Fantasy

This article originally appeared on Fantasyfootballmaniaxs.com.

It has been an exciting past week in baseball, to say the least.  We have seen the bust of Manny Ramirez, as the Los Angeles star will be suspended for 50 games.  Also, Alex Rodriguez returned to the Yankees’ lineup and knocked a three-run bomb against the Birds of Baltimore. 

"Flamethrowers" is our Monday topic at thesportspa.blogspot.com during the MLB season. In these articles, we attempt to showcase the hot pitchers, as well as the not so hot pitchers.

These pitchers, in no particular order, are hot/not in my eyes.

Huh? What? Really? According to David Lennon of New York Newsday (click here for the post) the Mets have pulled Oliver Perez from the rotation. There really shouldn’t be a surprise there, despite the amount of money he’s being paid. He’s currently sporting a rotund 9.97 ERA and 2.26 WHIP over his first five starts, numbers that are simply unacceptable.

Believe it or not folks, this is a critical time of year.

Right now is when the free agent and trade moves you make can define your season. We have all sat around and watched the first month of the baseball season.

In most cases, teams have given their players time to work out of early season slumps. This has worked out well for players such as Justin Upton and Chris Davis. For others such as Derek Lee and Matt Holliday, we are still waiting for the turn-around.

P.O.W. is our weekly tribute to those players who have had a tremendous week. We are currently in our MLB schedule at thesportspa.blogspot.com, so these articles will showcase the best hitting and pitching performances of the previous week.

I chose to focus solely on offense this week since so many players had great weeks. These, in no particular order, were the best offensive performances of the past week in my eyes.

Most of the players who made this list were probably not even drafted in your fantasy league. However, nearly all of them have probably been grabbed from your free agent pool by now.

Not all of these players will continue to rake in these stats for the entire season, but for now they deserve to be recognized for what they have accomplished in the young season.

Here are the 12 biggest fantasy hitting surprises for the month of April:

Matt Holliday showed signs of life.  Billy Butler continued to rake. Matt Garza had the performance of the night.  Let’s look at these stories and all the rest from yesterday’s games.

Oakland vs. Texas

Starters

Yovani Gallardo

Gallardo has been impressive this season. So far, he has pitched 26.2 innings and given up 19 hits and 11 runs while accumulating 23 strikeouts, two wins, and an ERA of 3.71. That doesn't include his impressive outing today against the Pirates, in which he threw eight scoreless innings, gave up just two hits, and struck out 11 batters.

He has now managed to lower his ERA to 2.86 and boasts a 34:9 strikeout-to-walk ratio. Heck, he even hit a home run, which turned out to be the only run of the game.

Welcome back my friends to the most in depth free agent and waiver pickup blog anywhere, The Hot Eight! As we close out the first month of the MLB season, I am happy to have recommended free agents such as Dexter Fowler, Nelson Cruz, Colby Rasmus, Scott Downs, Nyjer Morgan, Nick Swisher and Brett Gardner well in advance of their most productive games so far.

"Flamethrowers" is our Monday topic at thesportspa.blogspot.com during the MLB season. In these articles, we attempt to showcase the hot pitchers, as well as the not-so-hot pitchers.

These pitchers, in no particular order, are Hot/Not in my eyes.

HOT:

1) Zack Greinke- Royals

Greinke, the story of the year so far in 2009, stayed hot by throwing his second complete game in a row. He gave up an unearned run in the fifth inning, which snapped his 38-inning scoreless streak that went back to last season.