Santana leads me to fantasy greatness

Indians catcher Carlos Santana's home run this afternoon in a 5-3 loss to Pittsburgh put my fantasy baseball over the top for a 10-0 week, the first of its kind in my league this season.

I picked up Santana on Friday and was rewarded this afternoon, as I was needing a home run to make a clean sweep of the board. My opponent had a home run on his bench today.

Currently, I am six games behind in my division, but I have had a place in the playoffs secured since the first week of the season.

The prize pool for the league is a pool of baseball cards and is played by moderators of several trading card websites. The league has 12 teams, is played on Yahoo! and uses a 10-category head-to-head format.

Welcome to the Bigs

Catching prospect Carlos Santana has been promoted by the Indians. The team optioned Lou Marson to make roster space.

At this time, it is unknown if he will start tonight against Washington.

Yesterday, reports came out that said Santana would be promoted to Cleveland before the All-Star Break, but few likely expected the move to be made already.

Santana was hitting .316 with 13 home runs and 51 RBIs at AAA Columbus, but he only throws out 23 percent of base stealers (9-for-31), the biggest concern in his overall game.

"He's young. He's got a cannon and he wants people to see it," manager Manny Acta said to The Plain Dealer. "Sometimes he gets a little long [throwing motion] because of it. He does fine during the drills, but it changes during the game."

Marson, a key piece of the trade that sent Cliff Lee to Philadelphia, has struggled in Cleveland, hitting just .191 with one home run and 12 RBIs, but he was strong defensively, throwing out an AL-leading 35 percent of base stealers (14-for-40).

Veteran Mike Redmond is Cleveland's other catcher.

Plain Dealer image