Please rate my late-season baseball team?

Question

Two days ago, I just took over a late-season dead team. I'm currently 9th place (30 games out of 1st, only 4 games out of 6th) in a 12-team H2H league, 8 playoff seeds. I definitely got a mixed bag of goods:

Pierzynski C

Pujols 1B

Uggla 2B

C Jones 3B

Tejada SS

D Young (Min) OF

Taveras OF

Blake OF

Loney UTL

Guillén BN

Rowand BN

Duchscherer SP

Hamels SP

Rauch RP

Gagne RP

Downs P

Litsch P

Ja Weaver P

Kendrick BN

Wakefield BN

Bedard BN

Percival IR

Top WW players (in 11th WW position):

Batting: Pierre OF, Martínez C, Griffey Jr.OF, Encarnación 3B, Church OF, Swisher 1B/OF, Blalock 3B

Pitching: Lester SP, Willis SP, Wheeler RP, Kuroda SP, Perkins SP, Sampson RP, Shields RP, Zumaya RP

Three questions:

1) How long can Duchscherer keep it up? Am I in an sell-high trading position?

2) Which WW players should be picked up ASAP (Lester? Pierre? others?) and which bench players cut?

3) Which of my players are WW fodder vs any trade value? I'd prefer to just cut/package-trade my worse players.

Answer 1

First off, drop wakefield and kendrick.

Pick up Swisher ASAP.

Trade duchs for a stud OF, or even a good catcher (mccann, martin, or mauer).  He won't keep up his stats.

Don't touch Zumaya, Willis, Perkins, Sampson....

Lester is interesting.  You should bench gagne or even cut him....if you have to, just drop pierz and leave the Catcher spot open..at least u won't take the BA hit.

Since Chipper is very injury prone, try to get the best value out of him....maybe for someone like a Lincecum or a Zambrano if you can.

Then pick up Encarnacion..the Reds will be scoring lots of runs.

You also may want to wait for uggla to get hot and then trade him for a good SP, and pick up another 2b or even trade for one.