Ryan Braun

[Roberto Clemente]

Ryan Braun is the best fantasy player in baseball since his call-up and clearly the best surprise.

>The Associated Press reports Milwaukee Brewers 3B Ryan Braun hit his 20th homer of the season Sunday, Aug. 5, in his 64th game. He became the fastest Brewer to reach 20 career homers and the second fastest in MLB since St. Louis Cardinals 1B Albert Pujols reached 20 homers in his 63rd game in 2001. Braun also has 53 RBI.<

I won't even talk about his lofty .348 Batting Average or 10 Stolen Bases.

How many people on this board got in on Braun thru the waivers when he first got called up like I did? If yu were 1 of the lucky ones then your team got a God-send!

[Heiserman02]

I'm just glad the last place guy in my league got him and not a competitor

[coldfusion]

Well I picked up Hunter Pence the moment he was available, and did the same with Ryan Braun. At the same time, I feel like a moron. Before Braun caught fire and went on a home run tear, I dealt him and Kenji Johjima for Adam Dunn and Jarrod Saltalamacchia. What's funny is that I put the trade on the Fantasy Baseball boards asking if it was a good trade, and was told I should do it. I myself thought it was a good trade and now feel like a complete idiot for doing it. Agh.

[Wisconsin Sports Fan]

I got him in one of my leagues, but wasn't so lucky in the other. I traded him for John Lackey about 2 weeks ago. I thought I was getting a good price for him, but he has hit 5 home runs and somehow managed to raise his average from .330 since then.

[Whisp]

i got him pretty early on, before he was a household name like he is now. he had 6 HR.
he's helped me (1st place) keep in step with the guy (2nd place) who traded for ryan howard.
the reason i picked him up was because i noticed he was ranked somewhat high in yahoo rankings for {last week} at the time.
production from my UT spot is basically automatic because of braun.

[The Big Train]

I can't believe what I'm seeing with this guy. Every time I check the box score he's something like 2/4, HR, 2 RBI. Unreal. However, I think it's important to note his splits. Against LHP in 69 AB, he's .478/.543/1.058 (he's slugging 1.058; that's not his OPS number!) with 11 HR. Clearly not sustainable. Against RHP: 183 AB, .295/.327/.486, 9 HR. It will be interesting to see how the league begins to adjust to him going foward in terms of matchups etc. His offensive production is certainly masking his defensive shortcomings (16 errors already)

Kudos to Yost for immediately plugging him into the 3-hole in front of Prince. The Brewers obviously believed from the beginning that the had something special on their hands.

[pasterofmuppets]

Yeah, unfortunately Yahoo had to add both Braun and Gallardo at the same time. I had to choose one (since I had the higher waiver priority), my buddy would take the other. Took Gallardo since I needed the pitching depth even more than a 3B at the time knowing that Gallardo wont be starting anytime soon, but hoping for the best since I missed out on Lincecum and Hughes. Hopefully my waiver on Upton will make up for it

[zepfan]

Got him on waivers thinking he could be a good keeper and he's been a machine ever since. After sitting on guys like Rios, Morneau and now Hermida through their brutal seasons it's nice to finally have a guy pay off right away. If he can avoid the deep slumps that most young players go through all the better.
In hindsight it's funny I had no idea what I was getting. I hadn't even heard much about him until shortly before he was called up. I figured "what the heck" and used my waiver. Talk about stumbling upon a gem.

[BillyHallDisciple]

I saw a lot of buzz on this site about him, then I kept watching the Brewers' team site/fan message board for news of a call-up. I had Melvin Mora at 3B and was unsuccessful in a few trade attempts to buy low on Atkins... so I added Braun in my keeper about 2 hours before he was called up. I was willing to wait a few weeks and just stash him on my roster, but lo and behold he was called up a couple of hours after I added him.

I never knew I'd end up fending off trade offers for him - even where people were offering players like Bay and Berkman. Not too bad for what I thought of as a possibly slight upgrade over Mora, who is now the back-up to Braun on my bench.

Braun has carried my team and many other fantasy teams on his back the last several weeks. We can just hope it will continue, but even if he doesn't continue at this pace, he is probably my team MVP for making me pretty much a lock to get into the playoffs this year. He's almost the baseball equivalent of when Larry Johnson had his break-out year in fantasy football as far as impact on a fantasy team.

[Bwanna]

I actually picked him up solely on the hype from this board (thanks all), but got impatient and dropped him after he went through an 0-7 stretch. But, based on more hype from this board, I immediately picked him up again after he cleared waivers.

Honestly, I don't think that anyone would be surprised by a drop in in stats over the last couple of months, but if you picked him up on waivers, nothing else for the rest of the entire season is or should be required or expected.