fling93 loves fishies

My Fantasy Baseball Team

Well, spring is here, and that means baseball. We didn’t renew our Giants season tix (of course, I didn’t know that SBC Park would have free Wi-Fi this year), so I’ll have some more free time. Of course, I expected to spend most of it blogging, but my lil brother talked me into joining a Fantasy Baseball League with him and some of his friends and coworkers.

For those unfamiliar, fantasy sports are games played where a bunch of sports geeks act like owners/GMs and pick (in a mock draft) different professional players to be on their “team.” How well the fantasy owner does in the game is then determined by the real-world stats of their team’s players. Sometimes the teams face-off against each other, and the fantasy league maintains won-loss records of each owner (head-to-head). Sometimes the fantasy league just totals up the stats for each fantasy team in several categories and awards points based on how high you’re ranked in each category (Rotisserie).

I’d participated in a head-to-head Fantasy Football League several years back for a couple of years, and while it was fine, I kinda lost interest in it after one season where I devoted a ton of time researching before the draft, all to no avail. One team drafted poorly and had to scramble to pick up an free QB after the season started — Kurt Warner. The team went on to win it all. Lucky bastard.

But I figured I’d try my hand at baseball, at least to see how I’d do against my brother, a big Yankees fan (I was a Mets fan, and am now a Giants fan). He set it up on Yahoo! as Rotisserie-style scoring, where you get points based on rankings in several offensive and defensive statistical categories, like HR, RBI, K, etc. The first place team in a category gets 10 points, 2nd place gets 9, etc., and the winner is the team with the highest points from the all the totaled categories. So it rewards balanced teams (having a ton of homers more than the 2nd place team doesn’t help).

The Draft Preparation

I didn’t want to be embarrassed, especially against my little brother, Ploofy1, so I picked up a copy of the Sporting News Fantasy Baseball Owners Manual 2004 at the local bookstore (I had a couple of gift cards to use). Dunno if they’re any good at this sorta thing, but it looked credible enough. Their ranking looked a lot better than Yahoo!’s default ranking, and it saved me the trouble of coming up with my own ranking from scratch. I could just start with theirs and nudge players up and down a bit.

I didn’t have time to input all the players, so I just ranked 75 or so, and then ranked the rest by position in a printout. It was a live draft, so I was planning to cross out players as they were drafted so I could quickly see the top players available at each position. Pretty standard stuff if you’ve played fantasy leagues before. Just like real baseball, players have value according to their position. A SS who hits 20 HRs a year is worth a lot more than a 1st baseman who hits 20 HRs a year because it’s much harder to find someone who can field the SS position, let alone one who can also hit (this is why most people think ARod is the best player in baseball).

I wasn’t as prepared as I thought

Well, each pick was given a 90 second limit, and I didn’t realize how short that was. Some people couldn’t make it to the draft, including Ploofy, so Yahoo! automatically picks the highest available player in their ranking, regardless of position and need (which is why most of the owners asked for a live draft). Unfortunately, such picks are generally done much more quickly than 90 seconds, giving others even less time to prepare.

Plus, I didn’t realize that the Yahoo! draft window would have tabs letting you show the listing of available players ranked by Yahoo!’s list and your own list, both overall and by position. Had I known that, I’d have tried to dump all the remaining players into the ranking, one position at a time, at least to have a convenient intra-positional ranking of the remaining players (although I was somewhat worried I’d miss the draft and would then be stuck with a ton of players at one position).

Also, for some reason, I thought our league was the common 5×5 league, or 5 offensive categories (BA, HR, RBI, R, and SB) and 5 pitching categories (W, ERA, K, WHIP, and SV). It was actually 7×6 (also counting H, BB, and SHO). So I had Bonds ranked too low because I didn’t know BBs were counted (although the steroid issue also worried me, which is why I also moved Sheffield and Giambi down a bit).

The Draft: The Early Rounds

As assigned randomly, I had the 8th pick and my brother had the 6th pick. As is standard, the draft order reverses in all the even numbered rounds. We had 10 teams, so this meant I’d pick 8th in the 1st round, 2nd in the 2nd round, 8th in the 3rd, 2nd in the 4th, etc.

No big surprises in the first round. Pujols went first overall, followed by ARod and Vlad Guerrero (Yahoo! had him ranked 38th, probably due to his lower numbers last year due to injury, so I was hoping he’d slide down to me, but apparently I wasn’t the only one who modified their rankings). I personally ranked ARod ahead of Pujols, but the two are both pretty close, so it wasn’t that surprising.

Soriano went next. Ploofy was assigned Mark Prior (apparently he filled out his ranking before hearing the news that he would be out till May). Carlos Beltran followed after that. I had Pedro Martinez ranked 5th, so that was a no-brainer for me. Gagne and Bonds followed. But I wasn’t too surprised by anything there.

Helton and Delgado followed, which did surprise me cuz I had AL Cy Young award winner, Roy Halladay, ranked 6th, so to have him still available at pick 13 was pretty surprising. Although I already had a starting pitcher, I couldn’t pass up the value. Ploofy grabbed Mussina that round, which I thought was odd, but he is a huge fan of the Evil Empire.

I was hoping to snag Edgar Renteria, the top SS (after ARod moves to 3rd base for the Yankees), in the next round, since Yahoo! had him ranked 30th, but the same guy who grabbed Vlad beat me to the punch again. Ploofy picked Mariano Rivera. Silly Yankee fan. The superior John Smoltz was still on the board, so I had no trouble making that decision (I also had Billy Wagner ranked ahead of Rivera). I was pretty stoked at this point, having, in my mind, 2 potential 1st-rounders and a 2nd-rounder.

