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Taking Your Beatings

There are few things in life more enjoyable than seeing pitchers you don't own in any league take an absolute pounding. Bartolo Colon, for example, on Sunday- that's got to really hurt some of my rivals. So sorry you drafted him.

For the first four days of the season, I had been beating free (and in five leagues, that's actually saying something). It must have been Thursday morning when I called my brother and told him to check out a young stud sleeper starter that I bought for our home money league that we share. "Damon," I said, "Check out this kid, Daniel Cabrera. It's a tough matchup against the Sox, but with Leo Mazzone around, this guy's gonna have a huge year."

So Coco Crisp lays down a bunt single - okay, no big deal. Then Cabrera walks seven batters, gives up three hits, and Eric Dubose kindly lets the last two inherited runners score. 7 ER, 10 baserunners in 1.1 IP.

That I have him in LABR also hurts even more. (It's easy to become obsessive about a really damaging outing when you consider how the league will likely be decided by a narrow margin, and this one outing could very well have cost you the title).

I think Cabrera will bounce back, but that he fell apart so completely is worrying. Even if he's fine in his next start or two, what happens after a rough patch and on a day he doesn't have his best stuff? While a top pitcher will give up four runs in six innings and grit out a win or no decision, is this guy going to get battered for eight or nine earned runs?

When I check the boxscore on Saturday, I notice Dewon Brazelton's line - it was something like 9 runs and 11 hits in 2 innings. I've got Brazelton in the RotoWire Staff League.

Now, in retrospect, it's ridiculous to have put Brazelton in my lineup and expected anything different given his track record. Yeah, he looked good when we caught him in Arizona during spring training, but we know how unreliable that is. What was I thinking? Well, I was thinking that he'd be pitching in Petco against a weak Rockies offense. I thought it was a fairly safe experiment. The odd thing is looking at the boxscore, it said he threw 50 of 68 pitches for strikes. His problem was he gave up 11 hits, two of which were home runs.

This would lead me to believe that (1) when he missed with his pitches (which was often), he missed over the plate, and (2) his stuff isn't very good. But consider that Jake Peavy got smacked around for 8 runs and 11 hits in 4 innings against that same light hitting Rockies team in Petco Park. So who knows? I'd still bench Brazelton until COMPELLING evidence to the contrary, but maybe those Rockies are just in a rare groove.

At least I don't own Peavy.