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Daily blurbs from the Guru
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7/31 - With the flurry of weekend trades, and the likelihood of more to come this afternoon, I guess "you can't tell your players without a scorecard". I won't even begin to recount the shuffling. If you play in any rotisserie-style leagues - particularly AL-only or NL-only - this can be a good opportunity to pick up some previously unavailable names. It can also be a time when you lose a valuable team member. Keep your eyes and ears open.

I'm getting that sinking feeling that my SW team would be doing better if I had just abandoned it for the past few weeks. It's hard to recall the last non-Randro trade that hasn't backfired to some extent. Oh well... If players can go through slumps, then I guess fantasy managers should have the same privilege. Maybe the problem is that we have too many trades. If we were forced to retain players for the long haul, rather than having the opportunity to continually tweak the roster for off days, apparent streaks, & home/away opportunities, I think I'd be less of a menace to my own teams.

We had one Smallworld Gurupie team reach the $100 million mark over the weekend, and a few others may get there today - including mine. Making money hasn't been a problem, especially with some of the monster Randro swings we've experienced lately. Now if I can just start converting that value into improved points.

Swirve launched their football game over the weekend. The format will be similar to their recent offerings in hockey, hoops, and baseball. The scoring system is slightly altered from prior years, with rushing yards worth an extra point.

My plan for this week is to get the sortable stats and Football Assimilator up and running with the new prices and points based on the new formulas for both Swirve and Smallworld. (The currently available versions are still from the end of last season.) Maybe by focusing on football, I'll stay away from my baseball over-management.

(I know, I know... I've got a lot of nerve whining about a top-30 team worth $100 million! I just hate it when it seems like my value-added is negative.)

7/28 - It was a good day for hitters, as only 2 pitchers reached triple-digit SWPs, headed by Mike Hampton's complete game 120 SWP. The other was by new Blue Jay Esteban Loaiza, who had exactly 100 SWP. No one else was above 80. Arthur Rhodes managed -90 SWP in just 1/3 of an inning, including deductions for a blown save and a loss. Double jeopardy! And David Cone's misery continued with -75 SWP in Minneapolis. Cone has a grand total of 110 SWP for the entire season, ranking him alongside the likes of Chuck McElroy, Mark Thompson, and former teammate Hideki Irabu, who surged into a tie with Cone on the strength of his 25 SWP start yesterday.

In Colorado, Adrian Beltre and Alex Cora each slugged out 93 SWP. The Arizona outfield combined for 197 SWP as part of a 17-run outburst in St. Louis. Altogether, 14 hitters exceeded 50 SWP. And the top catcher was from Texas, but it obviously wasn't Pudge.

The average game on Thursday produced total SWPs of 273 for hitting and 106 for pitching, a gap of 166. That is on the high side... somewhere around the 92nd percentile for the season.

I've posted the 2000 NFL Schedule, using the customary format with all teams and all 17 weeks on one grid. For those of you who just can't stand to wait to start drafting, be aware of the teams with early bye weeks, particularly Cincy in week 1, and Pittsburgh in week 2.

Enjoy your weekend.

7/27 - David Wells continued his career mastery over Cleveland (13-3 lifetime) with a complete game worth 180 SWP and 196 EBP. Five other pitchers reached triple digits in SWP.

Two Cubbies led the hitting parade with 80+ SWP nights: Mark Grace and Sammy Sosa. Meanwhile, two games were rained out. The rescheduled Minnesota-Boston game will not be until Sept. 7, but the Expos and Mets are now scheduled for 2 today - weather permitting. And the weather looks like it may win again. We'll see.

Apparently, Boston's rainout will not affect Pedro's next start, which is still announced to be on Friday in Oakland. Not surprising, given the way the rest of the Red Sox pitching staff has performed lately. You may recall that in late May, the Red Sox team ERA - excluding Pedro - was 3.85, which would still have ranked #1 in the AL at that time. But since then, Boston's non-Pedro ERA has been 5.23, and while that wouldn't rank last (four teams are worse), it certainly doesn't inspire fear.

