Hot damn, I love this game. These games, actually. Real baseball is what I grew up on and was my passion as a young kid, but fantasy baseball, over the years, has continued to stoke the fire and has allowed me a lifetime of joy. Not to mention a pretty cool career. But while the industry still shifts toward the money-making of DFS, I still lean heavily on my seasonal play. It’s not that I don’t enjoy the daily aspect, because I do, but there’s just something about cultivating a team and taking it through six grueling months of highs and lows to, hopefully, bring home the title.

And while it’s still early here, there’s also nothing better than sitting at the top, or relatively near it, to get your season going. My LABR Mixed team is crushing it right now, my Tout H2H is currently wiping its ass with Jake Ciely of the RotoExperts and I’ve been getting the best of fellow SiriusXM host Craig Mish in our NL-only roto league. Sure, my SiriusXM Host League team started in the crapper thanks to a world of injuries and first-week mishaps, but I’ve already moved up five spots in the standings and watched that bed-wetter Clay Link from RotoWire (defending champ) fall to the cellar. My one team that has struggled to date and remains in the bottom three of the standings is the BARF League, a local San Francisco league filled with both industry guys and residents of The Wreck Room. But that doesn’t concern me at all. It would if Mookie Betts, Andrew McCutchen, Eric Hosmer and Greg Bird were all starting the season strong, but since they haven’t, I’ll happily bide my time.

But enough about me. Let’s take a look at what’s been going on in the MLB and fantasy baseball world in the last 24 hours.

Dream the Impossible Dream

OK, fine. The Blue Jays offense looks absolutely atrocious here in the early part of the season. Josh Donaldson is banged up and Kendrys Morales is not having the easiest of times getting the fans to forget about Edwin Encarnacion. But despite the Jays’ team wOBA of .234 and weak-ass 46 wRC+, there was no way any rational fantasy owner was going to start Chase Anderson on the road in the Rogers Center, right? WTF? Anderson’s career peripherals look pedestrian, at best, and he’s sporting a 1.31 HR/9 over 432.2 innings. So how the hell does he come away looking like Cy Young in this one? Not only does he toss seven scoreless frames, but he also fanned a batter per innings and allowed just three hits and two walks all night. Oh yeah, and how about a ridiculously efficient 89 pitches thrown with 59 coming in for strikes? Mind blown? Yeah. Interested in picking him up? Hell no.

When Mike Leake opened the season with eight innings of one-run ball against the Reds, I chalked it up to a nice start against a former team with all the bells and whistles of first-start excitement. He had some nice seasons with them but then struggled last year in his first season with the Cardinals, so to me, it was a nice feel-good outing. But going up against the Nationals who have been lighting up right-handed pitching to the tune of a .359 wOBA and 119 wRC+, I was lukewarm about starting him. That David Murphy/Bryce Harper back-to-back lefty tandem in the middle of that order is downright scary, especially the way they’re swinging the bats. But wouldn’t you know it – seven shutout innings, just four hits allowed, zero walks and seven strikeouts. While the concern yesterday was warranted, in my opinion, you can’t argue with results. Leake is a decent middle-of-your-fantasy-rotation type pitcher and justifies a spot on your roster fairly regularly. He’s always a bit underrated too, so if you’re trading and someone wants to throw him in, take it.

Now for the real mind-scrambler – Matt freakin’ Cain??? This guy hasn’t been good or fantasy relevant since 2012 and he’s squaring off against one of the hottest-hitting teams in baseball? Damn. I wouldn’t even own him in seasonal play outside of a 16-team NL-only league and, frankly, I was pretty psyched to use a few Diamondbacks in my DFS lineups too. I mean, we’re talking about a guy who, over the last three years, has a 4.80 ERA at home with a 1.34 WHIP and a diminishing strikeout rate. Granted, the weather in San Francisco last night was going to be cold and damp, but with Arizona posting a .363 wOBA and an .835 OPS against righties this season, I was ready to start popping bottles after this one. Overall, the pitching line looked good but not great – five innings, one earned run on five hits and three walks with six strikeouts – but considering this was Cain we were talking about? Damn. Let the Giants fan in your league believe that he’s on the rebound here, but 92 pitches over five frames is going to cause some serious tired-arm in the future.

