Greetings.  Here for another fantasy chit chat is your man, Maxmillien.  I tackled the NBA the last time around and am now going to dive into some fantasy baseball analysis.  As the All Star Break are upon us, I decided that this would be no better a time to hand out some mid season awards.

Biggest Surprise Player:  Texas Ranger OF Josh Hamiltonhamilton-300x140 Texas Rangers OF Josh Hamilton Tops List of Fantasy Surprises
What else can one say?  21 HR, 93 RBI and hitting a stunning .313; nobody saw this coming.  After some early career issues with drugs Josh Hamilton has come on HUGE this season and is leading the American League in RBI’s (25 ahead of 2nd place Justin Morneau!).  He is tied for 2nd in HR’s with Carlos Quentin and is only one dinger behind AL leader Grady Sizemore.  He is further behind in the total MLB stats but who cares, Josh Hamilton is the man.
volquez-300x250 Texas Rangers OF Josh Hamilton Tops List of Fantasy Surprises
Biggest Surprise Pitcher: Cinncinati Reds P Edinson Volquez
As someone who may have gone undrafted in your pool, Volquez sits with an 12-3 record, 126 K’s a 2.295 ERA and a respectable 1.241 WHIP.  If you nabbed him early in the season, or drafted him with the idea he was going to be this good, kudos to you. He’s 2nd in the MLB in ERA.  Hopefully he can keep it up as there has been chatter of him slowing down, but it hasn’t happened yet so ride him out!

Biggest Surprise Team: Tampa Bay Raysrays-300x297 Texas Rangers OF Josh Hamilton Tops List of Fantasy Surprises
Who even knew 3 of the 9 starters on the Rays before the season even started and now they have a plethora of fantasy worthy players.  They’ve gone from worst to first and are atop the AL East standings by 1.5 games.  All of their starters have come into their own, especially young star Evan Longoria (.281 and 16 HR) and B.J. Upton (27 SB).  Other team surprises have been the .303 hitting of C Dioner Navarro (added to the AL All Star Team), 2nd baseman Akinori Iwamura and team ERA leader P Matt Garza (who almost threw a no-hitter 2 starts ago).  I’m on the bandwagon and there is always space for more.  Let’s just hope a late charge by either the Yanks or Bo Sox doesn’t knock them out of the playoffs.

P.S. For another opinion check out ESPN’s Jayson Stark’s article “Honoring the very best (and worst) of the first half”