At the end it was a three team race with the championship going to Matt who managed The Rusty Kuntz. And, to the victor go the spoils. For winning the league, I’m going to buy Matt the 2009 Baseball Prospectus, which should be available on February 16th. He’s also going to get the 2009 Baseball Preseason Package that the folks over at Mock Draft Central were fantastic enough to donate as a prize to the league champion.

Here are the final results:

1. The Rusty Kuntz - 91
2. 12th MAN - 89.5
3. Sleeping Giant - 88
4. Atl Snakes - 80
5. Tigers - 70.5
6. Victorious Secret - 65.5
7. The Mercs - 61
8. Crooked Pitch - 60
9. Da Bomb Cheifs - 56.5
10. Last Place Grabbers - 51.5
11. Library Bats - 41
12. The Uggla Stick - 25.5

He’s tied for the AFL lead in home runs with two. He also has six RBI and slash stats of .300/.385/.846.

You may want to keep your eye on this kid. He was a second round (#69 overall) pick in the 2006 First-Year Played Draft by Cleveland, and many feel that he will be ready for the Indians at some point in 2009. A hundred or so at-bats of hitting like this could hasten his approach to the big leagues.

• Oakland’s Justin Duchscherer’s season was cut short by what we now know was loose cartilage in his hip. His 2008 record was 10-8 with a 2.54 ERA, but jumped into fantasy notoriety for his great results in the month of June. In June he was 4-1 with a 1.45 ERA and joined most fantasy rosters at that time. According to Duchscherer, he’ll be ready for Spring Training.

Justin Duchscherer’s right hip problem at the end of the season was the result of loose cartilage, which was cleaned out in an arthroscopic procedure, the A’s All-Star right-hander said Wednesday.

“Now I know I’ll be ready to go during spring training,” he said.

The recovery time is two months, according to Duchscherer, and he expects he will not miss any time next spring. He’s currently on crutches, but he said he’ll be walking in less than a week.

• It turns out that you can beat the Marlins on short rest and with torn cartilage in your left knee. At least you can if you’re Johan Santana. An MRI earlier this week revealed the tear, which Santana has since had surgically repaired.

New York Mets ace Johan Santana had arthroscopic surgery on torn cartilage in his left knee and is expected to be ready for spring training. The injury was revealed in a magnetic resonance imaging Tuesday.

• He lowered his walk total from 59 in 2007 to 45 in 2008, even though he pitched more innings in 2008.
• He reduced his HR total from 20 last season to 14 in 2008.
• He dropped his ERA from 3.88 in 2007 to 3.24 in 2008, his best ERA since his 21-win campaign in 2002.

Had Lowe not stunk up May with an 0-4 record and a 6.11 ERA, we might be including him in Cy Young talks. Lowe improved in many key statistics that are important to starting pitchers, and he did it all with a pretty normal 28.3% hit rate. You’d much rather have Lowe pitch at home (2.30 ERA) than on the road (4.42 ERA), but that may be a moot point if Lowe ends up somewhere other than Los Angeles in 2009.

The Rusty Kuntz are in first place currently with 93.5 points and 12th MAN has 90 points in second place. The underdog here in third place is actually Underdog with 86.5 points. Someone is actually going to win all of the nice prizes that were donated to us, as the rules stated that to get the goods, you had to beat me. Well, I’m mired in 5th place with 66 points and no chance to catch up.

There are multiple categories where each of these teams can put a dent in the others lead or put some distance between them. All three teams are hitting the waiver wire like crazy over the past few days with The Rusty Kuntz leading the way today with six waiver wire acquisitions, all pitchers.

I’m not going to handicap this race, yet. I’ll do a little bit of that over the next week or two as I update the blogosphere on a daily basis about this race. All I know is that this will be a fun championship run, and I expect the trash talking to be fierce, as it’s already been.

Sandoval made the jump from Double-A Connecticut to San Francisco after spending 44 games there and 68 games in Advanced Single-A San Jose. His combined 2008 minor league stat line in 448 at-bats is .350/.394/.578 with 20 home runs and 96 RBI. This switch hitting multi-position player is proving that he can hit at every level.

With enough games played to qualify at catcher and first base in just about every fantasy platform. And with enough third base games to qualify in a few others, it’s hard for me to see a fantasy team right now who couldn’t use the kind of numbers Sandoval is putting out.

• Over the last month Sandoval is the third ranked catcher behind Joe Mauer and Geovany Soto.
• He’s the 13th ranked third baseman over that same period of time.
• He’s the 19th ranked first baseman over the last month.
• If you compare him to the rest of the fantasy league over the last week he’s the top ranked catcher, the #3 third baseman, and the #5 first baseman.

There’s a bit of buzz surrounding Sandoval as well.

• Jokingly, at least I think it’s a bit tongue in cheek, Grant at the McCovey Chronicles thinks that Sandoval could be the next Babe Ruth.
  

  After watching Pablo Sandoval spray the ball all over Mays Field on Sunday, I have the perfect new comparison: a switch-hitting Vladimir Guerrero who can play catcher. Wait, let me qualify that. Sandoval’s worst-case scenario is a switch-hitting Vladimir Guerrero who can play catcher. His best-case comparison is a switch-pitching, multi-position Babe Ruth.

• David Pinto, (of Baseball Musings fame) in a recent article for The Sporting News, says that fantasy baseball owners should be skeptical about Sandoval as his MLB sample size is small, but is generally high on what 2009 could look like for this youngster.
  

  Fantasy owners should be skeptical that performance over their minor league norms can last. Recent history, however, points in a different direction. Here are the numbers for three good, young catchers now established in the majors:

  Player averages tend to go down when making the transition to the majors as they face better pitching. That makes this list all the more impressive. The catchers in this group either held their own or improved over their minor league numbers.

