Kazmir & Garza leading “The Empire”.

Matt Garza has been a pleasant surprise for me this year in regards to my fantasy team.

I mentioned in an earlier blog that I would use this site as a vehicle to chronicle the trials and tribulations of my Yahoo! Fantasy Baseball team this year.

Since I have spent the last 3 weeks finding a place to move to, and subsequently moving to the place I found, I have had little time to keep my readers updated on what is going on with my team, or to keep this blog updated for that matter.

Finally, now that things have settled down, and I have internet that ACTUALLY works more often than every third day, I figure this is the time to update you all on how things are going for my team, “The Empire”.

There of course, will be a specific focus on how the four Rays–Pat Burrell, Matt Garza, Grant Balfour and Scott Kazmir are helping add to my teams success.

Let’s start with the crown jewel of the Rays off season spending…Burrell.

While his presence as a Ray has contributed GREATLY to the success of Evan Longoria and Carlos Pena in real life, he has done next to nothing for my fantasy team, batting a light .241 with just one home run and 12 RBIs. It IS however a long season, and I have a hunch that Burrell will get hot on the long road trip the Rays are currently on. It is bound to happen eventually, as he is good for 25-30 homers and 100 or so RBIs year in and year out.

Balfour has not been strong, but is typically a catalyst for the Rays who ends up seeing the ball in his hand during big game situations. As it stands right now, Balfour has an inflated 7.00 ERA and 9 strikeouts, but as far as relief pitchers go, he does alright for fantasy baseball.

Now…the strength of my pitching staff…Kazmir and Garza. Garza flirted with a perfect game earlier this year, and Kazmir is hitting his stride as of late. Garza has an impressive 36 strikeouts with a 3.51 ERA and three wins, and seems to be getting stronger as the season goes on. The only pitcher on my team with more strikeouts is Roy Halladay who has 38 K’s with 5 wins.

Kazmir is looking good, with 3 wins and 28 K’s, despite a 6.00 ERA. Kazmir will keep improving as the year goes on, however, his years of leading the Rays in strikeouts I think will be short lived with the emergence of Garza.

At any rate, with the limited attention I have paid to the team, and the mediocre performances of some players so I know will improve by year end (Josh Hamilton, Jay Bruce) I still sit in third place right now.

I will keep you posted as the year goes on…

Anyone with a hot tip…send it my way