2009 fantasy recap, week #5

Here’s my fashion schedule for the baseball postseason:

The Chase Utley T-shirt
This goes on at the start of games, and usually means good things for the Phillies offense. However, it has mixed results with Phillies pitching, and was present in DC for one of Cliff Lee’s worst outings of the year.
Verdict: Acceptable to wear during early innings.

The Jimmy Rollins T-shirt
Jimmy actually plays better when I wear his number, but it doesn’t transfer over to anyone else in the lineup. It also is a size too large and makes me look like I’m wearing Matt Stairs’ clothes.
Verdict: Keep it off, but nearby for a late Rollins at bat.

The 2008 WFC T-shirt
This is the Cliff Lee shirt; It reminds him that he doesn’t have a ring yet, and he’ll need to buckle down to earn one. So far he’s got a 1.65 ERA with me wearing it. Unfortunately, it does nothing for Cole Hamels.
Verdict: A must-wear for the Cy Young winner’s games

The Eagles T-shirt
This item has no Phillies in it, and repeated washings have not gotten the Mike Vick smell out.
Verdict: Banned from the same room as a Phillies game.

The playoff shirt
My red Philadelphia 76ers shirt – On the front, it has “It’s a Philly thing” in a large, flowery font. It’s so ugly, I won’t wear it out of the house. But it’s the shirt I wore for the clinching game of all three post-season series last year.
Verdict: I’ve changed into it midway through the last two games, both come from behind wins.

You may think all of this is amusing, but I assure you I’m not kidding. When Lidge came into the game last night, I ran across the house and grabbed the playoff shirt before he could throw a pitch. Nearly broke my neck, but it saved the game.

QB: Matt Hasselbeck, 35.94 pts – sitting on Jim’s bench
RB: Michael Turner, 27.70 pts – started by Jeff
WR: Miles Austin, 39.15 pts – sitting on the wire
TE: Kellen Winslow, 27.80 pts – started by Joel
K: Lawrence Tynes, 14.00 pts – started by Dad
DEF: Seattle, 30.00 pts – started by Jeff
D: Ed Reed, 13.50 pts – sitting on my bench

Still not listed among the top performers: T.O. I’m just saying…

“Starting” Quarterbacks edition
3rd place: Seneca Wallace, -0.30 pts – started by me
2nd place: Derek Anderson, -0.88pts – sitting on the wire
1st place: JaMarcus Russell, -1.50 pts – sitting on the wire

I say “starting” QBs because Yahoo told me that Seneca Wallace was starting this week, so I picked him up off waivers and dropped him into my lineup. Imagine how excited I was when I saw that Seattle had put up 41 pts in their win over the Jaguars … and how furious I was when I saw that Hasselbeck had thrown 4 TDs in his first game back.

A glitch in Yahoo also kept me from picking up two WRs Sunday night (have fun with Maclin and Austin Collie, latecomers!), so whoever behind the scenes at Yahoo is screwing me over gets the “Andy Reid Blown Call of the Week” award. You’ll see how much that hurt me in the standings later on.

Don’t know how closely you were watching that Broncos/Patriots game on Sunday, but about midway through the game they started running promos for the 60 Minutes episode coming up after the game. Play-by-play announcer Jim Nantz several times teased their lead report this way:

What is the most dangerous sport in the world? How about jumping off a cliff and waving your arms like a bird?

I didn’t see the report, so all day Monday I had a Lewis Black “If it weren’t for my horse” episode in my head. Is that a sport? Is it a separate from cliff diving, where they don’t act like a bird? If we’re just making stuff up, wouldn’t napalm juggling be more dangerous? Are those two sentences even connected? Was Jim Nantz just bored?

Naturally, I did the only logical thing: I went up to the roof and jumped off, to see if I could win a gold medal. It took me 20 hours to type this recap up with my broken arms.

Rocktober.

A few faces on the Dodgers have changed from last year, and a few of the old enemies are still there. Here’s a quick primer:

P Randy Wolf – This former Phillie is in his second stint with the California Yankees, but wasn’t with them for their abbreviated playoff run last year. Still, chances of the Wolf Pack re-appearing at Citizens Bank Park are only 5 percent.

PH Jim Thome – This former Phillie will be the basis of at least three different features titled “Did the Phillies make the right choice letting him go?” The answer is an obvious yes, but they’ll debate it anyway.

P Vincente Padilla – This former Phillie (for the love of gawd, do they have any of their own players) has been a critical late-season add for the Dodgers. Chances of the Padilla Flotilla re-appearing at Citizens Bank Park are only 2 percent.

LF Manny Ramirez – This former star of the “Predator” movies will play in the series, unless MLB decides to drug test the players before game one. (It won’t.)

P Jonathon Broxton – The Dodgers closer blew six saves this year. I’m just taking a wild guess here, but I’m betting that’s not going to be the headline when they talk about these two teams bullpens.

The stinking Cowboys managed to sneak out an overtime win against the dreadful Chiefs this weekend (The Eagles beat the Chiefs 34-14, FYI) and now face the unusual stretch of the Hotlanta Falcons, Seattle Seahawks and Philadelphia Eagles in the next three weeks. What’s odd about that? I’ll let Dallas’ lead RB spell that out for you.

Dallas Cowboys Running back Marion S. Barber
-- Birds alarm us. Bank on balance, wins? No. Go cry, bro. --

So for the next three weeks, we’re all really big birds fans … except for the Cardinals. They can still rot in Phoenix.

Click on the standings to see them larger.

Jeff posted the biggest week so far, posting 173.15 pts thanks to those two top performers. Champ Mike, meanwhile, posted one of the worst weeks ever in this league: A 50.75-pts week that featured only one player in double digits. His bench, for comparison, scored nearly 39 pts.

Neal failed to field a kicker, a defense or any defensive players this week, and started a WR who recorded no points. That’s about the only reason I didn’t fall into last place.

** Dad dropped another game in our standings solely because KC didn’t pull out that upset over the Cowboys. So he gets props for a gutsy call, but that still leaves him six games down just five weeks into the season.

** Browns QB Derek Anderson was 2 for 17 for 23 yards and one INT, posting a miserable 15.1 QB rating. Remember, just going outside and throwing a ball into the ground is a 39.5 QB rating. Anderson was two and a half times worse than that. Naturally, the Browns won that game, 6-3.

** I had planned a whole big section on the Maryland Racial Slurs losing to the Panthers, but nothing I could come up with was funnier than the Washington Post this morning: Taking the Giants out of the mix, the Racial Slurs four other opponents are 2-22 on the year. And those two wins are against the Maryland team.

** If the Dodgers get by the Phils, and the Yankees beat up the Angels, then the World Series will be Joe Torre vs his old team. You think the Brett Favre/Packers battle coverage was bad on ESPN? That would be 20 times worse. The Phils are playing for the sanity of baseball fans everywhere.