The daily grind 5-9

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!

Today’s grind

Christian Friedrich makes his debut against the Padres in lovely Petco Park. I’ll be starting him in three quarters of my daily roster leagues.

Anthony Bass is on the other side of that match-up. He’s turned into a fairly reliable guy in the early going, but I’m still using him pnly for home starts.

Drew Smyly draws the coveted Mariners match-up. When you watch the Mariners play, there’s always a chance for a no-hitter.

Craig Gentry should get the start against Wei-Yin Chen.

Chens come in pairs. Bruce Chen faces the Red Sox today which means Marlon Byrd and Darnell McDonald look like nice picks.

Tomorrow’s grind

There are only six games tomorrow. My suggestion is to take a pass on the day. Henderson Alvarez will face the Twins, but he never strikes anybody out, so take that into consideration.

Andruw Jones will get to face a lefty. Except that lefty is David Price, so this isn’t a match-up made in heaven.

Ryan Sweeney will face veteran ground ball maven Derek Lowe.

Eric Thames sees Jason Marquis. Circle me Bert.

Max Scherzer has been a bit of a mess early on, so I’ll throw Seth Smith and Josh Reddick on the list.

Reliever watch

Francisco Cordero appears to have a fork in him. He blew the save last night and took the loss. I don’t have a strong handle on who is next in line for the Blue Jays—probably a platoon of Casey Janssen and Jason Frasor—but it’s painfully clear that Cordero needs to be moved to a never-relief role.

Henry Rodriguez blew the save for the Nationals. He’s going to remain volatile but still has a shot of keeping the role until Drew Storen returns to action.

Did you know that Chris Perez has the most saves to date? Baseball is a weird game.

Yesterday’s results

My starters imploded all over my teams yesterday. Danny Duffy’s mess was avoidable through foresight: 4.1 IP, 1 K, 6.23 ERA, 2.77 WHIP. Daniel Bard’s middling outing caught me off-guard: 7 IP, 1 K, 6.43 ERA, 1.43 WHIP.

A good match-up for a hitter will be won roughly one-third of the time. Shelley Duncan lost round two against John Danks with an 0-for-3 night. He did walk once.

Juan Pierre did his thing: 2-for-5 with one run and one stolen base.

Laynce Nix did not play. I was unaware he has been battling a sore calf for the last few days.

Kirk Nieuwenhuis had a nice night going 2-for-3 with one walk, two runs, and two RBI.