He can drive a final stake into your fantasy baseball competitor’s season, too.

Most people shied away from the relief-pitcher fearing that he would produce Braden Looper-type statistics as a starter. But, now everyone wants him. The MLB sophomore sparkled in his debut as a starter and will likely become a part of the Mariners’ future pitching-staff.

In all of his minor league starts, Morrow only threw 82 pitches. In Friday’s game against the Yankees, he tossed a total of 106 pitches. He confessed that, “[he] was tired. [His] arm felt great, but [he] was tired.” Morrow’s arm will progressively adapt to pitching more innings. But for now, owners can count on him to pitch about five solid innings without giving up a plethora of runs.

Also, the youngster will not need a lot of time to adapt. The 2006 First-Round draft pick only needed a mere sixteen innings in the Minor Leagues before jumping into the Majors. It will only be a period of time before he evolves into a full-time starter capable of pitching eight innings or so.

Originally, scouting reporters believed that his small repertoire would not last six-innings. However, in Friday night’s miraculous start against the Yankees, he pitched strong through 7.2 innings. In fact, he would have lasted longer had Wilson Betemit not broken his no-hit bid scoring a run.

According to Pitch F/X, he threw his fastball 58% of the time on Friday night. As a mediocre relief pitcher, he depended on his fastball 76% of the time. He will be pure gold if he continues to utilize his full repertoire of a fastball, split-finger, and a curveball.

Brandon Morrow’s flaw had always been controlling his fabulous pitches. But, he had no evident issues during Friday night’s game. Joe Girardi commented, “When you have stuff like that and you can locate with that stuff, you’re going to shut down a lot of lineups. He was electric tonight.” He will continue to “shut down,” powerful line-ups in the future.

His average velocity during last night’s game was 95.7 MPH. USS Mariner, one of the most-popular blogs covering the Seattle Mariners, believes that if he continues to throw 95 MPH pitches most of the time, “he’s going to be terrific.”

At this moment, ESPN.Com claims that Morrow is owned in only 33.0% of its various leagues. Patrick Dahl of Rotoworld believes that the starter is, “worth a flier in mixed leagues.” A key acquisition now could be the difference between being glorified as the league champion and not even being in the playoff-picture.

• Carlos Delgado
• Jayson Werth
• Vernon Wells
• Shin-Soo Choo
• Kelly Shoppach
• Miguel Cabrera
• Ty Wiggington

Today, I want to focus on Indians outfielder Shin-Soo Choo. And I want to do this for a number of reasons. First, and foremost, is that he’s available in a lot of leagues right now. I just signed him in one of my most competitive leagues. And he’s going to help immediately.

• Over the last week he’s 11-19 with four runs scored, three home runs, seven RBI, and has slash stats of .579/.619/1.158.
• Over the last month he’s 30-81 with 20 runs scored, five home runs, 18 RBI, one stolen base, and slash stats of .370/.452/.716.

To put last month into perspective he has a higher batting average than Ichiro, more runs scored than Manny or Albert Pujols, and more home runs than Ryan Braun.  I’d like to see any fantasy baseball roster where Choo’s numbers over the last month wouldn’t help.

Terry Pluto, with the Cleveland Plains Dealer, just recently had some interesting things to say about how the Indians felt about Choo and some insight into his future value.

You haven’t heard a lot about it, but the Indians are becoming very enamored with Shin-Soo Choo. They mention how he has only 222 at-bats heading into the weekend, but his 31 extra-base hits were fourth on the team — only Grady Sizemore (66), Jhonny Peralta (60) and Ben Francisco (40) had more. They talk about how he missed all of spring training and most of the first two months of the season as he was coming off elbow reconstruction surgery — and how he’s hitting .287 with a .911 OPS (on-base plus slugging percentage) after the All-Star break. They see him as a 15-20 HR guy batting close to .300 with lots of doubles.

You could do a lot worse that Choo for a late season waiver wire pick-up. And at 26-years-old, those of you in keeper leagues might want to pay extra attention.

1. Not that he’s on many fantasy baseball rosters, except for maybe the deepest of AL-only leagues, but Luke Hochevar left the game tonight with an undisclosed rib cage injury. Not to scream out only bad news about Royals baseball, you could do a lot worse than Mike Aviles for you shortstop or middle infield needs. He had two hits tonight and is hitting .320 over 262 at-bats.
2. Note to American League pitchers. You might want to rethink your strategy of walking Big Papi to get to Youk. Kevin Youkilis popped a two-run home run tonight, and drove in another run in the eigth after David Ortiz was intentionally walked. In the last week Youk is .364/.440/.955 with 8 runs scored, 3 homers, and 8 RBI.
3. A.J. Burnett was 5-0 over the last month with a 3.94 ERA going into tonight’s game. To say he continued to pitch well is an understatement. He threw eight strong innings allowing five hits and only one earned. He also struck out 13 batters while only walking one. Strong stuff!!
4. Since we’re on the subject of strong pitching performances tonight, let’s look at Rich Harden’s 10 strikeout night. He threw seven innings and only allowed two hits. He didn’t give up any runs or walk anyone. Harden is averaging 8.42 strikeouts per outing over his last seven starts, or 1.40 strikeouts per inning. It look as if pushing his start back so that Harden could pitch in cooler weather was a superb idea.
5. Tigers 4th outfielder Matt Joyce belted two home runs tonight and could start seeing more playing time. Also, don’t be surprised if he gets moved higher in the batting order (he currently hits 7th) when he plays.
6. Let’s add Kevin Slowey to the list of great pitching performances tonight. He struck out 12 and walked none in his seven innings of work. He only gave up one earned run and five hits tonight while earning his tenth win of the season.