fantasy baseball teams update!
Baseball's All-Star Break has come and gone (seemed early this year), so it's a good time to take stock of my four fantasy baseball teams: Dying Quails, Jews for Jebus, Gold Domers, and Local Yokels.
There are a couple of ways of doing this. The first is easy: where am I in the standings? That gives an overall look both at the team as a whole and at the success of my managerial moves (benching players in cold spells, starting players on hot streaks, etc). The second is more complicated: how do my players rate within their positions? Basically, you want every position covered by a top-10 guy with a few top-5 and a top-3 or two thrown in. ESPN's Player Rater is a good tool for that, though it only shows past performance and doesn't speculate on future stats, which are all that really matter now.
Let's take a look, in order of how much I care.
The Dying Quails : auction league : 1st Place!
The mighty DQ's are dominating the Atlanta-Conyers league. I have 97 points (out of 110, the end-of-season record for us is 100/110), while the second place team has just 79.5. Back in Week 7, one team managed to close to within 3.5 points, but the very next week, my lead jumped back to 15. Otherwise, no one has come close as I have led wire to wire. As an added bonus, the DQs have won six individual weeks (including the three of the first six) out of 14, earning me $90 and counting.
Guess I drafted better than I thought.
Turns out not getting Abreu was the best move I made as he's been really mediocre this year. My pitching has held up pretty well even though my ace, Rich Harden, has been on the DL most of the year. And my outfield is littered with power. My biggest offensive concern is 3B, where Chipper Jones hasn't been doing so well - until last week, when he hit .550 with a bad foot while on my bench. Bastard. I just made a minor trade to strengthen my 3B bench, so I'm not worried about that anymore.
Basically, all I have to worry about is injury, and those are starting to hit my team. Chipper is hurt even if he's hitting. My CF, Johnny Damon, is hurting all over but is playing; this is tying my hands with trading my backup CF, Corey Patterson, who has been a fantasy stud this year, third in the AL in steals. And he's my backup. I'm sure Magglio Ordonez will get hurt. Curt Schilling is getting old and may hit the DL soon. Brad Penny always gets hurt, so I'm waiting for that one.
Individually, my guys are doing great. My catcher is probably giving me the most value for the dollar: I paid $4 for Hernandez, and he's #3 on every list. Delgado is surprisingly hurting me at 1B (#15), but he's a second-half guy; plus I have Adam Dunn at #11, though what little I've used him (love his 28 HR, hate his .237 BA) has mostly been in the OF. Iguchi is serviceable at 2B, Chipper is holding his own at 3B (both top 10). My stud is SS Jose Reyes, #1 in all of baseball right now.
Turns out my OF is my offensive strength: Lee (#3), Holliday (#10), Damon (#14, #5 for CF), Dunn (#19), Patterson (#22 on my bench, #7 CF), Ordonez (#24), and I just traded away Brad Hawpe (#31). Since we play one CF, two other (any) OF, plus a DH, I have five of the top 24 players, including two of the top ten, to choose from every week for four active slots, leaving just 20 of the top 25 players for the other ten teams. Sweet.
Even my pitching is great. My closers' peripheral numbers suck, but all I care about are saves. Izzy is tied for the lead with 26; Turnbow is tied for sixth with 23. Good enough to put me in third in the category overall. My starters? Rock: Webb (#4), Schilling (#6), Young (#10), Penny (#17), Sabathia (#33), plus a couple of good matchups guys. That's three of the top ten. I start four every week.
Looking at the rest of the season, most of my guys are projected to stay pretty much where they are. I don't want to get overconfident, but unless the injury bug hits hard, I should be able to coast to my first championship after nine years in the league.
Jews for Jebus : ESPN keeper league : 5th place.
On Saturday, J4J was in second place with 64 (out of 100) points. At the Break, I'm in fifth with 61 points, just 3.5 out of second, 10 out of first. I have no idea how that happened.
My hitting is very good except for steals, where I'm dead last without hope of catching up to even 9th place. My pitching overall is very mediocre. The computer didn't draft me any closers, so I've spent the first half of the season scraping new closers off the waiver wire (Saito, Otsuka, and now Guardado); I even tried out Jorge Sosa, God help me. Harden and Ben Sheets have been on the DL most of the year, taking up my one DL slot plus a roster spot. I got lucky and picked up Francisco Liriano, who has been awesome and will make a great keeper for next season. Otherwise, I'm just picking up starting pitchers as the matchups look good.
