Fantasy Baseball Advice

Last time we checked in, we were 15 points in front of the pack in one league; yeah, lost that one.  And we were barely in first in another league, lost that one too.  In the Razzball points league, Grey was about 10,000 points up (estimate for exaggeration purposes); yup, came in 2nd there too.   If only we could blame a shirtless renegade for our losses. There’s no one to blame but Rudy.  Joking.  He won his league and a Carnivale Cruise to boot!  But we’ll get to that.  Let’s recap where it all went wrong for us.  You’ll like this.  After all, schadenfreude!  Anyway, here’s the fantasy baseball team updates:

Overall Razzball Commenters’ League Winner

Drumroll, please…. Mowses!  You have $50 worth of Taco Bell coupons coming your way. (Give me your email in the comments.)  Don’t spend the coupons all in one place.  Really, don’t.  You’ll get very sick.  And whatever you do don’t order a black taco.  I think I know how they decided on this new taco.  “We need to cut back on the quality of our meat.”  “But it’s already the lowest grade we can find.”  “Right, so what’s the best way to take the focus off of a downgrade in the meat?”  “Make the taco look disgusting.”  “I got it, a black taco!”  Enjoy, Mowses!

Overall Fantasy Razzball League Winner

Congratulations, Jay!  Taco Bell Coupons will be coming your way too.  (Give me your email in the comments.)  Get the black licorice tacos, I hear they’re wonderful!

15 Team, mixed league, 5×5; host: Tim of RotoRob, 2nd place.

Recap – Came down to .002 on average between us and number one.  (Everything was real close though; coulda gained a few points in WHIP with a .02 gain.  Or a few points in ERA with a .05 gain.)  We had some tough breaks — lost Peavy, Beltran, Hawpe and Ibanez in the 2nd half of the season.  Beltran was filled in by The Big FraGu, which is not a push, but it’s pretty close to a nudge at least.  Peavy was filled in by Kevin Correia (on our team, Correia had 72 innings and a line of 5 Wins, 1.88 ERA and a 1.13 WHIP).  We were stacked at starting pitching anyway because of some good drafting/trading — Gallardo, Haren, Josh Johnson and Randy Wolf (that’s stacked in a 15 team league).  Well, we don’t want any of these recaps to sound like crying over spilled milk.  In the end, as John Kruk said, the first place team wanted it more.

12 Team, mixed league, 5×5 (with OBP/SLG instead of AVG/HR) ; host: FSWA, 2nd place.

Recap – If we tried to put a “no excuses” vibe forward on the last recap, we’re not here.  We had excuses.  On this team, we lost Jose Reyes, Carlos Beltran/Quentin. This team was in shizzambles for about two months. We clawed our way to first for a second in September, but we didn’t have enough gas to finish the race and ended up getting a second in October.

16 Team, mixed league, 5×5; host: Andy Behrens of Yahoo! Roto Arcade, 5th place.

Recap – This team was the one that was in first by 15 points a little over a month ago.  In this league, we got freakin’ 3 points in Wins.  In 1319 2/3 innings, we won 65 games.  In the entire month of September, we had only 8 wins.  2 Wins a week.  You can do the math on how awful that is.  Oh, wait, that’s right, no excuses.  As with just about every team we owned, we lost Beltran here too.  Oh, then with a little over a month to go, and the power categories locked up, we traded Prince Fielder for Nyjer Morgan and Heath Bell.  We were really excited about this trade.  Honestly, when it went through, we thought this might get us the league win.  If Nyjer stole 15-20 bases in the last 40 games and Bell saved 10 games, we were golden.  Nyjer stole two bases for us in 3 games and went down for the year.  Bell did fine, but it didn’t matter.

10 Team, mixed league, Razzball format (worst team wins); host: Us, 2nd place (Grey’s team).

Recap – This was just Grey’s team.  I was so far out in front from April until the next to last week of September that I can’t believe I lost this league.  I mean, in over 5000 at-bats, my team only hit 79 homers.  That’s one homer every 63 at-bats.  That makes Brian L. Hunter shudder.  On the flip side, in 1729 and 2/3 innings, my pitching gave up 1030 runs.  That’s a 5.36 ERA.  Yeah, that Razztastic.  So, I didn’t lose this league, R.J. from Fantasy Baseball Cafe won it.  (Oh, in the overall standings, I beat Rudy.  Natch!)

