to hit more homers than his National League counterpart. Santana is a good pick-up for any fantasy team, even if you have one of the top catchers in the league.
The “groin injury” that caused Alex Rodriguez to come out of yesterday’s game turns out to be a hip problem after all, although according to his manager it is not in the area that caused him to have surgery and miss the first month of last season (although I don’t believe that for one second).
He did not play on Friday and the team says that he is day to day. If I had to guess, I would say that he probably won’t play until Sunday, but I wouldn’t be totally shocked if he was back with the team on Saturday. It might cause him to miss some games sporadically over the next couple of weeks, but it appears that this won’t be major.
Austin Kearns is having a nice little bounce back year as he attempts to actually have a season that he can actually stay healthy. Kearns has only played more than 90 games once in the last five seasons. He had two home runs on Friday, bringing his season total to seven in just 40 games.
If you are considering adding Kearns, allow me to offer these words of advice. I can see you adding him to your roster if you are a little weak in the due to injury or other factors. However, just know that this is probably going to be short lived because he has never proven to be consistent or able to stay on the field.
For those of you who have been worried about Francisco Liriano regressing after his hot start, how are you feeling now?
Liriano absolutely dominated the Atlanta Braves on Friday as he gave up just one run over eight innings and struck out a very impressive 11 batters.
This is now back to back games in which he has double digit strikeouts and has allowed only one run, so any concern coming off that little rough stretch should be gone. His ERA is under 3.00 and he has more than a strikeout an inning for the season.
R. A. Dickey got his fourth win in just five starts for the New York Mets, but I don’t see any way that you can possibly trust this journeyman knuckleballer to be a consistent contributor for you. There is no way that you can take away today’s performance though as he allowed just one run over seven innings and struck out eight.
Most of the time with knuckleballers it is either feast or famine. Either the ball is jumping all over and it is hard to hit, or it just isn’t moving much at all and it is batting practice for the offense. So far, so good for Dickey, but I think you are grasping at straws if you are expecting a 35 year old pitcher with a career record under .500 and a ERA of 5.31 to pitch well throughout the season.
Granted it is easier to pitch when your team gives you nine runs of support in the first two innings, John Lackey had a strong outing today regardless of his cushion. He gave up just two runs over seven innings and struck out three.
Like I wrote last time he took the mound, I think the days of the John Lackey in Anaheim with the good strikeout numbers might be gone, but I still think he is a very viable fantasy pitcher. He has gone from a possible staff ace to a very solid third starter on your team; but on the Red Sox he should really be able to pile up some wins as he got number seven on Friday. It has been an uncharacteristic season for Lackey, but perhaps he can get back on track.
Speaking of getting back on track, hopefully tonight’s game will do just that for David Ortiz . Big Papi was starting to turn back into a pumpkin again as he had just one hit in his previous eight games—but he broke out big time on Friday as he collected three hits and drove in four runs to bring his season total to 39 RBI. Looks like it is going to be similar to last year for Papi with a good number of homers and RBIs and a pretty putrid batting average.
James Shields has hit a major bump in the road lately, a bump that hopefully is temporary. He had a streak from April 22nd to May 25th in which he did not allow more than three earned runs, and now two of his last three outings he has coughed up at least seven. He gave up a whopping ten earned runs on Friday in just 3.1 innings, but at least he struck out four (like that is any consolation to his owners!).
At least Shields is still getting exceptional strikeout numbers for his career, as he now has 82 whiffs in just 85 innings pitched, which is well above his career rate. If you have Shields, you have to continue to start him no matter the opponent and hope that this is short lived.
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