The Best Laid Plans of Mice and ass hDLes

I had a plan.  I knew that my day yesterday was going to be chalk full of things from very early in the morning through most of the day.  So...I developed a plan to make sure that I still got a post up yesterday.  It started on Wednesday, when Bob spent a lot of time in the part of the building where I work most often.  We shot the proverbial shit, mostly about fantasy baseball in general and this league in particular (Bob didnt understand the Lackey for Crisp trade either).  When I brought up that he was kinda being a dick for not answering the 7 questions I had sent him (when isnt he though?), he mentioned that he rarely checks his email and often just deletss it.  So I asked him if he would answer them if I resent them, and he said he would.  With that, I figured I would get Bob's answers, write a short intro then paste those answers in and add a couple of snarky comments and call it good.  It wouldnt be the best post I had ever done, but it would work and I wouldnt have John texting my wife asking why I hadnt posted anything yet.

Fast forward to yesterday morning.  Calli decided that 4:30 was the appropriate wake up call for Mom and Dad, so there was no getting to anything before I left the house.  I got to work early and I knew that I had a small window to get something posted before I was whisked away to a cavalcade of meetings and, later, more family stuff.  When I got to a computer and checked my email, I knew that I had made a nice plan...for Bob to poop on.  With no answers from Bob and no real time to construct any sort of semblence of coherent writing my best option was to hope that things broke just right and I could squeeze some time in later.  As you probably guessed by the fact that there was no post yesterday, things didnt break just the right way.  Before I got in bed, I thought about throwing something together, but decided that the mattress looked all too inviting and that the morning wake up call was going to be coming sooner rather than later, and that you all could wait.  Blame Bob.

Before I went to bed, though, I did sneak a peak at some of the action and I caught a few minutes of Baseball Tonight.  Any of you who watched SC last night or caught up this morning know the ugly details of yesterday's baseball injury news.  Kamakaze Tanaka, he of the now partially torn UCL in his right elbow, is out indefinitely.  He is trying some kinda of Kobe Bryant voodoo on his elbow, but these situations end in surgery almost 90% of the time...the ShommyShon type of surgery.  The best case scenario is that Tanaka is out 6-8 weeks and that he can cobble together the rest of the season before getting some extended rest in the offseason.  But really, can the Skankees, already without CC FATathia and Ivan LessThanSuperNova, stay close enough to the top of the AL East to make it worth their while to bring out Tanaka at all over the rest of the season?  The worst case, waiting the 6 weeks followed by TJ surgery, means Tanaka will likely not toe the rubber until Spring Training...in 2016.

That story was followed by the news that Yadier Molina, with his now surgically repaired right thumb, is out 8 to 12 weeks.  That eliminates him from the rest of the fantasy regular season and probably for all of the fantasy playoffs, if not for all of the real playoffs.

After that there was a Brandon Phillips story that I didnt care about because...well, its Brandon Phillips.  I am sure hes wonderful and he kisses babies and feeds homeless puppies and rainbows shine out of his ass when hes happy causing leprechauns to live amongst his dingleberries.  Whatever.  As the SC anchor was talking, a thought popped in my head.  I knew John had Tanaka, but I only had a inkling that he has Molina as well.  Yup.  Both of them.  They can now join Jose Fernandez on the rest of the year DL.  Evan Gattis and the recently released Angel Pagan are already setting up shop on the DL.  And this earlier this week, Josh Beckett joined them with a left hip impingement that should sideline him for around the minimum of 2 weeks, though only 1 start because of the All Star break.

John went from a preseason top 3 of Fernandez, Tanaka and Cueto (pretty strong, if you ask me, and its my blog so I am pretty sure you did) to a post All Star top 3 of Cueto, Hyun-Jin Ryu and...Mark Buehrle?  The best laid plans...?  That's not a let down, thats falling off the edge of the cliffs of Dover (Eyota).  If John is able to somehow pull this together and make a playof run, I might try to figure out a way to vote him American League Manager of the Year (I think Ron Roenicke has the NL one firmly in his grip at this point of the season...I cant bring myself to take it away from him like the Pirates or Cardinals are going to take the division and the Wild Card from the Crew.

So...the three biggest injuries of the week, and 2 of the larger ones of the entire season, hit John in a couple of days...talk about ass hDLes.

