A Moment of Fantasy Indulgence: Welcome, Josh Hamilton

(Illustration courtesy of David Istvan. I didn't have a drawing of Hamilton available, but this works.)

When I managed to snag Matt Cain in the fourth round of my 12-team fantasy draft, I was giving myself a major pat on the back. The best pitcher on the defending-World Series champions? What could go wrong? Well, stuff went wrong, as it turned out. I went 2-8 in my first matchup of the year, and Cain was part of the problem. Sure, he was great in his first outing, but in his second game he was a walking disaster, giving up nine runs and completely ruining my ERA.

Yes, it'd be rediculous to pin my 2-8 loss entirely on the shoulders of Mr. Cain. But in the wake of my epic defeat, I had the burning desire to cast off one of my pitchers, and Cain invariably went on the trade block -- partly because he had the most value of all my pitchers and partly because his performance was still fresh in my mind. I had the sudden, sporadic need to mutate my fantasy team; a loss that decisive necessitated change. I had been shown that my team had flaws, and even though I had seen the absolute worst of Cain and even though I would probably never lose 2-8 again, I vowed to remove him from my team.

So last Monday I dealt Cain and closer Mitchell Boggs to a squad in my league called the "Jacksonville Expos" for Josh Hamilton. Hamilton is one of the best sluggers in baseball and is poised to be an RBI monster hitting behind Mike Trout and Albert Pujols. But he was just 1-20 to begin the year, and Expos was just as dissatisfied with his superstar as I was with mine. Plus his team was in desperate need of pitching, so the swap made sense.

The deal was thrown into immediate jeopardy, however, when Mitchell Boggs gave up 7 earned runs in a third of an inning mere hours after I made the deal. A scientist will probably say that what you do in a fantasy league has no baring on how a player performs in real life, but I beg to differ. I think Boggs found out that I had traded him and vowed to sabotage my pitching stats. And let me tell you, folks: 7 runs in a third of an inning, which translates to an ERA of 162.00, will DESTROY your pitching stats.

Thankfully, Boggs was just an accessory in the Hamilton deal, which finally went through on Friday. Amazingly, through divine intervention, Boggs managed to hold onto the closer's role until the weekend. More amazing: I actually won all the pitching categories. Take a gander:

"night job" managed to do the impossible. He squandered the gift of Boggs' meltdown by throwing out Jake Peavy, Josh Johnson and Jarrod Parker, all of whom were awful this week. And to make matters worse, he foolishly added Dillon Gee for a spot start, who promptly gave up 7 earned runs in three innings. Meanwhile, my pitching was phenomenal after Boggs' meltdown; Clay Buchholz and Jaime Garcia have now been excellent through their first three starts, and even Roy Halladay came around to look professional against the Marlins. Granted, the Marlins were without Giancarlo Stanton and were putting out one of the worst lineups I've ever seen in my life, but hey, a good outing is a good outing.

Offensively, I got a nice little boost from Josh Hamilton, who's hit home runs in the first two games I've had him. Sadly, I just missed out on taking the RBI category, and I lost batting average by a single at-bat -- and since I plugged in a struggling Alfonso Soriano towards the end of the week, I may rue that decision as it cost me a whole category.

Still, if I can re-use the same platitude from a few lines up, a win is a win, even if it's a 5-4 win.

LOOKING AHEAD

I'm gradually getting fonder of team "Reliant," which will continue to bear a name, logo and slogan of Khan, one of the greatest villains in cinematic history. Even without Cain, I love my pitching; Hamels, Bumgarner, Buchholz and Garcia look like rock-solid starts from now on, and if Halladay has really turned a corner, it'll be very tough to beat me in pitching -- assuming of course I can avoid any more of those seven-runs-in-one-inning meltdowns.

My offense is still incomplete however. I love the addition of Hamilton, but Berkman, Hosmer and Victorino have been little more than singles hitters so far. I think I'm going to package Victorino with someone and see if I can acquire one more high-octane power hitter -- and if/once I do that, my team will be damn near complete. Not unbeatable, mind you, but complete. Until then, I'm going to struggle each week to compete in home runs.

I did make a couple interesting additions to begin the week. Edward Mujica is now on my team, after Cardinals manager Mike Matheny indicated that he could soon replace Boggs as the Cardinals' closer, since Boggs had yet another lousy showing on Sunday. Meanwhile, Andrew Bailey is now on my team and could get a lengthy trial run as the Red Sox closer with Joel Hanrahan out with a groin injury. And finally, Reds prospect Tony Cingrani is close to being called up; his pitching numbers in the minors are dominant, but who knows if the dude will pan out or not. Either way, he was worth a speculative add since I only had to drop John Lannon to pick him up -- not that I didn't appreciate the seven innings and 1 run Lannan gave me against the Marlins on Friday.

THE STANDINGS

In case you didn't print out last week's standings and hang it on your fridge, I'll just remind you that I was in 10th place a week ago. So 8th is a step in the right direction. Ultimately, I need to get into 6th place to make it into the playoffs. That's probably not going to happen in one week, but if it's going to happen, chopping down "B-La-Kee" will go a long way. That dude is my opponent this week, and we'll see if the team of Khan can put together back-to-back winning weeks.