Fantasy Baseball Advice

The final results are in and I tested negative!  Oh, wait, this is for the fantasy baseball leagues.  Um, yeah, ignore that first sentence.  This year in an unprecedented move of unprecedented size and bubbles.  We’re giving away a hot tub to the Fantasy Razzball winner.  I believe it’s a time machine too! (It is not a time machine and any ability to travel through time probably has something to do with your flux capacitor.)  If you didn’t win this year, don’t worry, there’s always 2011!  (Then 2012 is up in the air, according to the Mayans.)  Anyway, here’s the fantasy baseball league updates:

Overall Razzball Commenters League Winner

Drumroll, please… Nobody Beats the Wiz!  More like, Whiz!  (See what I did there?  Yeah, I’m not sure either.)    Nice showing, Wiz.  The prizes headed NBtW’s way is a trophy from Clay Trophies from our very own commenter, Tony.  An old school, shiny varsity jacket from commenters, Adam and The Real Tom For Real.  And, finally, a phone call of congratulations from a real live celebrity, who may or may not be drunk.  Depends if Wiz chooses Mr. Belding.  Wiz, please put your email in the comments so I can lavish you with prizes.

Overall Fantasy Razzball Winner

The people at Dreammaker Spas were nice enough to donate a hot tub priced at $3,199.  Crazy, you say.  I say, sour grapes because you didn’t win.  Maybe our winner will host the 1st Annual Razzball convention and we can ‘jacuzze’ a little, though it may become painfully obvious how few girl readers we actually have.  Did someone forget to order buns for all of these sausages? That’s me talking at our hypothetical hootenanny.  Neverthehoo!  Our winner is… I Am the Liquor!  Now go take a soak.  You earned it!  (Put your email in the comments so I can hook you up, and if you live in an apartment, get your landlord on the phone because you’re about to put a hot tub in your living room.)

Our leagues came out like this, “Blah blah blah 2nd place blah blah blah 3rd place blah blah blah 3rd place blah blah blah.”  I was in more leagues than I’m recapping, but some were leagues Rudy manned the wheel.  Some we co-managed.  And others are private leagues.  (And, honestly, I got to around 1000 words and started to feel like I was writing the Wikipedia entry for World War II so I pulled up.)  These three leagues I take most of the responsibility for:

20 Team, mixed league, 5×5; host: Not Entirely Sure, 2nd place.

Recap – I blew away the league in pitching.  20 points in Wins, Saves, Ks, ERA and a 19.5 in WHIP.  To say I made all the right moves in pitching is an understatement.  I had Heath Bell, Billy Wagner, Leo Nunez (while he was good), Jonathan Sanchez and Cliff Lee, who I traded right away after he was traded to Texas.  My obvious maladroit (if that’s being used correctly) was my hitting.  Prince Fielder took the junk from his trunk and gave it to me in RBIs.  Ryan Braun had his worst year yet.  Why did I have Johnny Damon on a team?   And Lance Berkman?  Oh, crimey.  Those were the negatives.  The positives:  Kelly Johnson, Casey McGehee and did I mention my pitching?   I also traded Alcides and Beckham for Stephen Drew on July 13th.  I won that trade.  You can look up Drew’s 2nd half stats if you don’t believe me.  I would’ve won the league with 8 more homers, i.e., one decent two-week stretch by Prince Fielder and Braun.  I will now go and get my shine box.

14 Team, mixed league, 5×5; host:  Brandon Funston, 3rd place

Recap – Had an ERA of 2.93 (1st place) and WHIP of 1.18 (3rd place) and a shizzload of Ks (3rd place).  Unfortunately, we only got 8 points from Wins.  As is a recurring theme in my leagues, I drafted F-Her and Jonathan Sanchez and they powered my pitching, except Wins.  Here’s my draft:

Punted catcher and 3rd base, middle and corner infidel and the last four rounds, in retrospect.  (I dropped Bumgarner before he was called up.)  Catching duties ended up going to Napoli; middle infield turned out okay with Desmond, corner infield ended up going to Dunn and the hitting worked out fine.  A 13 in homers, 12 in steals with a 9 in runs as my lowest hitting category.  What really killed me was the Wins and, surprisingly, Saves, where I got a 5.  I’m not bragging when I say I never struggle in saves.  Just couldn’t put the S in SAGNOF for this league.  I lost K-Rod to his ‘Someone Else’s Daddy’ issues, lost Fuentes to an Angels trade and Jenks to a trade I made, Sam I am.  I grabbed Hisanori, Hensley, Madson, Wuertz, League and Gutierrez.  Didn’t matter, I needed 19 more saves to get an extra 5 points and it never happened.  Too bad, so sad.

