The daily grind 5-10

The Daily Grind provides daily match-up advice based on my every morning waiver wire search. I welcome advice to help make this column more effective. Ownership rates are from Yahoo!

There is a better than even chance that I will be taking tomorrow off. I’ll send a weekend update if that happens. A reminder, I like being paid in Follows.

Today’s grind

If you don’t care that you won’t get any strike outs, Henderson Alvarez is the pitcher for today.

The Rangers have a double header in which they’ll see a righty and a lefty. That means both Craig Gentry and David Murphy will get starts with favorable match-ups.

Andruw Jones gets the pleasure of facing David Price. So he’ll play but not necessarily well.

Ryan Sweeney squares off against Derek Lowe.

Eric Thames has the match-up of the day against Jason Marquis. I expect the Blue Jays to explode.

Seth Smith and Josh Reddick might be able to take advantage of Max Scherzer’s early season struggles.

Tomorrow’s grind

James McDonald is starting to get popular. He’s 14 percent owned and set to face the Astros.

Kyle Drabek draws the Little League Twins. The Twins are shaping up to be historically terrible this year.

I’m taking any Blue Jay that starts against Nick Blackburn. That means Thames again.

Reed Johnson will likely draw the start for the Cubs against Randy Wolf.

I’d take Reddick against Rick Porcello any day.

Reliever watch

As I discussed yesterday Casey Janssen and Jason Frasor are the best relievers out of the Blue Jays pen at the moment. Janssen has been officially named the interim closer. Somewhere in Canada, there is a cult of Blue Jay worshipers praying that Sergio Santos comes back at full strength.

Dave Robertson blew the save for the Yankees last night. He also blew the save on Wednesday night. He has stiff competition from Rafael Soriano so he’s probably already used up his freebies.

The Marlins bullpen nightmare continues. Steve Cishek blew the save last night. At this point, Edward Mujica appears to be the only guy who can close the door reliably despite being thoroughly mediocre. Cishek is still the best guy to own for now.

The Phillies bullpen outside of Jonathan Papelbon has performed terribly. Five blown saves in 10 days. Kyle Kendrick fumbled yesterday’s game, although it wasn’t in the ninth.

Yesterday’s results

Great outing from Christian Friedrich. He earned the win: 6 IP, 7 K, 1.50 ERA, 1.00 WHIP

Anthony Bass did alright but allowed a handful of unearned runs: 5.2 IP, 4 K, 1.59 ERA, 1.76 WHIP

Drew Smyly pitched excellent but received a no decision: 6 IP, 5 K, 1.50 ERA, 0.67 WHIP

The Rangers were rained out, hence Gentry did not play.

Marlon Byrd went 1-for-2 with a run.

Darnell McDonald did not play.