Baseball has a history of strange injuries. Sammy Sosa hurt his back while sneezing. John Smoltz was injured while ironing a shirt…that he was wearing. In the past calendar year Giants’ reliever Jeremy Affeldt has been injured while trying to separate frozen hamburger patties with a knife and sprained his knee while hugging his 4’6(!) 4-year-old son. The latest strange injury comes courtesy of Brewers’ catcher Jonathan Lucroy. The third year veteran will miss 4-6 weeks after breaking his hand in an accident involving his wife, a hotel bed, a sock, and a suitcase. Lucroy was having a huge season, hitting .345/.387/.583 in 43 games and ranking fourth among all catchers according to Yahoo!. Luckily for the fantasy owner, i.e. you, there are suitable replacements to fill the void.

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George Kottaras (ESPN: 0.3 percent owned; Yahoo!: 2 percent owned)

Catching is a dangerous occupation, that much is certain, but it certainly seems as though the backstops are falling down at an incredible rate. The Cubs have had three catchers go on the disabled list already this year, the Nationals and Mariners have both had a pair go down, and yet neither Joe Mauer nor Ryan Doumit has been placed on the DL yet this season. Unless someone else got hurt overnight, there have been 19 DL stints for catchers in the season’s first two months — spring training and preseason inclusive — which has made life exceptionally difficult for those playing in two catcher leagues. Read the rest of this entry »

Gordon Beckham (ESPN: 7 percent owned; Yahoo!: 8 percent owned)

T.S. Eliot warned us. “April is the cruelest month,” he wrote in The Wasteland, and Gordon Beckham spent the first month of the 2012 season proving him right. Beckham hit .153/.231/.203 with a pair of RBI and without a single home run. A .209 BABIP certainly didn’t help his cause, but bad luck was really only part of his problem. Plus, his start fit so cleanly into the narrative of “Gordon Beckham is irreparably broken” that it became easier to write him off than to figure out if there was any life left in the husk of the White Sox former first round draft pick.

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This time, let’s hit on a recently-promoted outfielder, a shortstop with a masterful mitt and a bat that could help the Giants offense.

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When an organization decides to give a player an opportunity to play every day and take over a starting position, fantasy owners need to stand up and take notice.  Especially if the player qualifies at a position that is either thing to begin with or has been decimated by injuries through these first two months of the season.  Here are two prime examples that are likely sitting on your waiver wire just waiting to be claimed.

Josh Bell, ARI  |3B|  Ownership:  ESPN – 0.5%  Yahoo – 1.0%

Right on the heels of my last Kicking Rocks piece which clamored for Bell’s call-up, the Diamondbacks finally said enough to the Cody Ransom/Ryan Roberts platoon they had working the hot corner this season.  With little or no legitimate production at the position, it made perfect sense for the team to give Bell a shot, if not for anything but to at least just kick the tires and see what they had.  It’s not like things could get worse, right?

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Although it feels like every other week we lose another established arm to testy ligaments (or well trained ligament surgeons), it has the alternative effect of making you dig a little deeper for starters who are not only worthy of a roster spot, but ones that ought to be actual contributors. It’s the proverbial silver lining – you may experience a catastrophe, but you might discover a hidden gem in the process.

Lose a Cory Luebke? A Neftali Feliz? There are solutions.

Justin Masterson was bombed by the Seattle Mariners in his third start of the year and he almost immediately started hitting waiver wires across the contiguous fantasy landscape. Being blasted by a team that has set historic marks for offensive ineptitude is just difficult to stomach after all.

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It’s that day of the week again, time for another walk along the waiver wire. Do you make it safely to the end or fall off and fail miserably with your free agent pickups? Luckily, you have the Mike Podhorzer guide ropes to help you keep your balance.

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Injuries are really starting to pile up this year, and while it remains to be seen whether this year will end up being demonstrably worse than last year was, it certainly seems as though there are more fantasy-relevant players landing on the DL. Here are a pair of outfielders who are getting added in a lot of leagues by players looking to replace anyone from Lance Berkman to Allen Craig to Emilio Bonifacio.
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Got a pair of back-end starting pitchers for you this week, one young and one old…

Anthony Bass | SP, RP | Padres | Owned: 26% Yahoo! and 16.9% ESPN

The Padres currently have four starting pitchers on the disabled list including three of their Opening Day rotation guys, forcing them to use retreads like Jeff Suppan and Eric Stults. Bass, 24, is the one replacement who doesn’t qualify as a retread. The right-hander owns a 2.89 ERA and a 3.29 FIP through eight starts and two relief appearances, and only once has he allowed more than three runs in an outing.

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Alfonso Soriano (ESPN: 32 percent owned; Yahoo!: 29 percent owned)

Let’s make one thing clear: Alfonso Soriano isn’t a very good baseball player anymore. However, the things that make him ungood don’t so much translate to fantasy; he’s the perfect example of a player who gets undervalued in fantasy because he’s so disliked in real life. He does strike out a lot, that is true, his defense is bad and his contract is even worse, but he hasn’t hit fewer than 20 home runs since 2001. Read the rest of this entry »