13 teams, mixed league, 5×5, host: Scott Pianowski, 3rd Place

Recap – Let’s jump right into the draft for this one:

This team’s flaw coming out of the draft appeared to be pitching. In-season, the flaw turned into a little bit of a lot of categories, except HRs and RBIs.  Didn’t finish below 7th anywhere, didn’t win any categories besides the aforementioned ones.  (BTW, all of these Guerrier late round picks were because at the time he was fighting with Rauch for closing duties.  Yeah, he lost.)  Figgy sucked dog balls; I hate him.  Best part of Jason Bay’s season was the concussion.  Slowey lived up to my expectations for John Lackey and I dropped Lackey after about 3 starts.  Obvious value picks were Hamilton, Latos, Dunn, Choo, McCann, Weaver, Ervin and Oswalt.  Biggest pickup you’re not seeing here is Kelly Johnson who had 26 homers and 13 steals on my team.  Jaime Garcia helped too for a few months.  And put that in one hand and coming in third in the other hand and you have two empty hands with carpal tunnel.

It’s been a while since we took a look at my teams because I don’t think many people really care how my teams are doing.  It’s like when your friends tell you about the cutest thing their kid did.  Jimmy lost his first tooth!  Yeah, that’s nice as I mark your email as spam.  We’ve been sitting within striking distance of first in a few leagues and have gone from the top to the middle in a few leagues.  Okay, updates done.  So what about your teams?  Kidding.  I’ll go over some outstanding moves and some clunkers.  Oh, and since you really do only care about your teams — the RCL Standings and the Fantasy Razzball Standings were updated.  Anyway, here’s our fantasy baseball team updates:

14 Team, Roto, 5×5, host:  Brandon Funston of Yahoo, Currently in 2nd place

Key Pickup – Mike Napoli saved us from Quad-A All-Star, Jeff Clement.  In 82 ABs, Napoli has a 15/6/16/.293/1 line and 6 vaffanculo’s from Scioscia.  Justin Duchscherer worked for us for about 5 starts until Dr. Freeze came calling.  Brad Penny also helped us for about 50 innings.  Or should I say Dave Duncan helped us?  Really haven’t had many other game changing pickups.  Yet.  Muahahahahahahaha…

Key Trades – Were the first ones to grab Justin Smoak then traded him immediately for Ryan Madson and Everth Cabrera, which is neither here nor thurrrrr, Mystikal.  Traded Jenks the first week of the season for Maybin and Liriano.  Liriano alone makes the trade in our favor; Maybin was obviously dropped.  Finally, we traded Gardner for Polanco.  Trading steals to fix our 2nd baseman shituation (damn you, Desmond) helped us, but can’t say Gardner’s been bad.  I’m sure the other ‘pert is happy with the trade’s results too.

14 Team, H2H, 6×6 (OPS and Holds), host: Andy Behrens of Yahoo, Currently in 4th place

Key Trades – During the first week of the season, we traded Carlos Pena for Andrew McCutchen.  Since the team we traded him to is now in 13th place, I’d say we did okay with the trade.  Natch!  But we’re still in 4th.  Snap!  Before the season began, we traded Rafael Soriano for Matt Garza.  In a league that has Holds, which discounts closers, I think this trade worked out for us.  Though Soriano obviously hasn’t been bad.

Debilitating Loss – Incredibly, the loss of EverCab has hurt the most.  We’ve basically been punting shortstop for the last month.  Not literally punting as in not starting anyone, but the choices haven’t been great.  Jason Donald mean anything to you?  Good, it shouldn’t.  Just yesterday, I traded Carlos Santana for Yunel Escobar.  Not a glamorous trade, but with McCann at catcher and Donald at short it was one that needed to be done.

20 Team, Roto, 5×5, host:  Not Even Sure, Currently in 5th place

Key Pickups – John Ely has been representing for adverbs everywhere.  In 37 1/3 innings, 3.13 ERA and a 1.18 WHIP.  In a 20 team league, that’s a’ight.

Debilitating Loss – Can I count drafting Alcides and Beckham?  Don’t even want to know how many terrible ABs these two schmohawks have given me.  A combined 37/3/20/.237/5 in 308 ABs!!!  I’ll be right back, I’m going to stick my head in the oven.

13 Team, Roto, 5×5, host:  Scott Pianowski, Currently in 6th Place

Key Pickups – Jaime Garcia has 40 innings and a 1.79 ERA for the team.  Though he also has a 1.49 WHIP so I’m expecting him to fall back to earth hard any day now.