12 Team, NL, 5×5; host: FantasyPros911, 1st place, 5 points in front.

Recap – Yes, Grey beat me in the Razzball league (aka worst team wins), but I brought home the lone 2009 Razzball pennant with a win in my first try at a classic one-league, $260 budget format.  It wasn’t easy as my May-September lead looked like a fleeting affair after Dick Santino jumped past me in the beginning of September and seemed a lock to win until the last week.  How’d I do it?  Looking back at my post reviewing my draft, I can’t pretend I had all the answers in the beginning of the year.  I just spread my fantasy dollars as far as it could go by drafting quantity instead of quality.  Despite having some bad injury luck (Volquez, Conor Jackson, Maine, late-season pickup Harang), having awful Win and AVG karma (2 and 4 points, respectively) and spending $40 on two painfully regressive catcher seasons (Russ Martin and Geovany Soto), I overcame it with the following good values: Mark Reynolds ($14), Jorge Cantu ($15), Michael Bourn ($8), Andrew McCutchen ($3), Randy Wolf ($3), Huston Street ($8) & Ryan Franklin ($4).  I’d take credit for drafting ROY-candidate J.A. Happ for $3 if I wasn’t dumb enough to drop him before he won the starting job in May.  Other big pickups/trades included Jonny Gomes (20 HRs in 255 ABs), Joey Votto (for Uggla and Ryan Franklin), Matt Holliday (a monster 2 months), LaTroy Hawkins (10 early saves), and Brad Penny (3 wins in 5 starts down the stretch).  Best part is that the winner of the league gets a cruise for two and I’ll make Grey buy me margaritas on the cruise.  Not sure what will be more delicious – the margaritas or the irony.

10 Team, mixed league, worst team wins; host: Us, 3rd place (Rudy’s team).

Recap – I came into this year as the defending champion but got beat up in the first month with ridiculous starts by Brandon Inge and Marco Scutaro.  At one point, I jumped ahead of eventual 2nd place finisher Paul Moro of UmpBump.com but soon fell back to 3rd place for good as Paul and Jonathan Halket of The Hardball Times Fantasy Focus smoked me.  I did finish 9th out of 88 in the grand standings but I probably could’ve edged closer to 6th if I didn’t fall asleep at the wheel during August/September (holy -124 points from a streaky J.D. Drew!).  I even lost out the bragging rights of drafting the top points recipient as my 1st round pick Michael Bourn (415 points) was just nipped by Jeremy Guthrie (418 points).  Ugh…

Homestretch time in the Razzball Commenter and Fantasy Razzball Leagues. Here is the latest…

In the Razzball Commenter League, Mowses (Home Plate Security) and Mil Mascaras (Tequila Two Step) are separated by a mere .46 points at the top. This looks like a two person race at this point as 3rd place PWNightmare is 9 points behind but crazier things have happened (see Lou Pinella benching Jake Fox to f*** my NL-only team).

In the Fantasy Razzball League, we don’t have quite the photo finish shaping up as Jay’s Willy Wonka crew continues to treat the field like a bunch of petulant Veruca Salts with his crop of bad eggs. His 7,077 points is over 600 points ahead of 2nd place Jonathan Halket of THT Fantasy Focus. The only race of note is whether my team can nip Grey’s for a 2nd straight year. Despite a couple weeks of letting a move and a vacation take my eye off the team, I’m only about 100 points behind him, residing in 9th to his 7th. I will be championing my inner Spaceball and flip the switch so my teams will go from suck to blow (apologies to those of you directed from search because of that coin of phrase).

It’s been a while since we checked in on our Razzball Commenter League and Fantasy Razzball League – mainly because I’ve been either on vacation or working like a dog for the past month.  Here it goes…

There’s been a big shakeup in the RCL Standings as previous leader Cruz Control (commenter Anthony) has dropped all the way to 7th as his Gorditas Supreme divisionmate Tijuana Two Step salsas into first.  The new leader – helmed by an unidentified manager whom we’d like to think is ex-WWF star Mil Mascaras – has a whopping 113 points (out of a possible 120) and actually has potential to gain a couple points in the last month.  A look at the masked manager’s Active Stats show that top teams don’t have to get every top draft pick right as Grady Sizemore, Matt Holliday, and David Ortiz are all relative disappointments.  Killer picks like A-Gonz, Joe Mauer, and a three-ace staff of Wainwright, Vazquez, and Beckett definitely helped as did key FA pickups like Kendry Morales, Andrew McCutchen, Ubaldo Jiminez, and Tommy Hanson.

Mowses (Home Plate Security) remains in 2nd with PWNightmare (Halie Selassie Lions of Judah) hopping three spots to 3rd.  Slidenfail ftw and Widespread Panic leapfrogged 10 and 7 spots respectively to crash the top 10.

As for the Fantasy Razzball League, Jay (Willy Wonka) has established a near insurmountable 600+ point lead on second place Jonathan Halket of THT Fantasy Focus.  Paul Moro of UmpBump has chumpbumped his way from 6th to 3rd while Grey and I are now only one spot away from each other in the standings (Grey – 7th, me – 8th).  While it’s sad knowing I’ll have to relinquish last year’s Razzball crown, I hope I can at least have bragging rights in the Razzball office.

BTW Grey, you really need to clean the break room fridge – I know you love your SAGNOF but it doesn’t stand for “Spaghettios Are Great Nasty Old Food”….

It’s been about a month or so since our last update on where we is/are.  We’ve been sitting in first in a few leagues and have gone from the top to the middle to the bottom of the pack of one league then back to 2nd.  Okay, updates done.  So what about your teams?  I keed.  I’ll go over some outstanding moves (there’s been a few) and some clunkers (none as bad as Hochevar).  Anyway, here’s our fantasy baseball team updates:

15 Team, mixed league, 5×5; host: Tim of RotoRob, Currently in 1st place, 1 point in front.

Key Pickup – The Big FraGu has a line of 8/4/13/.341/2 so far on our team.  Get well soon!  I fully expect him to be dropped from this team by the next time we do an update, but so far so genius.  Also, two days before Ramon Hernandez went to the DL — but about two months after he was viable — we used our waiver claim and grabbed Napoli.  He’s hit two homers so far for us.  Not really sure why he was dropped in this deep of a league, let alone why he fell to us at 14 out of fifteen teams in the waiver process.  But we’ll take it.

