At this point, you might be saying to yourself, “Why am I reading this?” Bear with me. We’ll get it figured out. It’s too early to bail on me, your resident jerk.
Yesterday, we had some lineup issues with Raburn and Valencia not playing at all; ehem, Valencia isn’t even on the active roster. I fully accept responsibility for this gaffe, and beg your forgiveness. Actually, I won’t beg. It’s your choice.
Despite yesterday’s gaffe, we still did decently in a 100 player league, mostly thanks to Yu Darvish nearly throwing the 24th perfect game in MLB history. That one is still stinging.
If you played yesterday’s lineup, you may have won a bit of cash.
So, here’s our approach for today::
1) We’ll select players who are on active rosters; that should get us off to a good start.
2) Sacrifice the few for the many. We’re going easy on pitching payroll, and balancing the outfield so we can afford a handful of stars in Cabrera, Posey, Butler and Andrus.
(P) Anibal Sanchez DET@MIN $6,100: Going the Sanchez route based mostly on the fact that he’s facing the Twins, who might have had a decent offensive 2012, but this, however, is 2013. Sanchez was stellar down the stretch in 2012; I’m looking for him to pick up where he left off.
(C) Buster Posey SFG@LOS $3,900: Sanchez came cheap, which allows us to fill out our lineup with a few extra stars, Posey being one of them.
(1B) Billy Butler KAN@CWS $3,600: Butler is 12/27 lifetime against Jake Peavy, who’s shoeing the rubber for the White Sox today. He’s a star on the rise, and we’ll go with him quite often, as matchups allow.
(2B) Ben Zobrist BAL@TAM $3,900: Zobrist had a good day yesterday, going 2-for-3 with a home run. He’s also 7-for-15 against Wei-Yin Chen. Staying with the hot hand.
(3B) Miguel Cabrera DET@MIN $4,500: Sleeping Giant.
(SS) Elvis Andrus TEX@HOU $3,400: We trotted Andrus out there yesterday against Lucas Harrell and he went 3-for4 with an RBI and a run scored. Andrus is also on a shortlist of potential breakout players for this season, so for better or worse, we’ll stick with him unless things turn sour.
(OF) Adam Jones BAL@TAM $3,600: Jones had a good opener, going 2-for-5 with a couple of RBI. In additon, he’s 9-for-28 against Jeremy Hellickson with three home runs.
(OF) Jackie Bradley BOS@NYY $2,800: Bradley came at a decent price. He went o-for-2 in his Major League debut but walked three times and scored two runs. Something tells me this kid is going places, but something also told me to eat a pound of bacon last night. Reap what you sow.
(OF) Andy Dirks DET@MIN $3,100: This bat is bound to heat up. Facing RHP Kevin Correia might be a good chance for the lefty to get things going. He’ll get around 400 ABs this year if he stays healthy, and if he comes anywhere close to last year’s .322 BA, we might have something on our hands.
Total FanDuel Salary: $34,900