The evolution of a hobby
Pitchers and catchers report in 14 days, which means it's time to start thinking (in my copious free time, haha) about fantasy baseball. Usually I go out and pick up a couple of the cheap fantasy baseball guides that appear in the off-season, but it looks like I won't be doing that any more; I tried out Lindy's guide last year and found that to be less than satisfactory, and the new MLB guide is worse than useless as it doesn't even have a complete list of major league players, an index, or a comprehensive price list.
Perhaps predictably, the Sporting News guide, which I've relied on for a number of years, has completely abandoned the dead-tree version and gone online. This would be bad enough, but apparently somewhere along the line, the Sporting News got absorbed by either AOL or the Puffington Host, and while I don't have any problem with the AOL part of that, I'm not inclined to spend any time or money on HuffPo.
So I guess I'll be waiting for this year's Baseball Prospectus
; I already have the The Book Formerly Known As The STATS Major League Handbook
which is now put out by Bill James and Baseball Information Systems, which seems to have picked up where STATS left off after the latter was bought by Fox.
I'm feeling pretty good about the Nationals' 2012 season. True, they haven't really found a good answer to the center field problem*, but they have a ton of starting pitching and very possibly Bryce Harper, who can hit the shit out of the ball. I'm also hoping they re-sign Pudge for a couple of years; I think he's been a good influence on the younger players, and we're going to need some more of that as kids like Harper come up from the farm. With all the pitching, an incrementally improving defense, and (please God) the return of Jayson Werth to form, I think third place in the NL East is the most conservative assumption. The Mets suck, the Braves are slumping and don't appear to have addressed any of their problems in the off-season, the Phillies are slipping, and so it's going to be us, the Phillies and the Fish fighting it out. Pretty sure we'll finish over .500, and maybe, just maybe, have a shot at the division title. It's what we play the games to find out.
Perhaps predictably, the Sporting News guide, which I've relied on for a number of years, has completely abandoned the dead-tree version and gone online. This would be bad enough, but apparently somewhere along the line, the Sporting News got absorbed by either AOL or the Puffington Host, and while I don't have any problem with the AOL part of that, I'm not inclined to spend any time or money on HuffPo.
So I guess I'll be waiting for this year's Baseball Prospectus
; I already have the The Book Formerly Known As The STATS Major League Handbook
which is now put out by Bill James and Baseball Information Systems, which seems to have picked up where STATS left off after the latter was bought by Fox.
I'm feeling pretty good about the Nationals' 2012 season. True, they haven't really found a good answer to the center field problem*, but they have a ton of starting pitching and very possibly Bryce Harper, who can hit the shit out of the ball. I'm also hoping they re-sign Pudge for a couple of years; I think he's been a good influence on the younger players, and we're going to need some more of that as kids like Harper come up from the farm. With all the pitching, an incrementally improving defense, and (please God) the return of Jayson Werth to form, I think third place in the NL East is the most conservative assumption. The Mets suck, the Braves are slumping and don't appear to have addressed any of their problems in the off-season, the Phillies are slipping, and so it's going to be us, the Phillies and the Fish fighting it out. Pretty sure we'll finish over .500, and maybe, just maybe, have a shot at the division title. It's what we play the games to find out.