Jayson Werth And Other Baseball Notes From Yesterday

Jayson Werth of the Philladelphia Phillies hit three home runs and drove-in 8 in his team's 10-3 dismantling of the Toronto Blue Jays.  Many fantasy players will look to take him from the free agent pool, and I think that is a good move.  Note his splits, though.  He absolutely crushes right-handed pitching to the tune of  321/390/717 with six of his nine HRs.  Against righties, he is not as great -   262/329/462, but it is better than David Ortiz has fared this season -  252/348/433.

Cincinnati Reds' rookie Johnny Cueto logged a quality start agains the Cleveland Indians and struck out seven.  The red flag, though, was the three home runs allowed.  Despite 53 strikeouts in 51.2 innings, he has given up 12 longballs.  At that rate, Cueto has the most value to fantasy players as a chip for 2009.

Florida Marlins' 2B Dan Uggla went 3-3 and hit his 13th HR.  For the season, he has 30 RBI and a slash stat line of 313/397/680.  He is still on pace to strike out 160+ times,  but the increase in walks should mitigate the expected drop in AVG.  Expect Uggla to set career-highs in HR (31), RBI (90) and BB (68).  If the Rule V draftee was still with his original organization (Arizona), do you think he'd have ended up in Oakland as part of the Danny haren trade or as a free agent minor leaguer?

Texas Rangers CF Josh Hamilton went 5-5 with two HRs and his 45th, 46th, 47th, 48th and 49th RBIs of the season.  At .314/367/599, he has clearly been the top hitter in the American League this season.  With his life story, he might be able to snatch the AL MVP despite playing for a bad team.

Thank God for interleague play!  Now Los Angeles Dodgers manager Joe Torre can play all four of his outfielders by batting one at DH.  Last night, Andruw Jones filled the role and went 0-4.  The good news was he only struck out once.  The bad news was Torre could have used the DH to rest Russell Martin while keeping his bat in the line-up.  Instead, Torre played him at 3B.