New SW hitting trades are doled out this afternoon, and there appear to be a multitude of themes brewing. The Rockies will be on the road for the next week, and some teams with ample trades will be dealing away guys like Helton, Cirillo, and Hammonds. Second base is also a sore spot for many teams, with Jeff Kent mired in a lengthy slump and Chris Stynes apparently returning to earth. Some teams will still have to rectify their holding of Pudge Rodriguez, and some will be adding Alex Rodriguez. And in the midst of all this hitter activity, it sounds like a fair number of teams are generating some extra cash in order to upgrade their pitching. It doesn't seem to me like there is any widespread theme this week, which may lead to fairly dispersed price gains. Then again, maybe I'm missing something. Based on my team's recent performance, that's certainly plausible.

7/26 - It's a funny game. Randy Johnson had a 5 SWP night, and yet it had little impact on the standings - at least near the top. 91 of the top 100 teams had him, so I suppose the other 9 got some benefit, although they did miss out on his $500K gain over the past two days. But they did save a trade, or (more likely) two.

The top pitcher of the night was Kris Benson, who worked 9 innings but got no decision in a 1-run pitching duel against Jeff D'Amico, who also reached triple digits. Glendon Rusch and Joe Mays also posted solid 100+ SWP outings.

But hitters also got into the act last night, particularly Yankee hitters, as they scored 19 against the Orioles. Two of the top 4 hitters were Yankees, headed by Paul O'Neill with 91 SWP. Curiously, the top two (listed) shortstops of the night were both Yankees, Jeter and Vizcaino.

Small World Football went public yesterday. In addition to their standard football game, they are offering a few other alternatives as well. I'll be providing the usual statistical coverage for the regular football game, but it won't be immediate. Give me a few weeks. The general game framework looks very similar to last year, with a few scoring changes, and without the kick returner slot. Repricing will be weekly, on Tuesdays. They also completely redesigned the game interface once again.

Speaking of design changes, I made a few tweaks to the site yesterday. The most noticeable is probably the font enlargement for the baseball sortable stats. I think the display will still fit across most screen widths and resolutions. I also made a few programming enhancements to the message forum, including a more efficient means for making proofreading edits prior to final posting.

7/25 - 'Twas a night when the Rodriguez (Rodrigi?) traded places. Alex was activated from the DL just hours before Ivan went there - for the balance of the season. It's a tough loss, even though the Rangers didn't appear to be headed anywhere near the post season. Pudge was fun player to watch in all facets of the game, and he will be missed.

Eric Milton was the top hurler of the night, shutting down the Red Sox for 8 innings. His previous four starts had produced a combined total of -85 SWP, but last night he picked up 165. Mark Gardner produced 145 SWP, but unless you were vying for the top team of the night, it's unlikely you had him - although it was his third 3-digit outing in his last four starts, and with a near-minimum price, he might be a reasonable cheapie option to consider, if that's what you're looking for. And Kevin Brown ignored the fact that he was in Coor's Field and shut down the Rockies, good for 140 SWP.

All-in-all, it was a good night for pitchers, with only an 18 SWP gap between the average game's pitching and hitting totals (i.e., a typical Monday). Gary Sheffield was the only hitter north of 70 SWP, missing a Coor's cycle by a mere single. Only two other hitters were above 50 SWP (although another pair hit 50 exactly).

Yesterday's Randro price swing was something to behold. The gap was almost $1.3 million ($0.9m in the midseason game), and with Randy pitching today, the spread will widen. The size of the gain and loss reflects very concentrated trading on a light trading day. A Randro trading strategy is certainly not the most efficient from the standpoint of maximizing extra starts per trade, but the consistency of the pitchers and the consistency of the $ gains certainly makes it a very potent tactic.

What are the dollar gains worth, in terms of points? Let's assume that today produces an additional Randro $500K swing, so that reversing the trade tomorrow nets extra cash of $1.8 million. If that cash can be used to upgrade another position at a rate of 1.5 SWP/EG (a reasonable rule-of-thumb for the marginal benefit of an upgrade), with 60 games remaining in the season, the projected point increase is about 160 SWP - the value of an effective stud outing. As the season wears on, the marginal point benefit diminishes, but at this juncture, if you can still make effective use of the cash, it seems like the way to go, doesn't it?.

