Fantasy Focus Week One—Brandon Inge? Really?

Each week, I'm gonna be running down my fantasy week that was.

I'm not promising to impart any wisdom.  I'm not promising a look forward at the next week.  I'm not promising anything even remotely useful.

Some of the above may sneak in accidentally at the end where I'll point out waiver wire finds who I plan on keeping for the foreseeable future, but I make no guarantees about those guys.  They're an unpredictable bunch—it's why they were on the wire in the first place.

What I do promise is to vent the frustrations that must plague every fantasy baseball owner.  See, I'm in three leagues this year.  I usually play in two, but I got rope-a-doped into three this year.

One league was on, off, on again, off again, and back on for good.

When it was 'off again,' I joined up with a third league—believing of course this would be my second.  So now I've got three sources of additional baseball angst to go with what should be an ample source in the San Francisco Giants (who just got swept by the AAA San Diego Padres—awesome).

I'm afraid that, if I don't find a way to lock myself into all three, I might start slacking on the first collection to slide from contention.  Granted, one is a rotisserie-style league so I'm not sure what "contention" means—I've never participated in one of these so I don't know what a playoff would look like.

Worse, I might very well suffer an aneurysm if I don't find a cathartic outlet.  I've said it before and I'll say it again—the baseball gods love using my hindside as a chew toy and, this year, they've got three chances.

For instance, I spent almost all of last season waiting around for even a decent outing from Aaron Harang, one of my top two starters drafted.  His abhorrent year torpedoed my fragile staff.

Today, he threw a three-hit shutout with nine strikeouts and zero walks...while pitching for one of my opponents.

Harang's stellar performance sewed up both earned run average and WHIP for the dark side i.e. not me.

That same fine fellow's team went on an absolute mashing rampage.  His guys hit 17—SEVENTEEN—home runs.  Every single player he started during the week had at least two home runs and I don't mean every starter in the general sense, as in the non-spot starts.

I mean every player he put in for even a single day hit two bombs.

This guy picked up Mike Napoli and use him in the utility spot.  I actually laughed when I saw it because I had been talking with a friend about how putrid the Angel backstop had been up to that point.  Not only that, everyone knows you don't play more catchers than is necessary—all but the best stink.

Enter the baseball gods with a swift kick to my plums—Napoli proceeded to hit two homers and my opposite number promptly dropped him (nobody's seen a sup'd up DeLorean flying around here, have they?).

On the bright side, no other pair combined for as many taters as my opponent so it didn't matter that I kept burning my own HRs on the bench.  I actually dropped Raul Ibanez rather than try to sync up with him.

I kept wasting Raul's good days and slotting him in for 0-for-4s.

Needless to say, this head-to-head didn't end well.  The only positives were (A) burning a top pick on Alex Rodriguez didn't hurt me this go around since I got pummeled; and (B) it's over.

In my other head-to-head league, I was facing off against the commissioner—Bleacher Report's own Pete McKeown.

In deference to my man Pete, I won't complain too much because I managed to eke out a win in our tete-a-tete (8-6).  It wasn't pretty because both of our pitching staffs came down with a serious case of whiplash, but mine managed to right the ship towards the end and make up for Pete's offensive juggernaut—lead by its secret weapon.

Brandon Inge, damn you.

I needn't say anything else about the Detroit Tigers' third baseman other than Pete's squad features Albert Pujols (who put up a typically outstanding week—7 runs, 1 double, 3 HRs, 9 RBI, a .500 OBP, and only 1 K) and it was Inge who killed me.

He matched Prince Albert by raking to the tune of 6 runs, 1 double, 3 HRs, 5 RBI, 1 SB, a .480 OBP, and only the single whiff as well.  What made his contribution far more crushing that Pujols' was that it came from the catcher slot.

Those numbers from first base are nice, but you walk through that punch since your own first baseman is likely to have a relatively good week.  Coming from the backstop?  It's usually gonna be lights out.

You can see why I need some luck and got it when Pete's staff brought a bag full of gunpowder rather than rosin to the bump so my 6.31 ERA, 1.55 WHIP, and 3.52 OBPA were winners.

