Just checked the listings for FIVE to confirm that they will be showing the Yankees/Red Sox game on Sunday night, in which the Sox should be sending Tim Wakefield to the mound. This will be the second time in two weeks that they will have shown a Wakefield start having shown his outing against the Diamondbacks and Randy Johnson, he’ll now be matched up against Joba Chamberlain. I would never, ever start Wakefield on my fantasy team but there is no pitcher I like watching more when it comes to the real thing. I believe there is only one other knuckle ball pitcher in the Majors, possibly with Tampa Bay, but I’ve never seen him pitch. The game against the Big Unit was a wonderful contrast, Johnson’s mid nineties fast ball, high eighties slider against Wakfield’s high fifties knuckler and low seventies fast ball. And who’s fast ball was more hitable? Johnson’s. Wakefield’s throws over to first base are harder than his fast ball to home plate, I guess if he threw his fast ball harder his motion would change and tip his pitch to the hitter and even if he got the fast ball up to the low eighties then that’s just batting practice for a Major Leaguer if he can recognise it.
Even though I have Chamberlain on my fantasy team, and need wins, as long as he doesn’t get torched I would be happy to see him lose this one to Wakefield.

Speak it softly but I’ve managed to claw myself up to 8th place. Just tweaked the spreadsheet that I use to crunch the numbers(yes, I know it’s a little sad but I do enjoy playing with Excel) and find that the points split between hitting and pitching is still much the same as it was when I was in 12th, I had thought that I might have been improving on the pitching side but I find that I’m so far back of the nearest teams ahead that, whilst the numbers have been improving, I haven’t yet managed to pick up a lot of points despite some saves starting to come in from Morrow and Gonzalez, vulture wins this week from Broxton and Ramirez and a combined 10.1 innings of zero ERA from Morrow, Gonzalez and Ramirez along with a good number of Ks.
The hitting was starting to look like I thought it should on draft day, before last night, which didn’t go so well, I started 5 of 8 position players who had been hitting .400+ in the previous week and the other three, plus one on the bench, were high .300s, with occasional power outbursts and decent RUNS and RBI numbers. Haven’t done anything with the personnel on the hitting side, after thinking last week that Rolen would be the one on the hot seat should there be anyone on the waiver wire that I would want to pick up, it’s now Jesus Flores. It would seem that he’s either nicked up or gone into a platoon at C as he is now doing a lot of pinch hitting, and not very successfully. After Edwar Ramirez got lit up a couple of times shortly after I picked him up I was ready to dismiss Max Kellerman, (1050 ESPN Radio, New York) as just another Sabermetric freak but after the numbers he’s put up recently and seeing Ramirez pitch last night I might give his analyses another chance, his latest being that Carlos Delgado’s struggles could be due to deteriorating eyesight, this conjecture being based on the extreme splits between day and night games. Delgado is on the waiver wire and I’m thinking about picking him up to go in on day games at 1B, if Giambi starts to cool off, or Util. The best player on the wire at the moment might be Ryan Church but if I drop Flores to pick him up then 4 of my 5 bench spots would be filled with OF but maybe with another couple of weeks of production I could flip him, or one of the other outfielders, for a decent arm though there is still no trading at all going on in this league.