Imma put together a time capsule. Enter our favorite discontinued foods – Pudding Pops, Viennetta ice cream cake, McDonald’s roast beef fries. Enter the hidden Ernest Scared Stupid laserdisc. We’re about to cover celebrities we didn’t know everything about like pre-2000 Hulk Hogan. Finally, in this time capsule, we put the first Itch to talk about Curtis Mead“Grab a tankard. Time to get tipsy. Mead is like Jackie Chan in The Legend of Drunken Master in that he’s a little unusual in his changeup. He can hit almost any pitch and use a variety of swings to do so, which can be a rare and valuable skill as long as you don’t lose your best base mechanics because Vladimir Gutre Gut’re compared to your best base mechanics. omicron—sorry, unicorn—but the kind of skill I’m referring to CJ Abrams and Julio Rodriguez have some of that in them and they, like the 6’2” 171 lb Mead, can rack up hits in cuts that look less than ideal. These contact-making skills allowed Mead to play at four different levels this year, starting in Low-A and ending in the Arizona Fall League with the AAA playoffs in between. It’s been a bad ride for Mead, and I’d like to ride my El Dorado over Gray.” Okay, not cool! That was from 2021! He was a top prospect five years ago! This year, he’s hitting third with a solid lineup, his HardHit% is pretty high, his velo is up, his barrels are up, his K’s are down, his walks are up, his power is up, and he has some speed. Not everyone takes the same amount of time to develop, but Mead officially seems to have found it at age 25. Now if I could only find some Pizza Hut glass lamps to put in this capsule season. Anyway, here are some players you can buy or sell this week in fantasy baseball:
PSYCHE! This post was released a week ago to Patreon members. It will be released year round on Patreons, so if people are jumping on you, it’s because they paid $10. Anyway, Fantasy Baseball Buy/Sell:
BUY
Johnny Pereda – For two weeks now there has been a very poor harvest of tropical fish. What do we need to grab a hot handle here? “Dark parking lot and hand sanitizer.” I wasn’t asking you, Reese McGuire.
Joc Pederson – The UTIL-Only thing is brutal, so I just ignored him, thinking no one would pick him up, but I just checked his stats for the first time all season and he looks like he’s officially Zombino’ing.
Kyle Manzardo – “Come and get your Manz!” he said not as a guest on the Maury Povich Show but as someone pointing out the call to quit baseball.
Andy Rodriguez – I saw he was hitting .300 the other day, and I looked up at his BABIP. I was expecting ridiculous heights, and I was not disappointed.
Spencer Horwitz – He has a rare combination of a higher walk rate than a strike rate. Rarely do we have a name of players with a higher BB% than K%. Please suggest in the comments.
Vaughn Grissom – Hot on the 7-day Player Rater, that goes without saying, but, as I say, I’m also looking at each player’s stats for the entire season and Vaughn Grissom’s is – Well, did I mention he was hot last week?
Paul Goldschmidt – Don’t worry about losing Judge, Yankees fans, you have Goldschmidt. Why do they go to the sea?
Luis Garcia Jr. – You know I love me Lu-Ga-Ju. Look at this card around my neck — [hanging a Lu-Ga-Ju collector’s card around my neck from a gold chain like it’s the Pikachu Illustrator card] – but you can make the case that Garcia shouldn’t be a real baseball starter with his terrible defense and terrible OBP.
Isiah Kiner-Falefa – Climbing the ceiling trap to pull the rope and fall falafel balls to celebrate Israeli Diner Falafel and tell people it’s raining chickpeas.
Jorge Mateo – You have a very small Zombino season. Solid speed, some homers, easily a high OBP and career average. Small sample size – that’s what he said!
Brooks Lee – On Wikipedia, they list us as those who named Jon Jay as The Federalist. Photo evidence, provided with a screenshot:
And I think we need to start a petition to get Brooks Lee to use my nickname, Be Water. It is very complete. Don’t be humble.
Marcus Semien – Basically, Semien has turned out to be the perfect trade for the Mets. Psyche! It’s as bad as everyone thought it was when they got Semien as a replacement.
Nick Gonzales – We don’t give the Pirates enough credit, but their players and acquisitions have been successful so far: Horwitz, O’Hearn, Gonzales, Mangum, and Lowe. Well, except for Ozuna, which was clearly a bad call when it happened.
Michael Massey – Where first basemen and catchers have been lacking this week with hot bats, there is a shizzton of second basemen.
David Hamilton – Not calling Mr. Prorater and his Dumb Maths, but if he was here, he’d tell you that Hamilton might go 4/40.
Noelvi Marte – Called up by the Reds to make sure the Gatorade bucket at the end of the bench never gets lonely.
Jacob Gonzalez – I gave you my dream of Jacob Gonzalez. It had the trappings of summer.
Tristan Grey – He’s doing pretty well on the 7-Day Player Rater, but his season stats are some of the worst I’ve seen. Approval polls say trust in Gray is at an all-time low.
Cole Young – He was decent in April, and had such a bad May that he’s lucky to have a solid glove. He just picked it up, which is good since I don’t have all day to wait for Cole Young to be on the diamond.