7/24 - Pitching was the name of the game yesterday (although don't tell that to Andy Benes). Six starters pitched complete games yesterday, which I'm pretty sure is the high for this season. Pedro's monster topped the day with 205 SWP, but that didn't have much impact on the standings for most of the top teams, since he is so widely held for every start. But if you had Neagle, Ashby, or Schilling, you probably made a nice move upward.

In spite of the strong pitching, there were still some good hitting performances (just not on any of my teams!), including 5 players north of 70 SWP. The most impactful was probably Lance Berkman (who I swapped out of yesterday morning for Troy O'Leary on my midseason team... Aack!), although the top day was put up by Houston teammate Bill Spiers.

During the first half of the season, it seemed like many of my trades worked pretty well. Sure, there was the occasional pitcher implosion, but in general, I was gradually upgrading each slot, and the points and profits seemed to emerge pretty much according to plan. But lately, it seems like almost every move (except for Randro) is blowing up... some of them big-time. Time to regroup and try to regain some forward momentum. There are still 70 days left, which is almost 40% of the entire season. So there's plenty of time to make up ground. But the competition is fierce.

7/21 - On the surface, it's not usually a good idea to own the two opposing starting pitchers in a game. But while they certainly can't both win, they can both put up good scores. And yesterday was another case in point, as Randy Johnson and Darryl Kile combined for 305 SWP.

On the hitting side, doubleheaders were the name of the game, as the point leaders at every position except 2B benefited from a twin bill.

The oddity of the day occurred in Houston, not because Jose Lima won a game, but because Mike Bell became the third generation of the Bell family to play for the Cincinnati Reds, following the footsteps of father Buddy and Grandfather Gus. I remember when Buddy first came up to the bigs, and there may be a few Gurupies out there who can even remember Gus.

This will be my last blurb from the Jersey shore. We'll be heading back to New England on Sunday. Thanks for bearing with the delayed updates and the various server hiccups this week. I'm looking forward to the speed of my faster processor and cable modem.

7/20 - Wednesday's have tended to be good days for hitters. But yesterday the average game produced 151 hitting SWP and 142 pitching SWP, a gap of only 9. That's the sixth narrowest daily gap of the season. Of course, it would have been a wider gap had the Atlanta-Florida game been able to finish, since it was 6-6 in the fourth inning when it was washed out. But even so, five pitchers achieved 140 SWP or more, headed by 180 from Kevin Brown in a sea-level masterpiece over the Rockies (who should probably be renamed the "Pebbles" when they venture away from home). Pete Harnisch may be the hottest pitcher going, though, as he now has back-to-back complete game wins at Coor's and Enron Field, during which he has surrendered only one earned run.

Meanwhile, only ten hitters topped the 40 SWP threshold, headed by 63 SWP from Damon Buford.

Two games were washed out, and both will be made up as part of doubleheaders today: Boston at Baltimore, and Atlanta at Florida.

7/19 - It looks like it was a big night for a lot of teams. Several widely owned pitchers had good outings, headed by Pedro Martinez. And there were some good hitting days as well. Manny Ramirez led all hitters with 82 SWP, but Jeffrey Hammonds was close behind with 71 SWP, rewarding those who held him through his recent illness. Judging from his price drop yesterday, there are more than a few managers this morning who are kicking themselves.

Colorado finished their 3-game Oakland series with an 18 run outburst, bringing their three game run total to 38. Now they go to L.A. for a 2 game hiatus, after which they return for another seven at Coors. Their home vs. away production disparity is as notable for its persistence as it is for its magnitude.

Gurupie Kevin Landis was the play-by-play "announcer" for last night's cybercast of the Indians/Astros game. (Perhaps "cybercaster" is the proper term?) Not only did Kevin give an occasional SWP update, but check out the greeting at the end of the first inning! Thanks for remembering us, Kevin! And I'm glad you got to produce a Tribe victory.

