By Jesse Severe
League 3
This has happened to all of us. You are driving down the road, trying to reach a destination, and thinking you know how to get there. After driving a ways, and after a few wrong turns, you are no longer all that sure where you are or what direction you should be heading.
You swallow your pride and stop to ask directions and realize you are going the wrong way. In fact, you drove right past your stop and are driving directly in the opposite direction from your final destination.
What is the best way to get back on track?
Rather than plodding on without changing course, pulling over to the side of the road to ask for help, thereby getting your bearings, is more effective than continuing to drive the wrong direction.
The same applies to your fantasy baseball team. After a few sniper starts misfire, some owners continue to drive their teams in the same wrong direction by picking up even more risky pitch or ditch options.
Isn’t it better to try to stop, evaluate the situation, ask for help, and choose the pitchers who reliably bring down ERA and WHIP? My advice to you: check out some of the middle relievers below and get a GPS.
I can think of thirteen non-closer relievers with 20 innings pitched, have at least a 8.0 K/9, with no higher than a 1.5 HR/9, 4.0 BB/9, 1.3 WHIP, and 3.5 ERA. Ride them until you’ve driven that ugly “4″ at the beginning of your team ERA down to a roadworthy “3″!
Alert! The impossible has happened. There is such a thing as an underrated Yankee. No, seriously!
In a year when $200 million buys a team a half-dozen games out of the wild card, there are two undervalued Yankees with fantasy value. Edwar Ramirez and Jose Veras have worked their way into elite middle reliever status without showing up in every baseball column and talkshow. I expect to hear, any day now, that Barack Obama has selected Tony Cincotta as a running mate and the Dalai Lama has qualified for the Beijing Olympics in the Pole Vault.
As goes interleague play, so goes middle relief. Ten of my thirteen middle relief survivors this week are from the AL. Heck, maybe that’s part of why NL scoring is up while the AL keeps dominating interleague play. The AL may have a few more guys who can pitch a scoreless seventh inning, and that makes a difference.
Matt Thornton should be an All-Star. At the beginning of the season, Joe Crede was supposed to get out of the way for Josh Fields. Carlos Quentin was a promising rookie who wasn’t even assured a spot in Ozzie Guillen’s lineup. No one expected All-Star seasons from either. If the seasons of these two had gone according to expectations, maybe Thornton could have been the Sox’ representative this year.
The White Sox have one of the best bullpens in the Major Leagues, despite pitching in hitter-friendly US Cellular Field. It sure isn’t Paul Konerko and Jim Thome helping the team to an unlikely first-place run. Matt, you have my vote.