JP Crawford – It is with great regret that I say Just Peachy is still hot, and it comes with regret because I want Colt to ride his ass in the best place.
Edwin Arroyo – You have already given you the dream of Edwin Arroyo. It was written while wearing a hat-shaped paper mat.
Ezequiel Tovar – It’s been hot lately (mainly because of one big game), so don’t take it the wrong way, but I had no idea how bad Tovar was hitting. He has had production problems for the past two years. He went from a neutral .270 to .230. He fell quickly with the projection systems still thinking he was a .270 hitter.
Anthony Volpe – It’s too early to make any announcements about Volpe, but his walk rate is trending in the right direction. Perhaps in six weeks or so we can make a definitive declaration of Volpe’s-the-mancipation.
Kyle Karros – I’m thinking about po babies and Karros, and I watched Euphoria, and the ending was terrible. It was, “We put together all the worst scenes from Tarantino’s movies and sat a little kid in front of them for forty years. That kid is now Sam Levinson and here’s the end of Euphoria, please enjoy.” Sam Levinson is the producer of Euphoria, and I didn’t realize he’s Barry Levinson’s son. Remind me to come back in my next life as a baby popo. Any hoo! Karros has been hot. Not as hot as his father was from 1995 to 2000.
Jake McCarthy – Actually, like McCarthy a lot, usually. Be a moment. Very communicative and fast. It won’t add much power but a 10/25/.280 season is out of the question.
Jung Hoo Lee – Looking back at his last full KBO year of 23/5/.349, and that’s why it’s hard to take a KBO transplant 100% seriously. He’s almost an eight-homer, .270 hitter.
Jake Mangum – It’s interesting that a few new Pirates recruits came from the Rays. The student becomes the teacher in the Getting Value From Nowhere class.
Leody Taveras – This guy has had so many strong and incredibly bad seasons in his career, I forgot he’s only 27 years old. He may be the only person to benefit from the 2020 season. I think he was promoted because they wanted him to play and he wasn’t ready yet but he got some service time.
Colton Cowser – It’s really amazing how the O’s have developed Cowser. Somehow he seems to get worse each year in every way. Any hoo! You are hot.
Dominic Canzone – One of my funniest preseason sleepers was Canzone, and I once wrote a Josh Rutledge sleeper. Hello, Canzone hits the ball hard!
Wade Meckler – Also, his platoon mate, Jose Siri, has been unfortunately burning a group named The Smeckler, which sounds like a Jewish porn star.
Aaron Nola – This is a Streamonator phone just like the phone you do in a toy store.
Jameson Taillon – This is also a Streamonator call. “I was by your store the other day talking to a very nice robot. I was wondering if you could put Tracy on the phone? I believe you call her, Speak ‘n Spell.”
The Will Vest – I say this the other day, but now I go to the MQM, ” Think what we can think of in the use of many to release this year if the de facto proximity drops, there is no real “This person should get money now.” It is more than a bag to take.” And I’m the one you’re quoting! There’s also Drew Anderson and Kyle Finnegan.
Yoendrys Gomez – 0.87 ERA in May with 11.3 K/9, so, yeah, maybe the Twins save, but who knows about those because Derek Shelton is doing galaxy brain stuff with his bullpen. “What if I bring them closer to 12?” Derek Shelton asks thoughtfully as he stands in the dog pool.
Clayton Beeter – Maybe you get savings, but his rates are brutal. “Why are you insulting me?” That’s the word atrocious hearing itself used to describe Beeter’s numbers.
Trevor McGill – Chopped uribe, and Igill to save.
Alex Lange – It’s an interesting test to see how long it takes the manager to understand that Erceg is one of the best closers to ever try to close games. You would think that someone wouldn’t need more than two months of Erceg, but it was. This could be Matt Strahm or Daniel Lynch IV too. If you have text-to-speech reading this post to you, that’s not Daniel Lynch 42. But I think it’s Lange, because of using the last two games.
Jose A. Ferrer – Mariners got a special one Jose A. Ferrer. Whether it’s his stirring rendition of the Doors’ Light My Fire or putting together a chocolate-hazelnut combination with his partner, Rocher, or the release games. Ferrer has found the right mix this year with his 97 MPH sinker and 87 MPH slider and changeup. Left Grab the monster. Jose A. Ferrer sing me, Feliz NaviSAGNOF!
Sell it
Bryan Woo – Telling you to sell guys like Spencer Arrighetti doesn’t interest me. I am not motivated to sell Bryce Elder. I’m not going to sit here and ask you to sell me Foster Griffin, and not just because I’m at a standing desk. I say these guys are very obvious. I try to keep my sales to guys who were listed in the top 50 or find themselves somewhere in the top 50 now. So, that brings us to Bryan Woo. I’m not saying boo, I’m saying B. Woo is not riding as well as he has at any other time in the last two years. He’s settled for this guy who gives bleh hits and great command, but not as exemplary a command as he had in 2024. I can’t stress enough that I’m not saying Woo is bad and get him off my team immediately. He might hit well tonight. He’s just younger than what he was or what I think people think he is. I wouldn’t trade Bryan Woo for an Uber ride where the driver is a black bear in a cape, but I would go to the Fantasy Baseball Trade Analyzer and explore the options.