Power Plays

If you want a good laugh, check out the Giancarlo Stanton interview on MLB Network’s Intentional Talk from yesterday. Down about his slump and jealous of teammate Marcell Ozuna’s success, Stanton took Ozuna’s “clothing” he wore to the ballpark (an awful pair of spandex that has now ruined my admiration for Egyptian history) and wore it for batting practice. Instant results as Stanton went on to jack two bombs and get himself going for the regular season. As always, it’s never about power or skill with Stanton. It’s about health. So long as it’s there, he’ll be a beast in your lineups.

Looks like Trey Mancini has just put the Orioles on notice that he would very much like to be a part of this left field mix currently occupied by a Hyun-Soo Kim/Craig Gentry platoon. He absolutely crushed a Steven Wright knuckleball in the first inning to help chase him from the game early and then took reliever Ben Taylor deep in the third to put his stamp of approval on the night. While it’s a nice start, there’s no reason to go running to your waiver wire thinking you’ve got a steady power source coming to you. He will struggle to see regular at-bats and based on his strikeout rate from his whopping 10 games of big-league experience, he’s going to be a sink-or-swim type of hitter. He swam Wednesday. Let’s see what he does next time.

Looks like I was a day early in putting Ender Inciarte into my lineup Tuesday as I thought facing Dan Straily, a pitcher he’s had success against before, had all the earmarks of a breakout moment for his season. The ho-hum 1-for-5 did nothing for me, but I opted to leave him in against our good buddy Tom Koehler. There’s really nothing special about Inciarte’s profile and I own him as a hopeful supplement to stolen bases, but when I saw the early-season struggles and the 54-percent swing rate, I knew he was, at some point, going to take a step back and try to work the count better with some improved pitch selectivity. He’s really not much of a hacker and has seen great success as a two-strike hitter. In fact, since the 2016 All Star break, he’s got a 31.3-percent line drive rate in two-strike counts. You won’t see him here in the power section much, but he still makes for a solid third or fourth outfielder thanks to his spot atop the batting order.

And can I just give a quick shout-out to that Yeti in pinstripes, Aaron Judge? Yes, we know the strikeouts will be abundant, but this power is so freakin’ real, you’re going to happily sacrifice batting average to get his totals this season. I don’t see an issue with expecting something very close to the 30-homer plateau.

Exploiting Catchers for Stolen Bases

The Reds didn’t do much picking on Francisco Cervelli last night, but Jose Peraza did manage to swipe his fourth base of the season. He’s now hit safely in each of his last five games and has a stolen base in each of his last three. As advertised, baby! I won’t put the cart before the horse here, but I love the way this horse runs.

I had my eye on a few of the other catchers who have struggled to throw out runners and sure enough, they didn’t disappoint. Brian McCann couldn’t throw out Jarrod Dyson or Mitch Haniger while Matt Wieters gave up a pair of stolen bases to Jedd Gyorko and Greg Garcia. An interesting note is that last year, Salvador Perez was one of the best, but after Marcus Semien swiped his fourth base of the year, Perez has now been victimized seven times with just one caught-stealing. Keep tracking these guys, people. It’s going to prove very helpful as the season rolls on.

Games are gearing up to start with today’s first pitch expected to be thrown in Detroit at 1:10pm ET. Get your lineups set properly and be sure to check your waiver wire for any interesting drops. There’s a world of casual players out there who don’t understand the concept of patience (yeah, Byron Buxton droppers, I’m looking at you), so don’t let a productive player slip through the cracks.

Good luck and I’ll see you all in the money this year!