Too slow to pull the trigger

I turned to offense next with Bobby Abreu, a solid 20-HR, 20-SB guy, and then decent SS Rafael Furcal, the highest available non-pitcher in my ranking. After that, I was debating between Pudge and Jeff Kent (who used to be my favorite Giant). At the last second, I decided on Pudge, but I clicked the button a half-second too late and Yahoo! automatically picked, not the guy I’d placed in the draft window, but my highest ranked player, which was starting pitcher Barry Zito. Guess I didn’t read the instructions.

I was extremely upset at this, having filled out my starting pitching rotation after only 6 rounds, and realizing that I had pitchers ranked too high for this draft. But to my delight, Pudge was still available in the next round, 14 picks later! I was still kinda miffed, though, since Kent was gone by that time, and had I played my cards right, I could’ve had them both.

Filling out the lineup

Anyway, I filled out my position players for the next few rounds, drafting decent power guys in Mike Lowell and Mike Sweeney, a 40-SB outfielder Scott Podsednik, and the promising Rocco Baldelli. One of my last open positions was 2nd base, since I missed out on Kent but knew Mets 2nd-year phenom Jose Reyes was vastly underrated by Yahoo! and figured he would be available late, and I was right (probably could’ve waited a couple more rounds, but I saw little reason to risk it). I’d also had my eye on Kaz Matsui for similar reasons, but after I had Furcal, I forgot to check on him until someone stole him in the 16th round. Instead, I filled out my bullpen with Orioles closer, Jorge Julio (he’s not great, but I already had Smoltz).

Panic!

At this point, I was lost. I’d long exhausted my 75-pick ranking, and I’d not been able to keep up crossing out all the names on my positional rankings. Plus, they were already useless for the OF spots cuz you had to have someone in LF, CF, and RF. My ranking didn’t distinguish between them, assuming you could just throw out 3 outfielders. Argh!

So in a state of utter panic, I started grabbing people in each category according to name recognition, picking up Kevin Millar, Todd Walker (Reyes was still listed at SS, not 2nd, so I wanted another 2nd baseman), the injured Robb Nen, the versatile Desi Relaford2 (handy for filling out a lineup every day), Brad Lidge (recognized his name from the combined no-hitter the Astros threw against the Yanks last year), Edgardo Alfonzo (my current favorite Giant), Scott Williamson (closer for the BoSox last year, but I forgot they picked up Foulke), Ryan Klesko (to back up the injury-prone Sweeney), and Melvin Mora (another ex-Met who was hot last year).

And to my disbelief, one of my sleeper picks at starting pitcher was available in the very last round, Mike Hampton (yes, another former Met). He had awful first half numbers last year due to his transition from Coors field, and I figured he’d do much better this year, so I happily selected him as my final pick.

Aftermath

I later dropped Williamson for Expos closer Rocky Biddle (dunno how everybody missed him), moved Nen to the DL and picked up, at least temporarily, an extra guy in Jody Gerut, a young Cleveland outfielder with a lot of upside (Update 03/05/04 Ack! Todd Walker’s not even starting, so I dropped him in favor of Mark Loretta, and Reyes is starting on the DL, so I used the extra slot to pick up ex-Giant Jose Cruz, Jr. — too bad there’s a limit of 2 players on the DL). After initially being disappointed, I thought I ended up doing pretty well. I’m a bit down on power, especially in my outfield, but that’s my only weakness. I have pretty awesome pitching (albeit heavily weighted to the AL, which isn’t ideal), a lot of stolen bases, a lot of solid hitters, and not too much in the way of injury risk (Sweeney and Nen are the only real dangers, and I have depth at both positions). So in hindsight, I think Zito was the best value on the board when I picked him.

In comparison, I think Ploofy got cheated by the system. The Yahoo! ranking apparently had pitchers ranked way too high, so almost all of his bench spots were filled by mid-level starting pitchers like Pettitte, Livan Hernandez, Kelvin Escobar, Miguel Batista, Al Leiter, and Brad Penny. And there were plenty of similar level pitchers left undrafted.

Of course by virtue of the fact that the first game of the year was between the Yankees and Devil Rays, and since he had Mussina, the Opening Day starter, he was actually in first place after the first day even though Mussina got shelled, because he was still ranked #1 in Ks, #2 in ERA (with a 9.00!) and #2 in WHIP (with a 2.45 or so!) because hardly anybody else had any pitching stats. But that didn’t last long (somebody else had no less than 7 different Yankees, including Posada who hit 2 3-run HRs today). Me, I’m in a 3-way tie for fifth, cuz the only player I had in action was Baldelli, who has one hit so far. Not much of a sample size yet, needless to say.

Well, it’ll be an interesting season. Hope it doesn’t keep me from blogging too often (and I also have a new distraction).

So here’s my team, the Cute Smiley Fishies:

You can compare it to the other teams in our league. Dunno who has the advantage yet.

¹ When we were little kids, I was an incessant teaser, and decided to give my kid brother, Ben, a nickname that would absolutely infuriate him, and — being the clever guy that I am — I decided to combine “Goofy” and “Pluto” together to form Ploofy! And I have to say it worked quite well. It’s made a comeback recently due to the nostalgia it brings, and the fact that it sounds really silly. I tried something similar with my little sister, to whom I was much nastier, combining “stupid” and “idiot” to form “stupidiot” (hey, didn’t I tell you I was clever?), but for some reason, that one didn’t catch on. Return.

² Relaford was a utility guy I was fond of during his Mets days, when he came out of nowhere to bat .300. The Giants also had him very briefly from the Estes trade until they immediately flipped him for the older, more expensive, less versatile David Bell. I never really understood that trade. They did make it to the World Series that year with him (and yes, he scored the winning run in the NLCS), but as his dismal injury-plagued performance last year shows, we were extremely lucky. Return.