7/18 - The doubleheader at Coor's Field yesterday lived up to expectations. 40 runs scored, 52 hits. Todd Helton parlayed it into the top hitting performance of the day, almost reaching 100 points under both fantasy scoring systems. Other "mile high days" were produced by Jason Giambi, Tom Goodwin, Olmedo Saenz, and Brian Hunter, each contributing more than 70 SWP. Joining the 70+ club from closer to sea level were J.T. Snow and Brian Giles, whose performances were all the more impressive because they had only one game to play in the heavier air.

The pitching stud honors were no contest: Geraldo Guzman hurled a masterpiece at the BOB. 160 SWP, 159 EBP. No one else was even close.

So far today, it looks like all RotoGuru servers are hitting on all cylinders. Yesterday, shortly after rotoguru.com was resuscitated, rotoguru2.com took ill, and although a speedy recovery was promised (some sort of amnesia [i.e., memory loss] I'm told), the lights were out for the entire afternoon and much of the evening. But this morning, it's back on its feet, and all pages are now up to date, including the Assimilator. Hopefully, I can enjoy the rest of my week at the shore without searching for any more lost servers! Knock on wood. <

7/17 - Greetings from Long Beach Island, on the New Jersey shore! This is the temporary RotoGuru headquarters for the next week. Meanwhile, it appears that the rotoguru.com server also decided to take a vacation, as it has been AWOL since Friday afternoon. I'm glad I moved the time-critical material over to "The Deuce" several weeks ago.

A word of advice when future outages occur - and they inevitably will. If you can't get a response, or if you get what looks like an out of date page, try one of the alternate servers. Currently, I have four different domains that you can access: rotoguru.com, rotoguru1.com, rotoguru2.com, and rotoguru3.com. If one doesn't seem to be behaving, try another. Qualified Gurupies should be able to remember the domain names, and all working servers (i.e., 1-3) currently direct you here right now. Also, make sure you have the message forum bookmarked, because that is the first place I'll post an update. But, of course, that won't help if rotoguru3 happens to be the miscreant.

Keeping my fantasy teams humming has been no easier than keeping my servers humming. Pitchers seem to be imploding left and right, and even my stud hitters all seem to be in a relative funk. At least Magglio Ordonez had a monster yesterday, or I'd have slipped even further. The only silver lining is that misery loves company, and many other teams seem to be having their share of problems, too... particularly with pitching. As I've said many times, the season is a marathon, and you have to count on several slumps during the year. Tough it out. And try not to let it destroy your psyche in the process. That's not always easy.

7/14 - Happy Bastille Day!

Sorry for the late edition of today's blurb. There are several reasons. First, I went to bed before last night's Kim-plosion. So, I had to spend some time this morning figuring out what my reaction would be. Suffice it to say that I bought him this morning - on my LRV (low roster value) team. For the normal game, the good news is that he was still pretty widely held, so the -95 SWP were matched by most teams. But that won't be the case for much longer. These are the situations when it's useful to have some spare pitching trades in reserve. And, thanks to a monster "Randro" takeout over the past 4 days, I was able to maneuver from Kim into Kevin Brown on my best team. But it took awhile to think through a number of alternatives.

Second, this is my last day of producing the site from the "home planet" for the next 9 days. I'll be heading to the Jersey Shore for a vacation starting tomorrow. Vacation from what? Hmmm..., I see your point. Let me rephrase. I'll be temporarily relocating RotoGuru World Headquarters to Beach Haven, NJ for the next 9 days. So today, I wanted to manage the site from my laptop, just to make sure I had all the required files transferred over, and that all of the macros still worked in a different version of Excel. So far, so good, although a few adjustments were necessary, and that also consumed some time. So here it is, 11:55am EST, and I'm just getting started on the blurb. In a few minutes, I get to process the first SW Midseason price update, so I'm sure this won't get finished for awhile.

BTW, I sure hope you didn't draft Kim on to your midseason roster!

Victor Davis (a.k.a. Madman at the message forum) assembled an interesting analysis of ballpark effects on pitching stats for the first half of the season. It should be required reading for all Gurupies, because it is interesting and relevant, and because you won't find this type of customized information anywhere else. Since I'm strapped for time, I'll let you read it yourself. Thanks for sharing, Victor.

