By Tony in Hitchin

League 4

League 7

“Hey, Tony, how’s the Mafia team doing against the rest of the elite of the fantasy baseball website world?” I hear you ask. Well, I’m here to tell you, we’re doing pretty well right now.

As of this moment, we’re sitting third, with a solid 80 points, and while we were top for a couple of days and as low as fourth for two others, third seems about right. It’s a tough, competitive league, as you’d imagine, with most of the team owners writing about baseball for a living; the gap between the top of the league and the bottom is the smallest of any league I’m in this year.

As we came out of the draft, the rotation was our biggest concern. We had only four starters - Tim Hudson, Dontrelle Willis, Shaun Marcum and Randy Wolf, with Chris Carpenter stashed in a DL spot. Some observers noted that a lack of strikeouts might hurt us, even with Carlos Marmol and Jonathan Broxton on our roster. Marcum has proved to be an excellent pick-up in the twentieth round, and Tim Hudson has been sensational, but the other two are long gone.

In their place, we now have Joe Saunders and Ryan Dempster, both of whom were picked up after two starts, and we used a waiver claim to acquire Max Scherzer. Saunders doesn’t record many strikeouts, but Dempster has been a real nice addition, and I think he’s actually been better than his numbers suggest. I’m not suggesting he’s going to get Cy Young nominations, but on a winning Cubs team he’s more than useful.

We’re nervously awaiting news of young Scherzer’s future use, but he’ll be kept on the roster for now … even if he’s sent down. We’ve also picked up Scot Shields and last week grabbed Ryan Franklin, as a third closer, to go with Joakim Soria and JJ Putz.

I have my doubts as to whether Saunders will be able to maintain his recent form, so we’re keeping an eye out for sniper starts, but we’d rather miss a great start than do harm to our WHIP and ERA.

We currently have 41.5 pitching points, leading in WHIP, second in ERA, and in the middle of the pack for the other three categories. To me, this looks like a better-than-we-might-have-expected position given the understandable concerns expressed by some after our draft.

On the hitting side, we have 38.5 points, and the numbers here definitely fall into “the good, the bad and the ugly” territory. The area of concern is BA, where we have only two points, thanks to a horrendous mark of .254. Four main culprits are responsible: Travis Hafner, JJ Hardy, Gary Matthews, Jr. and Ryan Howard.

I’ve seen Hardy being dropped in a few leagues, but I think he’ll come around - the weekend, small sample size though that is, suggests it’s possible. And we’ve lived with him so far, so maybe the only way is up.

Travis Hafner has been benched for a few days, and we’re hoping that the recent vague signs of Cleveland’s offense coming to life will result in things picking up for our fourth round pick.

Ryan Howard, of course, is a must-start every day, and I still believe he’ll find his way to something like a .270 average before the season ends, with 45 HRs and 115 RBIs, at least.

Gary Matthews, Jr. seems to be the very embodiment of hot and cold - 3-for-4 one night and 0-for-4 the next. But again, he’s been producing.

Much of the team’s success offensively is thanks to three hitters: Rafael Furcal (6th round), Pat Burrell (10th round) and Josh Hamilton (11th round), all of whom have been scorching hot through April. If some of those who’ve been slacking can pick it up, we’ll be able to live with a dip in form from any of these three … and we’ve just seen Shane Victorino return from the DL.

With Jacoby Ellsbury and Kaz Matsui, another free agent pick-up, Victorino should help us to stay competitive in SBs, where we currently have 8 points. While Victorino was on the DL, by the way, we picked up Jayson Werth, who chipped in admirably.

We’re doing well in RBIs (11 points) and runs (10 points), but recovering enough to gain many points in BA is going to be tough. I was going to do the math to see where we’d be if everyone hit .300 for the rest of the season, but I decided that the answer might depress me too much. Ah well, at least we can only lose one point in that category.

I think we’ll see what happens, and if we can pick up two or three points (IF!) while maintaining or increasing our performance in other areas, we should be fine.

The waiver wire, not surprisingly, is remarkably thin. I looked yesterday and there’s only one player I think can help us right now, and that’s’ Blake DeWitt, who I like. Drop Gary Matthews, Jr for him? Yes, we’ve been thinking about it, but with Aramis at 3B and Prince Fielder at CI, the only place we can start him is at Utility, in place of Hafner, while Coco Crisp would have to be our fifth outfielder. Not ideal. So I think we have to pass on that one.

Our next move will probably be determined by what happens to Max Scherzer. If he moves to the bullpen, that’ll give us four starters and four middle relievers - Scherzer, Marmol, Broxton and Shields.

Broxton hit a bump in the road recently against the Astros, and unless he’s injured we might look to move Scot Shields. With the other three, his roster spot can be better used, I think, so maybe we’ll have a look and see which teams could use a quality middle reliever.

As always, let me know your thoughts, ideas, players to keep an eye on etc. Remember - this is our team!