Bottom 1: Michael Morse struck out swinging against Ted Lilly

Bottom 2: struck out swinging against Lilly

Bottom 5: flied out to right against Lilly

Bottom 7: struck out swinging Kenley Jansen

Bottom 9: called out on strikes against Javy Guerra

Final Line: 0-for-5, 4 K, 7 LOB

Notes:  Morse, who coincidentally made an appearance in our MLB Look-alikes series yesterday, recorded his first golden sombrero of the season against the Dodgers on Tuesday.  Currently having a well-deserved breakout season, the big man has shown the skeptics that his bat is for real.  With a 6-foot-5 frame and robust power to match it (.242 ISO, .342 BABIP, and 58 XBHs), it’s crazy to think that he was drafted as a shortstop.

Total 2011 Sombreros: 108

When I last wrote about my first fantasy exploits, I was losing in the first week with only three days left. My staff was performing poorly, and I was freaking out in front of my computer screen while Madison Bumgarner, Matt Thornton, and Ted Lilly tried to sabotage my team. After an awkward first week, my staff looked up the definition of “pitcher” in the Oxford-English dictionary and realized what they were doing didn’t fall under those guidelines—and they did something about it (or I made a move). We’ve been through four weeks of heated battles, and I thought I’d give the reader a breakdown of each week, including my weekly moves (henceforth referred to as “Strategery”), best hitter (“Neck Snapper”) and best pitcher (“Cash Checker”). It goes a little something like this:

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When I say this is my first week of fantasy, I don’t mean the first of the season—I mean I’ve never participated in fantasy sports before this year. Previously, I assumed that I would make too big of a time commitment just to be stomped around by guys (and possibly girls) that have done this before and have, you know, strategies and such. When fellow Sombrero contributor Rick Berdelle invited me to his league, “The Sober Valley Lodge,” I thought this was a great opportunity to finally make the plunge into fantasy. The Lodge’s settings look like this:

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The 2010 Major League Baseball trade deadline has come and gone and once again ended with GMs shouting out deals back and forth as frenetically as Wall Street floor traders. The two biggest names dealt before today’s deadline were pitchers Cliff Lee and Roy Oswalt. Lee has turned into quite the vagabond as of late, heading from Cleveland to Philly to Seattle and finally to the Texas Rangers all within the last two seasons. Seattle got switch hitting first baseman Justin Smoak and three minor league prospects out of the deal.

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June 2, 2010

I recently told Arlo that I would attempt to make more frequent Sombrero posts, but this weekend was a busy one for me.  I was in Denver attending the Calcote/Lucero bachelor party.  Jason Calcote is a lifelong friend of mine and was kind enough to invite me to be one of the groomsmen in his upcoming wedding.  Garret Lucero is another friend of mine, and the two decided to have a combined party up in Denver so that we could catch part of the Dodgers/Rox series.  It was a fun weekend.  I’m going to leave it at that.

A lot of baseball stuff happened over the weekend, though, so I’m going to attempt to condense it all into a reasonably brief post.  Probably the sweetest thing for New Mexican baseball that took place over the holiday weekend was UNM’s at-large bid into a regional.  The selection, which took place early Monday morning, was the program’s first selection in almost half a century.  They open up against Stanford as a three-seed in the Fullerton regional.  I truly believe they have an honest to God shot at making it into the round of 16.  With wins against Texas, TCU, and a couple other schools that have spent time in the top-25, this group appears to have all the requisite preparation for games of this magnitude.

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