And so the second half has begun. With a SW midseason team and a couple of midseason ESPN teams added to the RotoGuru management arsenal, I'm going to have to stay mentally alert. Hopefully, I can hit a stride before preseason football begins to intrude on the attention span. But I notice that NFL training camps are already starting to open.

Next week, I plan to continue to produce the full spectrum of regular RotoGuru features. You should expect some occasional delays, however, particularly in the midday price updates. I will also be less active at the message forum, although I will still stop in several times per day. Meanwhile, the other moderators will certainly be able to keep the peace over there, as they always do.

Enjoy the weekend.

7/11 - Wow. This is the first morning I haven't had to process any stats since the NBA All-Star break. I should've slept in.

The SW Midseason game. What's the strategy? I suppose it's basically the same, although the execution may be a bit trickier. In the full season game, there are many unknowns as the season opens. Potential sleepers abound, and the key was to draft more than your fair share. You used your trades to prune out the players that didn't pan out (remember Ramon Martinez and Carlos Guillen?), picking up the early risers who you missed in the draft. And for pitching, you needed to quickly settle into a staff that you could be comfortable holding, so you could maximize the value of your pitching trades by picking up extra quality starts.

But by midseason, there aren't many sleepers. Unless you can snag a few late bloomers who haven't yet been widely noticed, you're less likely to get a lot of early gains from your drafted players. In fact, if they are heavily drafted, they'll have heightened downside price risk if they falter on the field. The good news is that you might be more comfortable in drafting a lineup you can live with for awhile.

My midseason approach has been to figure out my pitching strategy, and then select a pitching staff that fits with that approach. For example, if you plan to use a "Randro" approach, you'll probably need all three pitching trades each week for that. Therefore, you'll need the non-rotating pitching slots to be filled by players that you are willing to hold for the long term, barring injury. If you plan to put studs in several slots, you may be more comfortable taking a flyer on one or two cheapies. You'll miss out on the predictable gains from rotating studs, but aside from the top several pitchers, the best gains opportunities will undoubtedly come from the hottest pitchers at the cheaper end of the spectrum.

Once you've got your pitchers arranged, then see what's left for hitting. You should be able to afford some quality players in a few slots, but you'll also need a few cheapies. After some preliminary mixing-and-matching, you'll probably gravitate toward a workable solution. As an aid, use the sortable stats, and check to see who has been doing the best over the past 7, 15, and 30 days. As a last step, you'll then want to test the possibilities if you were to shift some marginal dollars from pitching to hitting, and vice versa. Ultimately, you'll have to make some compromises. But the overall caliber of your team won't be nearly as speculative as your opening roster back in March.

I know, none of this was earth shaking. But I suspect a lot of us will have similar rosters. In my initial snooping around, I've seen a lot of common names, and many were players I had planned to draft as well. I expect you'll have a similar experience, especially if you look over the rosters of other Gurupies. And those are probably the rosters you'll want to peek at. In the full season standings, about two-thirds of the top 100 teams are managed by recognized Gurupies. I don't see why the midseason game should be any different.

7/10 - This should be the symbol of the 2000 All-Star game.

The most consequential items over the weekend were not who put up the big points, but merely who was able to play. It was a good weekend to have some SW hitting trades in reserve.

On the field, it was a nice time to have Ken Griffey, Jr. - at least on Saturday - for his monster game. Unfortunately, I lost patience on Friday, and swapped from Junior into Magglio Ordonez. Magglio had a good weekend, with 54 SWP, but that was still 55 SWP shy of Griffey's weekend output. Oh well... From the message board chatter, I know I wasn't alone in the premature Griffey dumping.

The inspired weekend move would have been to pick up Tyler Houston for his 3 HR game on Sunday, but judging from his price trend, it looks like no one was quite that insightful. How about dropping A-Rod to pick up Omar Vizquel for his 3 dingers? Actually, I added the "N" and went to Nomar on my best team, which looks like a pretty good choice so far. Jeter seemed like the obvious pickup on Saturday morning, since he had a doubleheader that day, but I decided to go with my gut, and probably got lucky when Maddux was unable to pitch against the BoSox on Sunday.

