In the midst of a magical weekend

It’s a holiday weekend, so it’d be pretty tough to screw this up. But this has been a magical weekend for me, and not just involving baseball. But for the sake of this blog, I’ll keep it to the game as we’ve got many things to cover and a few pictures to show off.

It all started on Friday when I headed to McAfee Coliseum in Oakland to watch the first of a three-game series featuring the Red Sox and A’s. When I bought the tickets in March, I told myself it didn’t matter who was pitching just as long as it wasn’t Tim Wakefield, who I’ve seen on four or five occasions already.

But what do you know. We walk in and see this …

The Jon knows these things to be true: Week 2

Should The Jon’s Panzer Dragoon edit have his finisher as the Fish Stretch Sleeper or the Super Rana? This is what the Jon could be deciding right now instead of serving The Jon’s loyal readers with another edition of “The Jon knows these things to be true.” It is probably a good thing The Jon isn’t playing Fire Pro Wrestling returns. When The Jon gets anal retentive about finishers in video games, it isn’t a good thing.

PoiDog knows of this. The Jon has called PoiDog many a time during WWF No Mercy’s heyday for the N64. “Hey PoiDog. Do you think my Cools edit would be better off with a Forward Front Russian Leg Sweep?”

The Jon’s a loser. let’s talk fantasy baseball: Week 2. Shall we?

Which BaseballStar are you?

So to get a better understanding of how TheBaseballStars differ, lets play a little game shall we? The fun begins with pitching, or which type of pitchers each individual BaseballStar goes for when creating a team. It is a vision of what the perfect pitcher is so to speak.
The game is figuring out which BaseballStar you are most alike in terms of which pitcher you go for when selecting your team.

The Jon fully expects you to read this post and spend one second saying you are like The Jon, Newspaperman (heaven forbid), PoiDog (you sheep), FreeSanJose (get anger management classes), or The Oz (MIA). So why the Roy Halladay video? The Jon thought you would never ask …

Daisuke to have 3 starts in opening week?

Ever imagine a starting pitcher having three starts in any given week of fantasy baseball? If this were the 1950s or 1960s, then it’d be common place. But in this day and age of the five-man rotation? Yeah, it’s possible.

Draft advice: Top 20 Starting pitchers

Every league has a pitching guru. Not to toot my own horn, but more times than not, I proudly proclaim that mantle. Once upon a time, I insisted on keeping five pitchers. But even I know that’s not a sound strategy. I prefer to take one or two studs early and fill in my staff with high-upside hurlers on the young side of 30 who are capable of becoming dominant. I’ll leave low-WHIP, low-ERA, low-K, low-risk guys for someone else. Our rankings largely reflect that philosophy. Although The BaseballStars had a pretty wide level of varience — some of our top-10 pitchers didn’t even appear on everyone’s top-20 list — I would feel perfectly comfortable following this list straight down.

Curt Schilling done for the year?

Poking around a few messages boards today and saw that Curt Schilling has a shoulder injury that could require season-ending surgery. As a Red Sox fan I am bummed to hear this as it leaves the team in a situation where they are now forced to use Clay Buchholz in the rotation, rather than just flirt with the idea and later guide him in. I like Schilling a lot, which is contrary to many Bostonians, and do feel he is an integral part of the team. He may have been supplanted as the team’s ace, but he still gives the team a toughness and veteran leadership, which makes his loss even more of an issue in my mind. I was lucky enough to watch Schilling pitch in Oakland last year during his near no-hitter …

No longer Twins Territory

So, The Jon has heard a couple Red Sox fans trying to justify the fallout from The Johan Santana deal. One of the great arguments was that they are happy to keep Jacoby Ellsbury and Jon Lester. The Red Sox told the Twins that they wouldn’t package those two guys together. As if those guys were the future of the franchise.

Granted Ellsbury had 41 hits in 33 games for the Red Sox and all signs point to him being one of the brightest stars in the game, but this is Johan Santana. Manny Ramirez and David Ortiz can carry an offense that has a pitching staff of Santana, Josh Beckett, Curt Schilling, Daisuke Matsuzaka and Tim Wakefield.

We are TheBaseballStars

There are many ways to start this. We could have talked about this site is the only alternative for weak fantasy baseball everywhere. We could have talked about how fantasy baseball is the best fake sport of all time. We could have talked about how fantasy advice is more than looking at last season’s stats and doling out rankings.

Or we can tell what we really want to say while saying what we could have said.

But let’s look at the most important reason. What you have here is five of the best fantasy baseball minds around.