The other ass hDLe this week, Gerrit Cole, is an important piece of both Kyler's and the Pirates rotations, but not on the Tanaka level.  Cole hit the DL on Tuesday with right labia lat soreness from his last game on July 4th.  The good news is that the Pirates dont think it is connected to the shoulder issues he dealt with earlier this year.  The bad news is that it is another in a line of small injuries that is forcing Cole to miss time.  Granted, teams are being unprescidentedly cautious with their pitchers on any and all injuries, regardless of size, shape or degree in hopes of keeping the ShommyShon Boogie Man from stealing their top prospects in the middle of the night, so it might not be Cole who is requesting the breaks.  But MLB history is littered with super talented pitchers (of which Cole is definitely one) who had health issues and ultimately couldnt cut it.  Rich (Dick) Harden comes immediately to mind, and not because his name is Dick Harden.  For those of you who dont remember, Harden came up late in 2002 with the A's as a 21 year old and showed enough in 75 innings to be slated for the rotation in 2003.  In 2003 (as a 22 year old, mind you), he struck out 167 batters in 189 innings while holding opponents to a .242/320/366 slash line on his way to 11 wins.  The 7.9 K/9innings was the lowest of his career.  Over the next 3 years his K/9 went from 7.9 to 8.5 to 9.5 to 9.5, but his inning pitched went from 189 to 128 to 46 to 25 as the injuries mounted.  He showed he was healthy in the first half of 2008 and the A's promptly made him someone else's problem in a trade that brought Josh Donaldson to Oakland from the Cubbies.

The second half of 2008 was the highwater mark of Harden's career (and really...check out that stats, it would have been the highwater mark of a lot of careers).  After the trade, Harden started 12 games (going 5-1), threw 71 innings, struck out 89, gave up 39 hits with a 1.77 ERA and 0.97 WHIP.  Opponents hit 157/252/273 for a .525 OPS.  Honestly, it was one of the most amazing 12 start stretches that I can remember.  To put it in context, Clayton Kershaw has 14 starts this season and opponents are hitting 191/220/294 for a .515 OPS...and everyone is talking about Kershaw as being the best pitcher in the game and how his no hitter may have been the greatest game ever pitched.  That's the level Harden was on that summer (but he only threw 148 innings on the entire season).  And he never came close to repeating it.  He was though to hit in 2009 and he struck out 171 in 141 innings but he walked 67 and he only threw 141 innings.  Two pretty terrible years later, he was out of professional baseball.  His body never let him handle the workload that his talent demanded he get.  As someone who appreciates baseball and loves the Cubs, it was a bit heartbreaking to watch.  I think Cole is that kinda talented.  I am hoping he is not that kinda injury prone.

There was another instances of a special kind of ass hDLe this week...and I cannot recall this happening before.  AJ Pierzynski was designated for assignment this week, which basically means that the Red Sawks released him...and, of all teams, he is in Dusty's starting lineup.  This is the same Dusty that let and injured Wil Myers hang out in his starting lineup for weeks until he finally dropped him a couple of waiver periods ago, but then didnt think it necessary to put anyone into the starting lineup in his place, despite having a number of options.  This is the same Dust Bunny team that has had Francisco Liriano in the lineup even though he has not pitched in a game in over a month (though he is coming back this weekend).  That means that Dusty is going to have multiple holes in his lineup for the foreseeable future.  Normally I would have gone out and found a replacement player by now because, well evidence shows that Dusty doesnt give a flying hootinanny.  But Dusty is my wife's sister's boyfriend and he loves baseball and he talks to me non stop about this fantasy league whenever I see him, so I know that he does care.  And...my sister in law would go apeshit on my ass if we tried to kick Dusty out (if this somehow gets back to her, I dont want to kick him out, I want him to start paying attention more and actually doing things like updating his lineup and responding to anyone of the 203873 trades I have offered him in hopes of getting TuloGit).  I know that Dusty struggles to get to things updated because he doesnt have a smart phone (I honestly do probably 90% of my interactions with my team on my phone) and cant get to a computer that often...but it's once a week man.  Anyways, the Dust Bunny moniker might come to represent the holes in the lineup if another player or 2 goes down.