Crooked Pitch

Thank you for visiting Crooked Pitch! While you're here you'll find tons of valuable fantasy baseball information to help you win your fantasy baseball league. If you're new here, or haven't done so yet, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

I’m coming at this from more of a sim angle, but here are a few Padres to keep your eye on in 2008:

• Kevin Kouzmanoff — His overall numbers (.275/.329/.457) don’t jump out, but bear in mind that he got off to a miserable start. Kouzmanoff hit .309/.362/.511 from May 7 to the end of the season. Although he won’t repeat that performance, at age 26, he’s a good bet to improve on his rookie campaign.
• Brian Giles — Giles played much of the year hurt, and underwent knee surgery after the season. After returning from the disabled list at the end of June, Giles hit .268/.367/.454 the rest of the way. Assuming he’s healthy (risky proposition for a guy who turns 37 in January), expect a slight rebound in ‘08. Also, if he gets traded, his value could jump: 12 of Giles’ 13 home runs last year came away from Petco Park.
• Scott Hairston — Again, his full-season line (.243/.313/.452) doesn’t tell the whole story. Hairston hit .287/.337/.644 in 31 games with San Diego (and darned near was the season’s hero with his dramatic home run that put the Padres ahead late in Game #163). He turns 28 in May and should see a fair amount of playing time in San Diego next year. Keep expectations low and try to snag him late; you could see nice returns.
• Heath Bell — Not really a sleeper after his breakout season, but if Trevor Hoffman should falter, Bell is next in line to close games.

Down on the farm, second baseman Matt Antonelli and third baseman Chase Headley are the best bets to have an impact in 2008. Antonelli has less of a roadblock, while Headley is more big-league ready as a hitter.

Happy hunting!

Hi there. My name is Geoff, and I blog about baseball in general at Knuckle Curve, and about the Padres in particular at Ducksnorts.

My fantasy baseball experience is pretty varied, though it doesn’t occupy as much of my time these days as it once did. I first started with Rotisserie Baseball in 1984 (Lance Parrish, Damaso Garcia, Alan Trammell, Kirk Gibson, and a craptastic pitching staff led by the forgettable Ken Schrom), which I played through the early-’90s. Then I turned my focus to Scoresheet Baseball, which combines the benefits of Roto (using current season stats) and tabletop games such as Strat-O-Matic (simulation that more properly reflects value in the real game of baseball — no more worshipping of Vince Coleman and his 581 OPS in 1986).

This past season I played in seven Scoresheet leagues and won two of them. I also played in three Roto leagues, but I finished out of the money in all those — my mind has been forever warped by Scoresheet, which taught me to think like a big-league GM instead of an accountant. Ah well. Now you know who I am…