Debilitating Loss – Carlos Beltran will be a recurring theme in our debilitating loss slot for all of our teams.  So far in this league FraGu’s held up his end of the bargain.

16 Team, mixed league, 5×5; host: Andy Behrens of Yahoo! Roto Arcade, Currently in 1st place, 14.5 points in front.

Key Pickup – Garrett Jones.  Need I say more.  Okay, I will.  I wish I grabbed Jones in every league I was in.  Even in my league that only use players with the last name Rzepczynski.  BTW, Garrett Jones was dropped and we needed to use our waiver claim for him, so if you wanna Razz my leaguemates in the comments, go for it.

Debilitating Loss – Jones filled in for Beltran here.  Also, we lost Kelly Johnson, but that probably helped us, even if EverCab and Lowrie have been less than ideal.

12 Team, mixed league, 5×5 (with OBP/SLG instead of AVG/HR) ; host: FSWA, Currently in 2nd place, 3.5 points out of first.

Key Pickup – On this team, we lost Jose Reyes (actually we never had him because I made the boneheaded trade of Adam Dunn for him around the time of the Mets first lie saying he’d be back tomorrow – which was almost two months ago), then we lost Carlos Beltran/Quentin, then lost Bedard (have since traded him), then had to deal with owning Gerardo Parra for three weeks.  This team was in shizzambles for about a month.  (At the last update we were down to 4th. We fell to 8th at one point.) But we scrambled and made some trades.  I sent Broxton and Bedard away for Carlos Lee and sent Scherzer away for Bourn.  Luckily, we had a 20+ save lead on the pack and were able to do the Broxton trade, while hurting in steals and Scherzer can’t get passed the fifth inning so the 2nd one seemed like a no-brainer.  (The Reyes trade was supposed to help with steals, obviously it did not.)  Right now, I’m proudest of this team because of how hard of a struggle it’s been. When this team tanks again, it will again be the redheaded stepchild.

Debilitating Loss – Did you miss the Key Pickup section where I went over how many guys we lost?

12 Team, NL, 5×5; host: FantasyPros911, Currently in 1st place, 9 points in front.

Key Pickup – This is Rudy’s team. (I’m merely a consultant.)  I can’t speak for Rudy, and he’s off in some far away world doing spy stuff, but I will wonder aloud on this.  Fantasy Pros 911 did about 16 updates of this league on their site when they were in first.  I don’t think there’s been one since they dropped to 8th.  Cust kayin’.

Key Trade – Rudy just sent Huston Street packing for Stephen Drew.  When trading any closer for a top SS in an NL-Only league, you gotta love that.  Especially when you’ve got about two times the saves as 10 of the other 11 teams.

Debilitating Loss – Rudy’s in first, and that’s with Conor Jackson, Volquez, Maine, and Soto being hurt.  Oh, and Rudy dropped J.A. Happ for Eric Stultz.  But Rudy’s a huge fan of the movie Mask.

We’re a little over the halfway mark in baseball so why not check in on our leagues…

First up, the Fantasy Razzball League. Jay – a Razzball commenter – is ahead of a pack which includes 30 bloggers and 50 other participants. The rest of the top five are Mike Podhorzer from FantasyPros911 (who is overdue for a league update in our NL-only league), Jonathan Halket of The Hardball Times Fantasy Focus, our own Grey Albright and Razzball commenter Freak in 5th. I’m in 7th place and it’s going to take a ridiculous 2nd half to try and defend my Fantasy Razzball title from last year.

In our Razzball Commenter leagues, there’s a 3-way battle for first with Anthony, Mowses, and an unnamed entry whose team goes by ‘Tijuana Two Step’. All three are above 100 points in their 12 team leagues which is pretty damn impressive. The craziest part is that Anthony and Tijuana are in the same league with the next team nearly 30 points out. The team known as “I said You’ve Got No Game’ is in 4th followed closely with Rhymenocerous (no sign of Hiphoppotamus), PWNightmare, ThirdandKing, and Doc.

Here are a few blogger shoutouts for those that are still battling in the Fantasy Razzball league:

R.J. White from the Fantasy Baseball Cafe is just outside the Top 10. For those unfamiliar with the Cafe, it’s full of lively debate and the perfect place to take a date if your date is your right hand. I personally like the brick wall on the home page – makes me feel like I’m at some 80’s comedy joint like the Chuckle Shack or Giggles.

The Fantasy Baseball Junkie is lurking just outside the Top 20 – like a sugar junkie loiters in the back of a Dunkin’ Donuts when they chuck the old batch. The Junkie has some good advice and definitely showed some prescience predicting Nyjer Morgan and Scott Hairston would be traded only a couple days before they did.