Fan News

With baseball's trading deadline in the rearview mirror, it's time for fantasy owners to move on to more pressing matters; mainly, to focus on their own league's cut-off date for trades and transaction.

Commonly, fantasy deadlines are situated somewhere in the second or third week of August. (Although if your league bares any resemblance to mine, the REAL trade deadline has triggered an abundance of swaps in the past week.)

The Atlanta Braves have been due for a slump for a little over two months now. Well, that slump has finally arrived and it just so happens that the Braves start losing when the Phillies start winning. Now that Atlanta's division lead has almost completely evaporated, it is time for Braves fans to start looking for a scapegoat and the most popular candidate so far is First Baseman Troy Glaus.

Just because you’ve slipped behind in the Stolen Base category doesn’t mean you can’t catch up.  Here are some reasonably available SB threats.

Coco Crisp, OF, Oakland A’s

If steals are what you’re looking for Coco is your guy.

Another game, another loss.

At this point in the season, this seems to be a common theme for the Florida Marlins.  Shoddy pitching by a starter not named Josh Johnson (in last night's case, Sean West), no offensive prowess and a bullpen with names like Jose Veras and Burke Badenhop not helping the cause. What makes it worse is that the Marlins lost 6-1 to a Philadelphia Phillies team missing All-Stars Chase Utley, Ryan Howard and Shane Victorino.

Baseball's non-waiver trade deadline came and went last weekend, with a number of clubs making last-minute additions to their team in a bid to make one final charge towards October.

There were buyers and there were sellers. Others decided to stay pat, content with what they had, or, more likely, unable or willing to shell out top dollar or part ways with highly-touted prospects.

Now that July 31 is a thing of the past, baseball fans can look forward to the next big deadline... August 31.

There was a flurry of noteworthy stories yesterday, so let’s take a look at what fantasy owners need to know:

With my Philadelphia Phillies leading Major League Baseball in the number of players placed on the disabled list at some point in the year, I could fill some space with how they can ride out injuries and make yet another late-season playoff run. But where’s the fun in that?

Instead of focusing on how to survive injuries, I decided to take a look at how to avoid them altogether during team celebrations.

In sports, we see a number of strange ways to revel in the moment.

It seems now that the Steroid Era is almost officially behind us the game of baseball has turned into a game of attrition. Much like football and hockey, only the healthy will survive.

Two of the teams that have been hit the most by injuries—the Boston Red Sox and Philadelphia Phillies—got hit even harder on Monday when both teams lost their All-Star first basemen.

Toronto Blue Jays starting pitcher Ricky Romero was remarkable and his teammates put up another home run show in Yankee Stadium.

The 25-year-old left-hander pitched a two-run complete game, only allowing two hits and a walk.  The Blue Jays’ 8-2 win is their second against the New York Yankees in many nights. 

Finally, last night, the Mets did something positive. They didn't throw the ball around and pitch poorly; they actually played a winning style of baseball.

What that did against the first-place Braves was cut the Mets' deficit to 6.5 games in the NL East. With one more game to go against them tonight, the Mets would love to win the series and gain another game on them before heading to Philadelphia.

In order to do that, they'll hope Mike Pelfrey can finally deliver a quality outing, which he hasn't since June 25.