Baseball has now seen two players test positive for PED use in the early going this season. Chris Colabello wasn’t a headline grabber in fantasy baseball terms, but Dee Gordon was a starting second baseman in probably every league. With the collective bargaining agreement coming up in December, the testing and punishment policies will obviously be a big part of the negotiations with many players actively calling for stiffer penalties. Baseball already has the stiffest penalties of the four major sports, so it remains to be seen how much stiffer the penalties will get.

If you read one thing

With most of the sports world focused on the NFL draft, it is natural to draw the parallels to baseball’s young players. Sean Manaea and Michael Fulmer both made their major league debuts on Friday night. Both players were significant pieces of deadline deals last July. It shows the relative difference between the two sports. Young players often don’t make their debuts for the teams that draft them. The MLB draft pales in comparison to the NFL version, but the baseball trade deadline is the most compelling deadline in sports. Both players performed well on Friday night and that gives both the Tigers and Athletics hope for the future.

We kind of expected…

Yoenis Cespedes wowed Mets fans last summer when he suddenly went from being a pretty good overall player to an MVP candidate. This year, that transformation has continued as he hit his seventh home run on the season to go along with six RBI. He is now hitting .313 with 23 RBI on the season. Those 23 RBI lead the National League and he is making a very good argument for being the National League Player of the Month for April. Mets fans are obviously ecstatic that he re-signed with them.

We didn’t expect…

When you get to the end of the month you begin to see numbers normalizing around baseball. Therefore, it is hard to explain how Albert Pujols could be hitting .172. It hasn’t been a complete disaster as the slugger has five home runs and 14 RBI and he has drawn eight walks on the season. In a few short years, Pujols has gone from the consensus number one overall pick in mixed fantasy leagues to barely registering as a starting fantasy first baseman. Thus, we have proven that there is nothing quite as insidious as the memory of a great player.

Save Opportunities

• Jonathan Papelbon (Converted #8)
• J. Ramos (Converted #7)
• Shawn Tolleson (Converted #8)
• Craig Kimbrel (Converted #7)
• Mark Melancon (Converted #6)
• Zach Britton (Converted #6)

Injury News/Roster Moves

• Jesse Hahn will make his 2016 debut for the Oakland Athletics against the Houston Astros on Saturday night. He has pitched well in AAA this season, so he will get another crack at staying in the rotation.
• Outfielder Sam Fuld will miss the rest of the 2016 season after having rotator cuff surgery.