H&J 156 - No Longer Lonely at the Top

Let's jump into news and notes.

It feels like a million guys went on the IL this week, and a lot of big names.

We look at Juan Soto headed to the IL, Josh Young, Cody Bellinger, Shea Langeleers probably out for the year, Spencer Steer, Kerry Carpenter, Curtis Meade gets traded to the Red Sox and then is immediately placed on the IL, Casey Schmidt, Vinny Pasquantino, Byron Buxton, and don't look now, but Shohei Otani was... is going up with pain management right now in a sore knee.

Yeah, hooray.

The ones that hurt the most, honestly, were Mead and Schmidt.

They were two of my favorite targets for the second half, and they're not going to play much of the second half, which hurts.

But the biggest name, Juan Soto, he'll be fine.

There was some initial rhetoric that they're like, oh, what if they just shut him down because the season stinks? And it's like, Yeah, I mean, you are still paying the guy.

I

was going to say he's paid a little too much for

that.

So I do think that he's going to play.

It may not be until September.

And that's true for a lot of these guys that got hurt.

So Langoliers, he's done for the year, no doubt about it.

Meade, maybe he comes back during the last week if they're still in the playoff race.

But that's it.

So you don't really care about that for fantasy.

Schmidt...

Meh.

Josh Young, they thought he might come back right away, but he had a setback in his injury, so that might be another week or two.

We'll see how that goes.

You've got Buxton, which, you know... he's just always a health risk, right? He's real good when he plays, he's heard a lot.

This is just par for that course.

Uh, Ballinger, I think Ballinger will be back by September or so that it's enough time to help you.