The House of Crouse 04.11.08
Posted by Mark Crouse on 04.11.2008
Witness the dawning of a new day in hack internet journalism! The column formerly known as This Week in Fantasy Baseball has spread its wings and become The House of Crouse, the most distilled blend of opinion and fact available to the masses! Behold!
Welcome to the premiere edition of The House of Crouse, also known as The Artist Formerly Known as This Week in Fantasy Baseball. Why change the name? Because now that the baseball season is in full swing, fantasy becomes a maintenance game. Sure, I'll be doling out tidbits and waiver wire pickups, and making some predictions, but my intention was to make a good portion of my weekly column a forum for questions posed by readers. Readers, that is, that haven't given me any feedback up to this point.
So, to add some value to my weekly home on 411, The House of Crouse has become my personal clearing house on all things sports. Think of it as my very own sports talk show without myopic homers fouling up my time with the people. Want to know my opinion on steroids? How about competitive balance in baseball? Who would I vote for as NBA MVP? It's basically me posing topics to myself. Here's hoping you like it, and as always, I'm a work in progress. Let me know what you think. But let's start this week's edition with some fantasy baseball nuggets!
-Reds rookie pitcher Johnny Cueto is all the rage. With a two-start stat line of 1-0, 2.20 ERA, 18 K's and 0 BB in 13.1 innings. Owned in practically every fantasy league at this point, Cueto owners likely plucked him from waivers, meaning a potential ace came for free from the fantasy angels. If you are one of these owners, enjoy the stats. I won't be one of these skeptics that will tell you it will end any time soon. And besides, Dusty Baker has never been guilty of handling young arms with kid gloves. Cueto should be a top-15 starter on his strikeout numbers alone.
-Speaking of starting pitching, what is wrong with the American League's starters? I know it's early, but Sabathia, Beckett, Verlander, Bedard, and Halladay are a combined 2-4 and all except Bedard have ERAs over 4.00. I know, it's very early, and I believe Verlander will turn it around and produce ace numbers, but consider Bedard has already missed a start with a sketchy hip, and that Beckett could make it back to the DL at any time. What does this mean in the big picture? If I had a draft today, I'd snag Santana or Peavy and draft hitting for the next eight rounds or so. That's right, folks, two aces to lead them all.
-Diamondback third baseman Mark Reynolds leads the majors with five homers. He's a powerful young man, hitting 11 dingers in his past 140 at-bats dating back to '07. My advice is to pick Reynolds up, but only if you have a spot on your roster being taken up by someone who is not helping your squad. Don't drop a useful player to snag Reynolds, although he will likely hit 30 home runs in '08. If that is the case, you've already missed out on 18% of his power production.
-This has no direct bearing on fantasy, but my Orioles have the best record in baseball at 6-1! Sure, it means nothing, but give us O's fans some reason to rejoice and have some hope. For the record, nothing that occurs this year should force management to take anyone off the market for the right price, and that includes Brian Roberts.
-If you own J.J. Putz or Francisco Rodriguez, I have no sympathy for you in light of their recent injuries. Spending the draft pick necessary to acquire either of these closers could have netted you a top hitter, or allowed you to corner the market on shallow positions like catcher or second base. But you wouldn't listen. Enjoy the empty roster spot while myself and other George Sherrill and Manny Corpas owners bask in the glow of saves.
-I have no recommendations on slow starters until the end of April, since a guy that doesn't produce for a week in August goes unnoticed, but a month of slacking will drag your team down. I also have no other waiver wire recommendations other than Cueto and Reynolds since they are the inverse of the slow starters, since someone has to be dropped for you to add a new player.
And now, onto other sports news:
-Let's just say I have the proverbial egg on my face after watching Kansas win the National Championship by dominating UNC and snatching victory from the jaws of defeat against Memphis. That's right, I picked UCLA to beat UNC in the final. Whoops. I thought star players won games in college basketball, and Kansas hasn't one. Who knew. Also, I don't blame John Calipari for not fouling and for his players missing free throws. The coach can't shoot the free throws for them. And yes, Derek Rose and Chris Douglas-Roberts are chokers. They are just as worthy of criticism as Chris Webber was when he called a time out Michigan didn't have, or any host of other goats are regarded in sports history. And I don't want to hear how they are only kids, an opinion I've heard in the media recently. Scrutiny is one side of a double-edged sword that will also get them paid millions when they reach the NBA. Getting called chokers by hack internet journalists and others in the media is a small price to pay.
-UCLA stars Kevin Love and Darren Collison are rumored to be leaving school to enter the NBA draft. And then they are rumored to be staying in school. In my opinion, both should stay in school for their own benefit. Collison was exposed as a smallish shooting guard, and Love looked awfully slow against the uber-athletic Memphis Tigers. You can't teach speed, but Love can make himself more marketable to NBA teams by winning the Naismith Award and leading the Bruins to another Final Four next year.
I'm not so sure either will be stars at the next level, since both have notable gaps in their respective games.
-Speaking of the NBA, there is great contention amongst the talking heads as to who the league MVP should be. My vote would go to Kevin Garnett, since his presence has meant so much more to Boston than even his unreal stats would indicate. I'm also partial to giving the MVP to the best player on the best team. If there were a Player of the Year, I'd be in Chris Paul's corner (26 points and 11 assists per game!), but I'm a purist where the MVP is concerned.
By the by, why is Major League Baseball the only league that awards an MVP for both the American League and National League, while the NBA, NFL, and NHL have MVP's for the entire league? I know the obvious answer is that the AL and NL are more dissimilar than the conferences in the other sports are, but I like the idea of having two MVP's since all of the leagues feature uneven schedules that have teams facing opponents in their own conference more often than the other.
And to close this week's House of Crouse, it's time to debut my new favorite feature...the soapbox!
As I watched the coverage of the Olympic torch being followed in San Francisco by protesters on CNN Wednesday, I became saddened that this display of unity, hope, and the neverending spirit of the Olympic games has been used as a target for those who protest the human rights offenses that China has perpetrated against Tibet and other factions within their culture.
From the gestures of black pride that John Carlos and Tommie Smith showed at the 1968 games in Mexico City, to the Black September massacre at the 1972 games in Munich, the Olympic games have been a backdrop for political groups to make a statement. While I am encouraged that the protests in California did not turn violent, the media coverage disappoints me. I watched the coverage of the torch being chased for an hour, and basically saw the same grainy long shot of the procession which may or may not have had the torch as a part of it.
This event is a prime example of what 24-hour news channels like CNN present as "news" when they have no substantiated information to report. That is why I rarely watch such networks for more than a few minutes to catch the day's headlines.
Well, that about does it for the first edition of The House of Crouse. I'll be back next week with more sports and fantasy tomfoolery. Until then, godspeed!
