Three mighty men sit atop this week’s hottest hitter of the week, but Boston’s 1B Kevin Youkilis edged out the other two with his 6HRs to go along with the rest of his week’s line of 10/14/1/.417/.421 (R/RBI/SB/BA/OBP).

The other two players were the Marlins 2B Dan Uggla who also hit .417 and smacked 5 HRs of his own. The other, was week 4’s hottest hitter, Houston’s Lance Berman. This week, he hit for an amazing .704 with a .758 to go along with yet another 2 SB week, tying him for 2^nd on the team with Matsui with 6.

For a look at the remaining 7 hottest hitters of this past week, please check out the chart below…

This week’s installation of Baseball Links Exchange highlights the writings of dchase from the blog: Brock For Broglio. His site is a great source for Fantasy Baseball enthusiasts. He not only shares his opinion on the game of Fantasy Baseball, but he also shares his resources with his readers, telling you, the reader, where to go to find the best information out there for Fantasy Baseball. And he’s always looking to add more site to his referral base.

You can also check him out at BallHype by clicking HERE.

He also slides into some general MLB commentary from time to time. Now go check him out! J

As of today, 5 teams have topped 20 wins. Some of them you would expect: Red Sox, Angels and maybe even the Diamondbacks. But who would have envisioned the rebuilding A’s or the Cardinals with their injury-riddled rotation? Predictions: The Sox, Angels and Diamondbacks have the best shot out of these five to stay atop their divisions, but the A’s and Cardinals will drop to around .500.

Also, who would have thought that the Tigers would be in last place in the AL Central, let alone 6 games under .500? Prediction: although, after they catch up from their horrendous start, they will end up being an above .500 team, but still may not be on top of the division due to their poor bullpen and the lack of consistency to back end of the rotation.

Then you have the woes of San Diego who can’t seem to be able to hit their way out of a paper bag right now, despite some good pitching from their rotation (especially from Peavy, Young, Maddux and Wolf). Prediction: they will start hitting again and make this a closer race at the top of this division.

The opposite hold true for the Rockies who saw a turnaround in pitching stats last year given the adoption of “the Humidor”, but this year it seems as if only Cook is holding his own as the rest of the staff seems to be reverting back to the proto-typical Rockies statistics.

And who would have pegged Seattle, with the addition of Beddard alleviating some of the pressure from “King Felix”, to be in the basement of the AL West after the first month of play. Prediction: they will end the year in either 1^st or 2^nd place; the A’s can’t keep up this pace!

Another big surprise is how well the Marlins are playing and currently tied for first place with the Phillies who aren’t pitching nearly as well as the Marlins after a month of playing. Prediction: barring further injuries to the Atlanta pitching staff, the Marlins should finish the year behind the Phillies, Mets and Braves.

Oakland A’s: Jack Cust

Jack had 3 HRs this week, but only 4 RBIs while he hit .500 with an OBP of .600 and he scored 6 runs (3 of which came on his 3 HRs).

A close second to Cust was Pirate’s RF Xavier Nady who went homerless this week but also scored 6 runs while hitting for a .450 BA with an OBP of .593 and he knocked in 7 RBIs.

Rounding out this weeks top 5 hitters, based on Fantasy Baseball 5×5 metrics, were the Giants Aaron Rowand, the Dodger’s Juan Pierre and the Mat’s Jose Reyes. You can see their numbers below.

My vote goes to the Arizona Diamondback’s Micah Owings. He’s probably one of my favorite pitchers of the past two years, but I don’t get to see him play much being from the east coast. To go along with his much improved performance on the mound so far this year (4-0 with a 3.48 ERA and a 1.00 WHIP 28 K’s in 31 innings) he is hitting .421 with 1 HR (he won the Silver Slugger last year (in his rookie year).

Hat’s off to Babes Love Baseball for their recent post on this very special player (click on the link to go there).

Hopefully, Micah can have a long and healthy career! Maybe he can revitalize the art of offensive minded pitchers and how much of an advantage they could be to their teams. Why? because “Chicks dig the long ball!”  

This week’s link exchange will be on blogger billfer (Bill Ferris) of Detroit Tigers Weblog which Bill started back in 2001. His was the first Detroit Tigers blog and he’s proud of it! And, he should be, it’s a darn good blog.

You can also find Bill writing at his other site Baseblogging, which is a great resource for professional baseball (or any other sport) blogging.

You can also find Bill writing about current Braves starter Jair Jurrjens.Throughout 2008 Bill can be heard on Friday mornings on sports talk station WDFN talking Tigers with host Sean Baligian.

So, if you’re a Tiger’s fan, reading Bill’s Detroit Tigers Weblog is a MUST! If you’re not a Tiger’s fan, it’s still a darn good read, but don’t forget to read his other two sites as well!

Here’s the answer to our trivia question from last week (Click Here to review).

Long time Cardinals closer Bruce Sutter (hat tip to Sox Addict), back in 2006, became the first relief pitcher elected to the Hall of Fame without ever starting a game in his entire career.

Hoyt Wilhelm, Rollie Fingers and Dennis Eckersley (Eck) had all been starters at one point during their careers!