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Trolling the Wire Pickup
Jason Kubel, OF, Minnesota Twins – With a 1-for-4 effort off of Ubaldo Jimenez on Thursday, Kubel ran his hitting streak to nine games as he continues to dig out of the enormous hole he built for himself in April and deepened in May. Hitting .225 when the streak started, he is now up to .248 while his power production is on very solid 24/101 pace. As he continues to creep closer toward his career .274 average, you could anticipate his counting stat paces to actually improve, too. He is only on pace for 56 runs scored which underscores how bad the 7-8-9 hitters have performed in Minnesota or just how painfully slow Kubel is on the basepath.
I projected him for 35 home runs in the preseason and I still believe he can push for that figure, but even if he falls short, he appears likely to match his 28/103 output from a year ago. Despite that fact, he is owned in 68% of CBS leagues, 57% of ESPN leagues and just 51% of Yahoo! Leagues. If you need some legitimate power production, you need to go out and grab Kubel.
Article of the Day
Featured Piece: A Closer Look at Austin Jackson – by Paul Sporer
Today’s article of the day comes from yours truly. I wrote an extensive piece about Austin Jackson and the excellent start to his major league career. I submitted it to the Fangraphs.com Community Blog and they posted it. I wrote about how he isn’t getting enough credit for excelling as a rookie leadoff hitter playing one of the toughest defensive positions brilliantly. Instead all of the focus goes toward his strikeout total. Though gaudy and in need of some help, there is more to the story with his punchouts.
Others:
The Internet Cried a Little When You Wrote that on it – by Mike Fast
Strasburg Makes Sense for the All-Star Game – by Jon Morosi
Wait, WHO has 18 Home Runs? – by Eric Seidman (sub. req.)
Joe Mauer and His Power Outage – by Bloomberg Sports
The Day that Moneyball Died – by Joe Posnanski
Delmon Young Maturing with Twins – by Tracy Ringolsby
Bet of the day
Jon Lester brought me back to even in record at 2-2 with his win on Wednesday against the Diamondbacks. But from a units standpoint, I’m still in the red. I’m currently at -$34 dollars. By the way, thanks to Jeff from Mason City, IA for pointing out that the win-loss record is fun and all, but keeping track of the hypothetical units won or lost is where it’s at with a segment like this.
For Friday, I’m taking the Mets at +170 against Javier Vazquez and the Yankees. I know Vazquez has been rolling lately and the streak got started with a nice outing against the Mets, but the bomb out potential for him remains. Meanwhile Hisanori Takahashi is going for the Mets and he opposed Vazquez that night and matched him tit for tat as both went six shutout innings.
Mets +170
Record: 2-2, -$34
Spot Starters
Thursday Review: R.A. Dickey dominanted Cleveland; Luke Hochevar was scratched and placed on the DL
Weekend Picks: Rick Porcello v. ARI, Jake Arrieta @ SD
***Programming Note*** there will be no podcasts this weekend as I’m going to Houston for the Astros-Rangers game on Saturday and then just taking Sunday off.
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