My third and final league is the rotisserie bad boy, also chaired by one of Bleacher Report's own—Will Howard.

I'm still not sure what to make of this league.

Like I said, it's my first rodeo in a rotisserie scoring system plus it's only an eight team group so my team looks stacked, but I'm used to four extra teams (at a minimum) thinning out the talent dispersal.

My other leagues might as well just hand me the championships now if I had Jose Reyes, Chase Utley, Kevin Youkilis, Jason Bay, Joey Votto, Tim Lincecum, Roy Halladay, Chris Carpenter, Jonathan Papelbon, Mariano Rivera, Francisco Cordero, and Brian Wilson as I do in this one.

However, that arsenal just landed me in fifth place and about 24 points in the rearview of the week one leader.

Additionally, I think Will is planning on writing a series about the ensemble so I don't want to step on his toes—until I know what his plans are, I'll leave the particulars for him.

And that makes a nice transition into the waiver wire portion of the show.

I'm not bothering with the waiver wire in the rotisseries league either since its smaller size means the wire will feature guys like A.J. Burnett, Brett Myers, or Kelly Johnson—guys that won't be on the vast majority of wires so mentioning them is useless.

In my other two leagues, my teams feature the following names plucked from the ether—Freddie Lewis, Dexter Fowler, Nick Swisher, Brett Anderson, Bartolo Colon, Edwin Jackson, Jesse Litsch, and Oliver Perez.

Of those names, my favorites are Lewis, Swisher, Fowler, and Anderson.

Fab Five Freddie is a stud and he's a stud for my favorite team, which is obviously the best kind.  This low-flier put up a very nice 2008 campaign despite being slowed by a weak offense and a painful bunion (yes, he's apparently an 80-year-old pro ballplayer with five tool capabilities).

The health woes are behind him, the offense is marginally better, and Lewis is entering his prime.

Swish is the other guy on whom I'm basically sold.

This hombre put up three quasi-monstrous years for Oakland before taking a digger in Chicago last season. 

But look closer at his dismal '08 showing and you'll notice his OBP still respectably hanging in the .330 neighborhood whilst bombing away to a finally tally of 23 HRs.  And 85 runs in the White Sox lineup figures to be the floor since Nick's now in NY.

Considering Swisher posted those numbers and "hit" only .219, the only real concern is playing time.  But, for those of you who haven't noticed, the New York Yankees have won three of the four games in which he's started.  Don't think the powers-that-be in pinstripes haven't noticed that.

And he's in his prime years, too.

Fowler and Anderson are two youngsters who I'm a little less sure of, but who've been impressive thus far.  To boot, they have superb reputations coming in, have all the tools in the world, operate in favorable yards (Fowler in the hitter-friendly confines of Coors Field and Anderson in the pitcher-friendly throes of the Oakland Coliseum), and—most importantly—both kids pass the eye test.

Anderson's a gargantuan lefty whose motion is an awkward, falling-into-the-pitch-but-across-your-body motion that often results in sneaky fast stuff—the late-stage-movement you always hear baseball people talking about.

Meanwhile, Fowler's like a Cameron Maybin who's not casting as large a hype shadow, but he's got all the tools that Maybe has without the pressure and spacious home park.

Colon and Perez have my eye because you never know when a former ace is going to rise from the ashes (figure there's just an element or two that could snap back into place at any time).  Bartolo pitched well against a weak offense and Oliver is always good for Ks even when he goes up in flames so both survive for another couple days.

Jackson should be gone as soon as I found an available replacement and Litsch's 2008 season earns him a bit of extra leash.  But he's not a "stuff" guy so he better find his control quickly otherwise it's back to the scrap heap for the Toronto hurler.

There you have it.

Week one, in the books—not a bad fantasy start, all things considered.  One win, one wrong end of a resounding thrashing, and a better jump from the gates than some while worse than others in the rotisserie league.  Yep, that's better than a sharp stick in the eye.

Now, about those Giants...