The offense is pretty solid. We play five OF, plus one each of 1B/3B, 2B/SS, and DH, which makes it hard to have quality up and down the lineup, but I've managed it. Problem is, I haven't been able to turn any of these guys into pitching. ESPN makes it very difficult to make trades since every slot must be filled. If you trade an OF, you need either an OF back or one on your bench to cover it; catch is, you only have three bench spots. Yeah.
I have Konerko at 1B (#6), A-Rod at 3B (#3), and Jeter at SS (#2), so three-quarters of my infield is rock solid. All five of my OF are in the top 27 at the position, but I expect Dye (#7) and Matthews (#27) to drop off a lot over the second half. I'm going to try and move Dye for pitching, but it's tough going.
I'm going for the win this season, and I have three solid keepers ready for next year (A-Rod, Jeter, Liriano) and maybe a fourth (Gathright), so things are looking pretty good.
Gold Domers : Yahoo public (live draft) : 2nd place.
Considering the first place team cheated, I'm perfectly happy with second. Yes, it's possible to cheat. The now-last place team dumped most of his roster back in April; some of us were lucky enough to have good waiver picks (yours truly included) to grab those guys - hey if I hadn't, someone else would have, and did. But then the now-first place team went a step further: he traded some scrubs to the quitter for that team's best players.
I noticed it and posted it on the league message board, but not enough of the other owners paid enough attention to veto the deal, so it went through. So now the guy has built up a huge lead, with 98.5 (out of 120) points to my second place 83. Third place is at 81.5, and then everybody else follows.
This is a pretty well-balanced team across the board. Manny should start really turning it up soon, so that will help; but he and Wagner are the only stars on the team. Everybody else are second-tier guys.
Local Yokels : Yahoo public (auto draft) : 3rd place.
Not bad considering I missed the live draft, which means the computer drafted for me while most everyone else picked their teams. So, again, no closers, but I scraped together a bullpen good enough to put me in the middle of the saves pack, with some hope of moving up.
I think I'm too far behind the leaders (97 points (out of 120), 91.5, and then me at 82) to pose a real threat, but I can make things interesting. I'm right in the mix in several categories, so we'll see.
The second half begins today. The big trade deadline is only a couple weeks away. Then the dog days of August. Then the pennant races of September. Then the playoffs.
Baseball season just isn't long enough.
There are a couple of ways of doing this. The first is easy: where am I in the standings? That gives an overall look both at the team as a whole and at the success of my managerial moves (benching players in cold spells, starting players on hot streaks, etc). The second is more complicated: how do my players rate within their positions? Basically, you want every position covered by a top-10 guy with a few top-5 and a top-3 or two thrown in. ESPN's Player Rater is a good tool for that, though it only shows past performance and doesn't speculate on future stats, which are all that really matter now.
Let's take a look, in order of how much I care.
The Dying Quails : auction league : 1st Place!
The mighty DQ's are dominating the Atlanta-Conyers league. I have 97 points (out of 110, the end-of-season record for us is 100/110), while the second place team has just 79.5. Back in Week 7, one team managed to close to within 3.5 points, but the very next week, my lead jumped back to 15. Otherwise, no one has come close as I have led wire to wire. As an added bonus, the DQs have won six individual weeks (including the three of the first six) out of 14, earning me $90 and counting.
Guess I drafted better than I thought.
Turns out not getting Abreu was the best move I made as he's been really mediocre this year. My pitching has held up pretty well even though my ace, Rich Harden, has been on the DL most of the year. And my outfield is littered with power. My biggest offensive concern is 3B, where Chipper Jones hasn't been doing so well - until last week, when he hit .550 with a bad foot while on my bench. Bastard. I just made a minor trade to strengthen my 3B bench, so I'm not worried about that anymore.
Basically, all I have to worry about is injury, and those are starting to hit my team. Chipper is hurt even if he's hitting. My CF, Johnny Damon, is hurting all over but is playing; this is tying my hands with trading my backup CF, Corey Patterson, who has been a fantasy stud this year, third in the AL in steals. And he's my backup. I'm sure Magglio Ordonez will get hurt. Curt Schilling is getting old and may hit the DL soon. Brad Penny always gets hurt, so I'm waiting for that one.
