Alex Ferreyra is playing a season of fantasy baseball with just Latino players. You can read his original article here, and send him tips on players or comments about how he screwed up his team here.

I am a lucky man, and this is not lost on me. I have a wonderful girlfriend, a great job and on occasion, serendipitous things will happen to me. Like this one time, I totally beat this homeless man to a $5 bill that was on the ground. A more recent example of God’s graces shinin’ upon me was when Marlins’ shortstop Hanley Ramirez fell to me at the fourth spot in my fantasy baseball draft. And if you have to ask why, you haven’t noticed that Hanley’s on pace to have the greatest season from any shortstop since Robin Yount was Brewin’ in Milwaukee.

Sure it’s a small sample size, but I’m going to argue that Hanley is currently the best player in the fantasy ball right now. Not to say that A-Rod isn’t the player you’d want to draft first in real life, but Han-Ram is now in the top 10 league-wide in stolen bases, runs, total hits, home runs and batting average. And this most likely isn’t a flukey instance, what I like to call the Chris Shelton-corollary—he was the 2006 Rookie of the Year, and he ended last year with a .332/29/81/51 SB line.

He had an 11-game hitting streak where he wasn’t just slapping the ball around, but getting those homers and extra-base hits. And the great thing about it is that he’s doing it in the faces of all the doubting Thomas out there who thought that he was up against too much this year.

The off-season shoulder surgery that many said worried them hasn’t flared up yet, even a bit. But the biggest hurdle he seems to be overcoming was losing Miguel Cabrera to Detroit and being surrounded by the likes of Dan Uggla and Jeremy Hermida (who—for full disclosure— is a recent pick-up of the Shef’s All-Star team). He’s on pace to drive in over a hundred runs leading off on a shitty team! If he continues on this streak, this is what his line would look like:

.354 BA/145 runs/230 hits/51 home runs/136 RBI/43 stolen bases

Sounds like a possible triple crown guy to me, no?

Image [AP]