Newsflash: Bulky White Guy Pitcher Receives Pitching Contract

This is fake, right? This is like a high school yearbook pic with a fake border?

Derek Lowe just signed a four-year $60 million dollar contract with the Atlanta Braves.  Their rotation now includes Javier Vazquez, that Kawakami guy from Japan, Jair Jurgggggens and Phil Neikro (103 years old, and the knuckler still works!).  People seem dubious of this signing, but I don’t think it’s that bad of a fit.  Do you know how you get a sweet 60 milly?

By being one of the most durable pitchers in the game.  By starting at least 32 times in the past seven seasons.  By owning an ERA of 3.24 with a WHIP of 1.13 last season.  By having a sub-4.00 ERA the past four seasons since entering the senior league.  He’s got a career ERA+ of 122, which makes him an above average pitcher if your glasses are constantly falling off your face and you own multiple pocket protectors.  For fantasy purposes, Derek Lowe is one of those hidden gems in the mid-to-low rounds who provides great ratios and is seemingly never hurt.  I like.

He fits perfectly into this rotation.  And by perfectly I mean the Braves will potentially have an all-right-handed rotation, which is nothing if not predictable.  With Charlie Morton and Jorge Campillo (yikes) fighting for the fifth spot, there will be little variation to the theme.  Oh well, at least they can depend on the solid play of Jeff Franceour to…never mind.  Remember Andruw Jones?  Double-yikes.  This team will be okay, especially if Kelly Johnson can get hit batting average up and Chipper Jones’s voodoo doll isn’t being stuck by a certain defensively over-rated third basemen from the New York Mets.  Will they win the East?  Probably not, especially if they don’t re-sign Julio Franco.  Will Derek Lowe make a big difference?  Yeah, I’d say he gives them some much needed stability that certain aging men (Smoltz, Hudson) could not seem to shoulder.  Terrible pun.  Just.  Terrible.

Then again, he is just a big bulky white guy one shoulder-snap away from the hallowed trenches of Atlanta’s Disabled List, permanent home of Mike Hampton. I don’t care that the Astros signed Mike Hampton. They will be confused when he doesn’t show up to training camp. They will soon find out he’s taken his wounded obliques back to Hotlanta.

THIS IS MIKE HAMPTON'S HOUSE. NO PAIN-FREE PERSONS ALLOWED

He will always be on the Braves DL in my mind. Always.

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Hello, It’s Me

After suffering through a number of serious mental health maladies related to my team and its inherent sucktitude, I’m back!  And so is my team, currently battling for 3rd place.  The league is so tight, that within a week I could probably be back in 10th place, but I refuse to accept the chaos of an unknown future and instead choose an optimistic, half-retarded future that involves me winning the league and/or beating Matt Berry in a Feel Sorry For Me Competition.

Not like anyone actually reads this thing anymore, but a few things have changed:

Trades

I made three semi-blockbuster trades, one of which has already blown up in my face (huzzah!)

Firstly, I was offered Brandon Phillips and Andrew Miller for Erik Bedard and Johnny Cueto.  It did not take me long to click accept on this trade.  Bedard won’t pitch until 2011, and Cueto is, well, Cueto.  Phillips has been okay, and Miller I dropped, but I still think I got the better end of this deal.

Secondly, I decided that Manny had to go.  I believed that his old Manny body would break down eventually.  I had the same thought with Kent.  He’s old.  After shopping him for weeks, I finally received Tim Hudson, Mike Gonzalez and Bobby Crosby for Manny Ram, Jeff Kent and Scott Downs.  Yes, I was raped in this trade, but Huddy’s actually trying to pitch through a ligament tear.  Dude’s a fucking gamer!  And Kent is still semi-broken, and who needs Scott Downs when I could pick up Ron Mahay?  Anywho, Gonzalez hasn’t gotten a chance to close in four years, and Manny has played well (but infrequently).  Hopefully hanging out with Andruw “The Curse” Jones won’t rub off on him the wrong way.

And thirdly, after picking up wunderchild Mike Aviles, I realized Pedroia was at the peak of his value for the season.  He was hitting at a bananas rate, something like .450 over a one-and-half-month period.  That’s fucking hitting.  I nabbed not only Ocab to fill in my SS hole, but John Danks for Pedroia and Andy Sonnanstine.  I feel like time will bear this one out, but I love having Ocab’s steals and runs.

Pick Up’s

I love vulturing people off the waiver wire.  Real good times, especially since Eick and Mattraw pitch a hissy because they “weren’t at their computers” when a new Tigers closer was announced (Rodney, got him!).  A lesson to them: You should always be at your computers, at all times.  Lord knows you couldn’t separate me from this thing with a backhoe.  Yeah.  Anyways, I grabbed the aforementioned Aviles, Billy Butler, Ty Wigginton, and Jerry Hairston, Jr to help fill out my line-up card.  Gotta love the multi-position eligibility.

Another reason I grabbed multi-position players is because I have 3 moves left on waivers.  That’s it.  Three.  I figure I don’t have much wiggle room left anyway, as I’ve been wiggling ever since Yovanni Gallardo and Furcal hit the DL for good.

Speaking of the DL, the Big Hurt just came off it and I’m chancing it by starting him tonight, hoping he can nail one of Wakefield’s errant Wuss…I mean, knucklers out of the park.  Cheap power is good power.

Also, John Lennon did not say “Cranberry Sauce” at the end of Strawberry Fields Forever.  He’s clearly saying, “Paul (Konerko) is dead.”

It’s true.

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Hilarity: Profitable at the Expense of Others

Tonight I just pulled a classic move in our league. Our waiver pool is full of horror shows like Jamie Moyer and Merkin Valdez. However, let’s say that someone’s closer went down with tendinitis, a terrible ailment as it creeps slowly up your arm and devours your soul.

That soul, of course, belongs to chronically half-broken Raphael Soriano, a pretty brilliant closer without the addiction to soothing Jacuzzis, back rubs and the other perks of rehab.

I quickly scooped up Peter Moylan tonight, some big white guy with a goatee who Bobby Cox squints at from time to time.

Anyways, he’s got a huge old head and I now have 4 closers. That’s preposterous. You may wonder, where does a lonely man spend the night with two closers tucked under each arm?

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