Individually, my guys are doing great. My catcher is probably giving me the most value for the dollar: I paid $4 for Hernandez, and he's #3 on every list. Delgado is surprisingly hurting me at 1B (#15), but he's a second-half guy; plus I have Adam Dunn at #11, though what little I've used him (love his 28 HR, hate his .237 BA) has mostly been in the OF. Iguchi is serviceable at 2B, Chipper is holding his own at 3B (both top 10). My stud is SS Jose Reyes, #1 in all of baseball right now.
Turns out my OF is my offensive strength: Lee (#3), Holliday (#10), Damon (#14, #5 for CF), Dunn (#19), Patterson (#22 on my bench, #7 CF), Ordonez (#24), and I just traded away Brad Hawpe (#31). Since we play one CF, two other (any) OF, plus a DH, I have five of the top 24 players, including two of the top ten, to choose from every week for four active slots, leaving just 20 of the top 25 players for the other ten teams. Sweet.
Even my pitching is great. My closers' peripheral numbers suck, but all I care about are saves. Izzy is tied for the lead with 26; Turnbow is tied for sixth with 23. Good enough to put me in third in the category overall. My starters? Rock: Webb (#4), Schilling (#6), Young (#10), Penny (#17), Sabathia (#33), plus a couple of good matchups guys. That's three of the top ten. I start four every week.
Looking at the rest of the season, most of my guys are projected to stay pretty much where they are. I don't want to get overconfident, but unless the injury bug hits hard, I should be able to coast to my first championship after nine years in the league.
Jews for Jebus : ESPN keeper league : 5th place.
On Saturday, J4J was in second place with 64 (out of 100) points. At the Break, I'm in fifth with 61 points, just 3.5 out of second, 10 out of first. I have no idea how that happened.
My hitting is very good except for steals, where I'm dead last without hope of catching up to even 9th place. My pitching overall is very mediocre. The computer didn't draft me any closers, so I've spent the first half of the season scraping new closers off the waiver wire (Saito, Otsuka, and now Guardado); I even tried out Jorge Sosa, God help me. Harden and Ben Sheets have been on the DL most of the year, taking up my one DL slot plus a roster spot. I got lucky and picked up Francisco Liriano, who has been awesome and will make a great keeper for next season. Otherwise, I'm just picking up starting pitchers as the matchups look good.
The offense is pretty solid. We play five OF, plus one each of 1B/3B, 2B/SS, and DH, which makes it hard to have quality up and down the lineup, but I've managed it. Problem is, I haven't been able to turn any of these guys into pitching. ESPN makes it very difficult to make trades since every slot must be filled. If you trade an OF, you need either an OF back or one on your bench to cover it; catch is, you only have three bench spots. Yeah.
I have Konerko at 1B (#6), A-Rod at 3B (#3), and Jeter at SS (#2), so three-quarters of my infield is rock solid. All five of my OF are in the top 27 at the position, but I expect Dye (#7) and Matthews (#27) to drop off a lot over the second half. I'm going to try and move Dye for pitching, but it's tough going.
I'm going for the win this season, and I have three solid keepers ready for next year (A-Rod, Jeter, Liriano) and maybe a fourth (Gathright), so things are looking pretty good.
Gold Domers : Yahoo public (live draft) : 2nd place.
Considering the first place team cheated, I'm perfectly happy with second. Yes, it's possible to cheat. The now-last place team dumped most of his roster back in April; some of us were lucky enough to have good waiver picks (yours truly included) to grab those guys - hey if I hadn't, someone else would have, and did. But then the now-first place team went a step further: he traded some scrubs to the quitter for that team's best players.
I noticed it and posted it on the league message board, but not enough of the other owners paid enough attention to veto the deal, so it went through. So now the guy has built up a huge lead, with 98.5 (out of 120) points to my second place 83. Third place is at 81.5, and then everybody else follows.
This is a pretty well-balanced team across the board. Manny should start really turning it up soon, so that will help; but he and Wagner are the only stars on the team. Everybody else are second-tier guys.
Local Yokels : Yahoo public (auto draft) : 3rd place.
Not bad considering I missed the live draft, which means the computer drafted for me while most everyone else picked their teams. So, again, no closers, but I scraped together a bullpen good enough to put me in the middle of the saves pack, with some hope of moving up.
I think I'm too far behind the leaders (97 points (out of 120), 91.5, and then me at 82) to pose a real threat, but I can make things interesting. I'm right in the mix in several categories, so we'll see.
The second half begins today. The big trade deadline is only a couple weeks away. Then the dog days of August. Then the pennant races of September. Then the playoffs.
Baseball season just isn't long enough.