Last week, I asked opinions on what I should do with Oakland A's outfielders Carlos Gonzalez and Travis Buck.  Both had been recalled from AAA on the same day, and I was without a clear path towards getting them on my active roster.  The rational actions were to wait for spots to open or to pursue a trade.  I did both.

The first opening on my roster resulted from the wrist injury to DH David Ortiz.  I guess that is a lesson in being careful what you wish for because you might get it.  Losing Ortiz' bat was a big hit for my team as I have been riding it since the beginning of May.  So I had a place to activate Buck, but the drop-off in expected performance meant I was worse off than if no opening had occurred.

This forced me into the trade market to bolster my Ortiz-less offense.  1st, I dealt Buck for Garrett Anderson.  This is a marginal improvement, but I figured Anderson to be a lock to play everyday while Buck has not erased his horrid start to the season and there is a roster/OF crunch coming in Oakland.  With 3B/DH Eric Chavez back, there are not as many ABs available for DHs Frank Thomas and Mike Sweeney and DLed OFs Ryan Sweeney and Chris Denorfia.

Then I acquired White Sox 1B/OF Nick Swisher and Tigers uber-position-qualifier Carlos Guillen in exchange for Twins 2B/SS Alexi Casilla, Jays OF Shannon Stewart and Gonzalez.  This trade had significant keeper implication for my trading partner as all three of the players he acquired can be kept next season for $5 while Guillen is out-of-time and Swisher is a full-rpiced $31.

I believe I significantly upgraded my power with the deal, and, with the hope of having bought low on both players, look for the AVGs to be better than their season-to-date efforts.  I also hope I successfully sold high on Gonzalez and Casilla.  What do you think?

NOTE:  This is a 12-team AL-Only 4x4 keeper league. 

There has certainly been an outage of offense in the American League this season. The questions of why and for how long remain unanswered. Here is a list of the Top 3 players by position using Baseball Prospectus' VORP statistic. Note how much difference there is just between the top player and the third-best one. This would lead me to believe a Stars & Scrubs versus a balance approach may be the best fantasy strategy. Agree?

Also, note how poorly the OF VORP leaders due relative to the other position players. The top VORP is lower. This supports the contention that the OF is "shallow" relative to the other positions. However, the drop-off is not as dramatic. There could be more depth in the OF relative to other positions. This supports a strategy that focuses on acquiring the top positions player at the expense of OFs. Agree?

Finally, look at the top three DHs. This helps epxlain the drop in AL production this season. That extra hitter has struggled mightily. I bet the answer to this question goes a ways to explaining the production outage in the AL.

Boston Red Sox DH David Ortiz hit two HRs yesterday and now has 10 this season.  That total ties him with three other players (Josh Hamilton, Mike Napoli and Carlos Quentin) for the American League lead.  Since beginning the year 3-43, Big Papi has hit .312 and is hitting 354/447/692 in the month of May.  If there is a chance of buying Ortiz for less than a 2nd round pick, it is very small.

In the marquee pitching match-up of the day, Cliff Lee of the Cleveland Indians and Edinson Volquez of the Cincinnati Reds faced off.  Lee entered with a 0.67 ERa and Volquez with a 1.12.  Cliff Lee circa 2007 showed up and left the game with a 1.37 while Volquez saw his ERA rise just a smidge to 1.33 despite walking four to bring his season total to 30 in 54.1 innings.  I wonder if the Cliff Lee owner would trade him for Edinson Volquez and vice versa.

The Seattle Mariners sent C/DH Jeff Clement to AAA following yesterday's game.  He was just 8-48 with 20 Ks so I can't argue that he deserved to stay up.  I wonder how much rope RF Wladimir Balentien has.  He is only 14-64 so far with 23 Ks and just four walks.  Clement drew seven free passes - one less than Jose Lopez and Yuni Betancourt combined with 329 ABs.  There's a hint to the M's offensive problems here somewhere.

St. Louis Cardinals' rookie reliever Chris Perez picked-up his 1st major league win.  He pitched the 9th inning of a tie game which the Cards won in their final AB.  Ryan Franklin has a lock on the interim closer's role, but he has just 11 Ks versus 10 BBs in 22 innings of work.  Additionally, he has more fly outs than groundouts, too.  If Jason Isringhausen struggles all season, I'd bet on Franklin's peripherals that Perez gets a closing shot by season's end.