Fantasy Baseball: Chin Music

By Chad Garner

Fan Fanatic Sports

What are you going to do?

That's the question you ask yourself when you have two of your own fantasy pitchers going up against one another in a game.

Take yesterday for instance. In one of my leagues, I've got Toronto's Roy Halladay and Boston's Jon Lester.

So how should you approach this matchup? Well, the smart fantasy thinking is that both pitchers have exceptional outings, maybe one throws a shutout and the other pitches 8 scoreless and then gets lifted in the ninth.

But how many times does that really happen? Maybe once in every blue moon. 

But you can realistically hope for two solid performances where one pitcher gets the win. You know you can't get two wins, so one is better than getting shut out and a reliever you don't have comes in and picks up a vulture win in the 8th inning.

Well, luckily for Halladay and Lester owners, they both came through and were solid. Halladay stole the show, however. He notched his fourth complete game of the season, allowing one run on six hits with no walks and seven strikeouts. He got his 11th win of the season.

Fantasy alert: Do not trade Halladay. Well, if you're in an AL only league and are worried he'll be traded to the NL, well, maybe it's worth a gamble. Expect a top-of-the-line hitter in return for Halladay's services, however.

I was so desperate for offense in one of my leagues, that I traded Halladay straight up for Josh Hamilton. It may sound crazy since Hamilton has been subpar due to injury, but remember that you're trading for current stats, not what they guys have and haven't done earlier this season. Plus, I was loaded with pitching, including Tim Lincecum, John Lackey and Jared Weaver, so I had some wiggle room to try to help my Bad News Bears offense.

Boy, Hamilton better turn it on. His homer Friday night made me feel good, though. 

Meanwhile, Lester wasn't unbelievable but he was good enough not to hurt any fantasy categories. He took the loss, but went seven innings, allowing three runs on five hits with four walks and six strikeouts.

I guess I'll take that any day of the week.

And we all know it's better than both pitchers getting lit up like a Christmas tree -- maybe surrendering five or six earned runs in four or five innings. If that happened, it's a long five days in between starts to correct that overblown ERA and WHIP.

SAVING HIS STARTING JOB?

New York's Joba Chamberlain, who hasn't been doing the job as a starter lately, perhaps saved his gig for the time being with a brilliant win versus the Tigers last night. Joba, who remember was as automatic as they come as an 8th-inning setup man last year, held Detroit to only three hits and one earned run in 6 2/3 innings. He walked three and struck out eight, while throwing 108 pitches (68 for strikes). Well, that's much better than his last two starts where he didn't go past 4 1/3 innings. Is he a starter or not? Stay tuned. 

NAILING DOWN THE NINTH

Show him some love. I'm talking about San Francisco closer Brian Wilson, who has 24 saves this season. I know he's not pretty at times, blowing saves from time to time and giving up a few runs here and there. But considering he'll never be mistaken for a Grade A cut of closer and he wasn't a must-get guy that was drafted high on draft day, he's done very well for the owner who plucked him as their guy midway through the draft. I guess his 41 saves wasn't a fluke last season?