So now we have the only two days of the year when none of the four major sports play a game. I guess the HR derby tonight will offer a diversion, but Wednesday will be a pretty dead day, unless you want to catch the minor league All-Star games. I hear Ruben Sierra will be starting!

Actually, I'll be using this lull to draft my SW midseason team. Frankly, I haven't done much thinking about strategy yet, so I can't offer any early pearls. Perhaps I'll have something relevant to suggest tomorrow or Wednesday. If not, I'll probably go blurbless.

Speaking of the blurbs, some of you are probably directly accessing this page on rotoguru2.com now. Let me suggest that you keep your blurb bookmark set to rotoguru.com. It will automatically roll over to whichever site has the current blurb, so if rotoguru2.com ever goes down, the rotoguru link will be updated to take you to whichever server is current.

Finally, one more administrative note regarding the baseball Assimilator. I wrote a routine that you can use to transfer your stored roster cookie files so that they can be accessed by the rotoguru2 server. I put the instructions at the message forum.

7/7 - Lucky sevens. (The date, that is.)

Kevin Brown led all pitchers with 155 SWP and 157 EBP. But the second best outing of the night was from Geraldo Guzman, who made his major league debut for Arizona and would have earned 130 SWP and 140 EBP had he been fantasy eligible. Paxton Crawford also won his first major league game for the Bosox last night, so it was a good night for rookie pitchers. It was not a good afternoon for rookie pitchers, though, as Ed Yarnall will attest to.

Nomar Garciaparra was the top hitter, with Ray Lankford only a couple points behind.

Planning your pitching rotations for the days following the All Star break can be maddening. Published outlooks for probable starters are notoriously inaccurate for this period, even as late as game day. Some major league teams just pick up the rotation where they left off, while most will do some reordering. If you have a particular pitcher in mind, it's best to check several sources, including the local papers for the team in question. (RotoNews provide links to local papers in each ML city). Even then, don't drop a pitcher until you've seen that he has thrown a pitch. Of course, that latter advice should apply to any pitcher on any day. But I did notice that Kevin Brown was dropped by a few teams on Wednesday before discovering that his start was pushed back a day. A trade - particularly a SW pitching trade - is a terrible thing to waste.

It's time to finally close down the basketball season and announce the new enshrines in the RotoGuru Hall of Fame. This time marks a few firsts. We have the first 2-time enshrinee, the first 3-time enshrinee, the second 2-time enshrinee, and the first two "tag team" entries. Confused? Rich Paganelli becomes the first repeat enshrinee for finishing with the #1 WWR in Echelon Basketball (along with his co-manager Chris Jensen), and then followed that up with a top finish in the SW Hoops Playoff game, where he co-managed a team with Greg Robinson, who also gets his second HOF listing. And, Mark Mendoza earned his first listing with his top finishes in the SW and CNN regular season games. I wouldn't be surprised to see Mark's name appear again sometime soon. Congratulations, gentlemen!

7/6 - Another hitting day. The hitting vs. pitching SWP gap was 168 on Wednesday, just one point shy of the previous day. And a look at the daily points shows this pretty vividly. Aside from Randy Wolf with 135 SWP, there were only four other pitchers who barely reached 3 digits. Meanwhile, sixteen hitters again topped the 50 SWP threshold, headed by Wil Cordero's 96 SWP.

Note to Echelon..., er, Swirve players. Be aware of the special rules regarding the All Star Break.

Take a peek at the top hitters over the past 7 days. The #1 producer has been Frank Thomas, averaging better than 35 SWP/G over the past week. Right on his tail is Derek Bell, who has heated up again after a prolonged slump. Tony Batista is the only other hitter to average over 30 SWP/G during the week. Of those three players, Tony Batista is the most heavily owned among teams in the SW top 100, but he's only on six rosters. Big Hurt is only on 3 of those teams. None of the three has shown much price activity this week, either. Clearly, value gains require more than just heat.

7/5 - I still haven't been able to solve this server problem. Grrr... But then, if you found this page, it really doesn't impact you, other than the Assimilator, which can't access rosters from the old domain.

