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AL West News Roundup, Fantasy Notes

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Continuing my news roundup series, here is the AL West. It is a short one, as I’m running out of time before my NFBC draft, tonight.

  • Kendrys Morales will start the season on the DL. This is one long rehab from a broken leg. He can hit and field, but can’t run. At this point he could be back soon, but who knows? I think I’ll let someone else play the waiting game, while I wouldn’t mind Mark Trumbo late to see if he can continue his great spring into the start of the season.
  • Coco Crisp has missed a bit of action with a hamstring strain. Speedy guy, stealing bases and hamstring injury – those things really do not go together well. I picked up Crisp off waivers last year and he went well above and beyond the call of duty, but colour me skeptical he can continue that this year.
  • Maybe it is Erik Bedard who is worth a taking a shot on late in drafts instead of Jake Peavy. Peavy’s comeback ground to a halt, while Bedard has another strong start in Spring Training action against the San Diego Padres. He says he is throwing without pain for the first time in three years.
  • The Texas Rangers are really riding the fence as to whether Neftali Feliz will be a starter or the closer this season. Right now I’m not ready to make a stand it will be one way or the other, so I will just pass on him in drafts either way. Alexi Ogando is one possible closer if Feliz becomes a starter, but if I’m the Rangers I would be looking to acquire a closer from another team. I won’t be putting much draft stock in Ogando, or any other closer candidate currently on the roster as a result.

AL Central News Roundup, Fantasy Comments and Joe Mauer PS3 Ads

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Did I say yesterday my time allotment to do news recap was going to be short-lived? Yes it was. We took the kids snow tubing in the afternoon, which is more exhausting than you’d think. Anyway, I got through the AL East only. Allow me to continue now with the AL Central.

  • Oh my, that was quick. Jake Peavy was just named the fifth starter in the Chicago White Sox rotation, and today he’s been shut down for an as yet undetermined amount of time. He felt discomfort in his rotator cuff on the heels of throwing 83 pitches Saturday against the Oakland Athletics. He most assuredly will not be on the Opening Day roster now, based on this news. His comeback has seen a lot of positives all spring, but this throws a lot more uncertainty into when he’ll return to the Majors and how effective he can be. I’d use a lot of caution spending a draft pick on him.
  • Matt Thornton was named the White Sox closer. The team doesn’t want to put too much pressure on Chris Sale. With a good option in Thornton, why would they? It doesn’t sound like this was much of a competition after all. Sale had control issues through the spring.
  • Brent Morel is expected to win the starting 3B job over Mark Teahen. How much is he going to play though? That is what I’d like to know. Rick has him at 260 at-bats, but 14 homers and 19 stolen bases. Is it too simplistic to extrapolate the numbers over more AB? Absolutely. Is it a name worth keeping in mind as a late round flier though? I think so.
  • Grady Sizemore won’t start the season with the Cleveland Indians. Okay, everyone knows that, but I want to keep my notes straight here. He did bat in a split-squad game this week and is expected to start in center and play three innings on Tuesday. No specific information is given on when he should return to the Majors though. That is still a guessing game.
  • Not much to say about the Detroit Tigers, except the competition for second base is between Scott Sizemore, Will Rhymes and Danny Worth. And the bench spots in the outfield are up for grabs.
  • Kansas City Royals CF Melky Cabrera has lost weight in the off-season and is in much better shape than he was during a disappointing 2010 campaign with the Atlanta Braves. It is a good bet Cabrera will improve on last year, but whether he becomes fantasy relevant or not is questionable.
  • Justin Morneau continues to slowly rehab back to being able to play like his old self. He’s going to play in some minor league games this week. Maybe it is the Canadian in me, but if this guy seriously falls in the draft I’m almost ready to take the plunge. I was sure of myself a couple weeks ago that I wouldn’t draft him this season, but he his participating in games which is a positive sign.
  • The new Joe Mauer-Kevin Butler PS3 commercial for The Show is pretty good, but not as good as the “I’ve not even allowed in Mexico” one. Or maybe I’ve just seen the new one too many times watching March Madness on demand.

Breaking Sports News Via Twitter

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I’ve been using Twitter for a little while now, and while I do like it, I continue to feel it out and explore ways to get the most out of it for me personally.

For those not familiar with Twitter, start by checking out my account for DraftBuddy.com. You do not need a Twitter account just to see the main page for anyone’s account, although some people choose to protect their “tweets” (short blurbs people post on Twitter). If only some NFL players selected that option in recent months.

Twitter accounts connect together using a follow system. I can choose who I follow, and others can choose if they want to follow me. The tweets you see on my main page are tweets I’ve sent out, sorted chronologically from most recent to oldest. If people find them interesting enough, or care to be updated in this way about what is going on with the Cheatsheet Compiler & Draft Buddy or DraftBuddy.com, then they will follow my account.

Of interest to me of course, is what other people have to say, so I choose to follow them. My main interests include breaking baseball news, football news and hockey news, plus some comedic sidebars and updates from friends are never a bad thing. Initially I followed a whole host of people across these sports topics and other people I knew.

The collected tweets of people I’m following builds a personal timeline. You can see your own timeline (you’ll need to have a Twitter account for this) by clicking “Home” at the top of your page. Now I have constant news and updates faster than any other resource short of being there in person, all in one convenient spot.

As a bonus, I don’t need to be at a computer to view my timeline. I can take it with me on my iPhone using any number of Twitter applications for mobile devices. I use Tweetdeck.

One thing I found though is the more people I follow on a whole mish-mash of topics, the more daunting viewing the timeline can be. If I want to get an update on football, I’d rather just look at updates from the guys who tweet about football. Keep me organized Twitter, please.

And they did. Twitter developed a new feature – simple enough – called lists. Now I can group people I’m following into lists, basically a group of people to follow on a particular topic. In fact, I don’t even need to follow them outside the list. So what I did is created three new lists at the DraftBuddy account. They are:

I believe you can see those even if you don’t have a Twitter account.

As it says in the list description, “MLB (or NFL or NHL) breaking news from media insiders, plus discussion and opinion from fantasy baseball experts.” Essentially, I’m looking for a nice mix of media guys who break the news most importantly, plus others focussed on fantasy whose thoughts and opinions are worth reading and discussing.

I guess the reason for this post in the blog is to introduce all of you to Twitter, and the Twitter lists. If you have a Twitter account, then you can follow the lists yourself, which is another nice feature of the lists. You don’t need to create your own list if you find another list that is useful to you and managed by someone else.

And even if you don’t have or want a Twitter account, then you can still go to the Twitter website at each of those list links and get updates that way. Maybe we’ll convert you over eventually.

Where I could use your help is to suggest new people to follow on each of the lists. We’ll leave out pro baseball, football and hockey players and stick to media and fantasy experts. If you know of worthwhile people to follow on Twitter that would be beneficial to any of these three lists, let me know and I’ll verify and add them to the lists.

At the end of the day, we’ll have one fine resource for each of those three topics that are near and dear to our hearts, or shall I say to further our fantasy sports fanaticism.