On a mission from … Day 5

Ah, the last mission post. The Jon is once again sitting during his break … on his own computer … ready before the ride home on the light rail with drunk Rockies fans on a Friday night racking The Jon’s brain on what to write about. Seeing how these posts were more on actual fantasy baseball with the exception of last night’s epic Ichiro post, The Jon had to think hard.

Anyone who reads The Jon knows thinking isn’t The Jon’s strong suit. Luckily, The Jon is involved in talks for some fantasy deals and needs to replenish rosters from the waiver wire.

And a topic was born. And what’s with the Rockies’ video? Read on and press read more to, well, read more.

On a mission from … Day 4

For the fourth day of this little mission, The Jon is going to take it easy and deal with one of The Jon’s favorite pastimes — while on break from work on The Jon’s own personal computer, yeah, that’s it — let’s restart the sentence to avoid awkwardness. The Jon is going to take it easy and deal with one of The Jon’s favorite pastimes, looking on youtube to find obscure baseball videos.

Give The Jon a break, this is four days of posting and counting. Stepping right up is another high-top fade Ichiro commercial from The Jon’s Motherland.

Here’s a breakdown, translated from The Jonpanese, of course:

The Jon knows these things to be true: Week 18

It finally happened. After five years of finishing in the money, the dynasty is over.
The Jon has accepted that The Jon aka The Greatness will not make the playoffs this season.
It is time for reminiscing.
A calming of the mind if you will … aw screw it, this sucks.

Take a look at that again. Five seasons straight. Two championships. The memories are all The Jon will have left from now on. A moment of silence, now.

OK, that’s somewhat better, let’s talk baseball, shall we?

The Jon knows these things to be true: Week 16

The Jon was going to start with some weak writing about the shortened H2H matchups this week … it was something like this:

With the All Star break over, fantasy managers faced the worst matchup week ever: The some odd four days of games after the Midsummer Classic. Four days does not a good H2H week make or something. A lot of teams got helped by the fewer games with double-digit wins while other mangers got the flip side.

Man, that’s weak. So instead, take a look at the best play of the actual All Star game of Ichiro gunning down Albert Pujols. First of all, the ball looked foul and then when it came up fair with the perfect hop, there was no way Pujols was going to test Ichiro … but then you saw Ichiro’s bullet and knew Pujols was going for second.

The result was never in doubt … although Pujols did look safe. But The Jon is rambling, let’s talk baseball, shortened week and all.

The Jon knows these things to be true: Week 13

The Jon sure feels sorry for Chipper Jones, Yunel Escobar, Magglio Ordonez and Felix Hernandez owners. All went down this week with injuries.
The Jon can’t imagine how it would feel like to have all of those players on one team in an H2H league going against an arch-rival that you literally and wholeheartedly abhor … wait The Jon can.

After a 10-1 shellacking to FreeSanJose, the only solace The Jon can find is Ichiro’s 5-for-5 performance Sunday that allowed The Jon to grab one point … but that’s besides the point. Let’s talk baseball shall we?

Four Bagger: Ramble On

Listen, Newspaperman can’t hang with the hip hop knowledge that TheJon, PoiDog and TheOz bring to TheBaseballStars. While they were listening to the supposed good stuff, I was eating up what MTV was serving: 3rdBass’ Pop Goes The Weasel, Metallica ‘s Enter Sandman, and Warren G and Nate Dogg in Regulate.

But I digress. I’ve come to understand the finer things in life, and I’m not talking about Tchaikovsky or anything like that. I’m talking Zeppelin, baby! Anyhow, as the header video states, it’s time to Ramble On and talk fantasy baseball.

The Jon knows these things to be true: Week 11

Look, Johan Santana was the man with the Twins. He put up one of the best seasons this side of the-turn-of-the-century Randy Johnson. In 2004 he was 20-6 with a 2.61 ERA to go along with 265 strikeouts. As the anchor of the Jon’s team, he led The Greatness to two titles and six seasons where The Jon didn’t finish any lower than third.

So it is with great sadness and an unabashed outlook on the future that The Jon brings this news: The Jon just traded Johan Santana.

The Jon knows these things to be true: Week 9

At the beginning of the season, this is how The Jon’s offense walked into a weekly matchup. The squad was stacked with Jorge Posada, Adrian Gonzalez, Placido Polanco, Rafael Furcal, Chipper Jones, Ichiro, Vladimir Guerrero, Magglio Ordonez and Curtis Granderson.
After three weeks of no RBI futility, The Jon’s team heads into a matchup like this:

But instead of Chip and Dale, uhhhh …

It’s more like Vlad and Granderson.

Losers.

But enough of the bleeding heart routine, lets talk fantasy baseball.

I.T.T.O.T.M.

So it was the first one of the 2008 baseball season. The Jon got the look from The Wife. It’s a look only you can get when you are on the phone for 3 hours talking fantasy baseball. To The Wife it sounded like a bunch of gibberish: Granderson-for-a-first-only-if-Carmona-is-available-in-the-first or … Maybe-Pujols-can-stay-healthy-all-year-but-it-will-suck-
if-you-get-stuck-with-his-exploding-arm. So, The Wife came through with that look of utter disgust combined with the look of deep, intense dislike that makes one feel guilty for learning how to talk, let alone talk on the telephone. Well, The Jon has had enough. The Jon takes care of his kids, changes diapers and plays dressup with Barbie dolls. The Jon has been emasculated for five months over here. Yes, Godfather it’s time to act like a man.

Draft Advice: The top 5 value picks

Fantasy baseball drafts are all about hype. As fantasy baseballers we feed off of it. When Jose Reyes, David Wright, Hanley Ramirez and Ryan Braun all have big seasons forever changing the fantasy landscape, we want to be the ones that said we saw it coming and that we told you so. That’s why Parrish was at this top of this post before the video becam no longer available seeing how his solo career was so successful. We all remember when Parrish Smith broke off from EPMD and the Green-Eyed Bandit. Yeah, that was successful. But guess what sweethearts, like a lot of solo careers, you can’t win by the rule of “I saw it comin” without solid producers — the value guys that keep on churning 180-plus hits, 30 or more homers, 100 RBI or 100 runs season after season. Your own Green-Eyed Bandit so to speak. What a weak piece of writing that last paragraph was. Videos no longer available sucks.

But still, we have humps out there saying Wright will drop 40 bombs along with Ryan Braun because they are under 26. Screw that. Let the other guys grab the sexy picks of Jose Reyes, David Wright, Hanley Ramirez and Ryan Braun, while you grab the sure things that are four-to five category studs. Get results, not predictions. Get value not teenage fandom. Here are the top 5 value picks in the draft:

Purple Lips: Yeah, no brainer right? Well, you would be surprised how many people