Hitters had the upper hand yesterday, as the average game had 169 more hitting SWP than pitching SWP. That's not a record, but it is the 8th largest gap of the year, so it's right up there. And imagine what it would have been without the Rockies doubleheader. Colorado scored only once in two games at Pac Bell, spreading 10 hits over 18 innings. Their home-away disparity is really something.

Maybe the best way to pick pitchers is to use the contra-road-Rockies strategy. Take any home pitcher who starts against Colorado. For example, yesterday's top outing came from Livan Hernandez, who had a no hitter going until the 7th inning, when Colorado did their scoring for the day.

Sixteen hitters topped the 50 SWP mark, and another 18 were in the 40's. The top two hitters were both guys who most teams probably owned back in April - Jim Edmonds and Adam Kennedy. Only one team in the SW top 100 owns Kennedy now, and if Edmonds is on any of those rosters, it's not many. Kennedy still appears on a lot of Echelon (or should I say Swirve?) rosters, though, so yesterday's outburst will be certainly appreciated by those managers.

If you're planning on rotating through Kevin Brown this week, this morning's LA Times reports that his start will be moved back until Thursday to give his sore back an extra day of rest. Go ahead and pick him up today - the price gain should be significant - but don't sell until you've seen him throw a pitch.

Interleague play resumes later this week, and continues for a week after the all star break. As before, the biggest fantasy significance is the downtime for American League DH's in National League Parks. Consider this in your trading plans. Forewarned is forearmed!

7/4 - I'm sure it was a night when many had the wrong Cabrera on their roster. Alex Cabrera was placed on the disabled list; Orlando Cabrera had a career night, going 4-5 with 2 homers, 4 runs, and 5 RBIs. If they were both listed as outfielders, we could have had some very confused trading patterns today. But Orlando is a shortstop. Still, I suppose we could have some casual managers pick up Alex, thinking they were getting the hot bat. If so, imagine the surprise they'll get when they're immediately greeted by the red cross of doom!

Yesterday's top gaining pitchers had varying success. David Wells pitched well enough to win, although he only lasted 6 innings and only fanned 3, so his SWP total of 65 was undoubtedly less than his owners hoped for. But they should count their blessings that they didn't have yesterday's other big price gainer, Cal Eldred, who gave up 8 runs in 2-1/3 innings, producing -75 SWP. At least the ChiSox came back to win, saving him the loss.

Sixteen games are scheduled for today, including a day-night doubleheader between the Rockies and Giants. So get off your computer and go watch one! If you're from the US, enjoy the Independence Day holiday. If you're from abroad, get back to work!

7/3 - Between being away for a good bit of the weekend, struggling with rotoguru.com server problems, and having the family guinea pig die yesterday, I must confess that I feel a bit out of touch with what's happening on the playing field. So let me just steer you to yesterday's points (note the new link) and the sortable stats, and you can do your own checking.

By the way, I'm not the only one with some new links this morning. It appears that Echelon sports has taken a new name - Swirve.com - and their baseball site now has a new URL. Reset your bookmark to http://sports.swirve.com/baseball/, and you'll be back in business.

Now, I've got to get back to figuring out what I can do to resuscitate the server. Hopefully, I'll have better luck than I did with the guinea pig.

Click here for prior daily blurbs, by month:

2000: June . . . . . May . . . . . April . . . . . March . . . . . February . . . . . January

Click here for prior daily blurbs, by month:

1999: December . . . . . November . . . . . October . . . . . September . . . . . August . . . . . July . . . . . June . . . . . May . . . . . April . . . . . March . . . . . February . . . . . January

1998: December . . . . . November . . . . . October . . . . . September . . . . August . . . . . July . . . . . June . . . . . May . . . . . April . . . . . March

RotoGuru is produced by Dave Hall (a.k.a. the Guru), an avid fantasy sports player. He is neither employed by nor compensated by any of the fantasy sports games discussed within this site, and all opinions expressed are solely his own. Questions or comments are welcome, and should be emailed to Guru<davehall@home.com>.