St. Louis Cardinals Fantasy Report Week 1
Welcome to the start of Fantasy Baseball. Hopefully you enjoyed your opening weekend festivities and are ready for a title chase of your own. Here’s a look at the Cardinals this week:
The Cards start at home this week and have a favorable offensive schedule against the Pirates. The Pirates will throw Morton, McDonald and Correia. McDonald has been battling side pain this spring so all in all, nothing to fear here. The club then hits the road for a west coast swing to San Fran. Fortunately, they will miss Tim Lincecum and will get Sanchez, Cain and Zito.
Matt Holliday is on the shelf for, at the very least, this week. Stay tuned for next week because he may avoid the DL totally and might be ready for week 2. In his stead will be a split of Allen Craig and John Jay. If you need a fill-in outfielder (and maybe even a 3B qualifier), go with Craig as the Redbirds will be facing two lefties this week and Craig has more pop in his bat.
HOT:
It’s only been three games, but hot of the gate is Colby Rasmus. I was able to catch the front and backside of this series in St. Louis and Colby definitely looks to be the most locked in bat in the Birds lineup. Even when he’s ahead of the pitch he’s ripping it foul with authority. He even batted 5th on Sunday which will give a little boost to both his RBI chances and his opportunity to swipe a bag.
Jaime Garcia opened up the season in style tossing a complete game 4-hit shutout of the Pads on Sunday. He came out of the gate throwing strikes, fanning 9 on the day. Daniel Descalso, who doubled off Dustin Moseley at third, helped him a bit on a line-drive snag at third base.
NOT:
Ryan Theriot is hitting a putrid .167. John Mozeliak even joked before the game that he was not even hitting his own daughter’s weight (contextually, he was discussing the trade-off of some defense for some offensive consistency at the position). Even Theriot’s defense has been shaky. If you have Theriot in an NL only league it may be wise to sit him until he gets comfortable in St. Louis.
This may be the only time you will see his name on the “Not-ty” list, but Albert Pujols had a rough season opening series going 2-14 and grounding into 4 double plays. He did have one home run and is simply too good for you to sit. He should come around facing the Pirates weaker arms.