Debilitating Loss – 6th place makes it sound like this team is much worse than it is.  Our team hasn’t looked bad besides Jason Bay, McCann, de la Rosa, Kemp, Markakis, Figgins, Teixeira, Slowey, Trevor Hoffman… Wait, this team is crap.  If Bay, Kemp, Figgy, Tex, McCann and Markakis can even glimpse their past glory, then I might have a shot.  Right now, I’m a middle of the pack team hoping for a miraclakakis.

It was the best of teams – it was the worst of teams.  Yes, I’m breaking out some Dickensian prose to paint my NL-only and AL-only teams as May comes to a close.

Let’s start with the worst team as that’s always more interesting – my AL-only team in a FantasyPros911-sponsored league.  While my pre-season stats had me projected in 2nd place, I was never confident in this team.  After a week of box scores where my whole lineup besides my two catchers (Mauer, K. Suzuki) were hitting 7th/8th/9th in their respective lineups, I realized my R/RBI weren’t going to be good as projected.

If it was just that, I should’ve at least managed to be middle of the pack.  But this team had a secret suckiness weapon and that was the power of injury.  Here are the guys I’ve drafted who’ve gone on the DL post-draft:

Curtis Granderson ($26), Cliff Lee ($22), Kurt Suzuki ($14), Kerry Wood ($13), Travis Snider ($12), Nick Johnson ($12), JJ Hardy ($11), Jack Wilson ($3), Matt Harrison (FA)

That’s a total of $113 out of $260 budget that spent at least 2 weeks on the DL in the first two months of the year.  If you count Joe Mauer’s week off for a bruised heel ($33), over half my budget has gone to fragility.  There are obviously a few injury-prone guys but it’s still a kick to the nuts when 3 of your top 5 guys (Granderson, Lee, Kurt Suzuki) miss significant time.

In addition, I managed to draft two DFA’s (Pat Burrell and Eric Byrnes) and miss every single fluke – e.g., Ty Wigginton, Andruw Jones, Jose Guillen, Paul Konerko.

Suffice to say, this team has been awful.  I’m in last place with 33 points and the best case appears to be a rung or two above last place. It’s fitting I drafted David Murphy on this team since his law is treating my team like a male Doberman treats a female poodle.

Now to the positive team – my NL-only team as part of a KFFL-sponsored league.  I’m currently in a 4-way battle at the top of the standings.  I cobbled together a top offense despite using 2 of my top 5 draft picks on pitching (it was a snake draft vs. auction).  I punted catcher until the 20th round and fell into Rod Barajas.  Dan Uggla has been on fire.  Jose Reyes has at least been healthy.  Jonny Gomes has more than made up for my drafting of Elijah Dukes.  And guys like Adam LaRoche, Jayson Werth, Placido Polanco, and Garrett Jones have all provided solid contributions.  Even better, no injuries except Eric Young Jr.

My Lincecum/Hamels-led staff had an awful April as my 2nd-tier starters of Kyle Lohse, Homer Bailey, Charlie Morton, and Clayton Richard couldn’t buy a win and – the first three especially – put up some awful starts.  My Wins, ERA, and WHIP have all bounced back in May as I dropped Lohse, shelved Morton, and got some solid starts out of Bailey (before he got injured), Richard, and a FA bargain in John Ely.

Assuming I don’t get barraged with injuries, I’m feeling really good about this NL-only team.

That’s it for now…will provide another update at the All-Star Break…

Fantasy Razzball Standings are up!  Click here for the standings.  We’ve added a link to the left sidebar for the standings page as well.  We’ll try to update it every week or so.

Early congrats to Minor League Miner, the unidentified owner of the Flailin’ Mendozas (is that you, Mil Mascaras?), and Troy Patterson of RotoSavants.com and FireBrandAL.com

Good luck to all those in the running for the free DreamMaker Spa!

We’ve posted the first update of the Razzball Commenter League (RCL) Master Standings! All 21 leagues (252 teams) are included.  We’ve added a permalink in the left sidebar as well for easy access to future updates.  We’ll do our best to update it every week or so.

A team’s points are calculated as Points in League * Competitive League Index/100

Leagues are indexed based on the overall performance of the league using the following points formulas that were devised by Tom Tango for his projections contest where, incidentally, I finished in the top half for 2009 and I’m competing again in 2010.  (Note:  For RCL leagues, I tweaked his Save multiplier from 1 to 1.5 and using some wizardry to estimate AB and IP).

Hitters:  (HR + SB + (H – .27*AB) + R/3 + RBI/3)
Pitchers: 2*W + 1.5*SV + K/5 + 2*W + SV + K/5 + IP – (H + BB + ER)/2

The average league gets an index of 100.  At this point, the lowest index is 98 and the highest is 103.  Basically, this index just serves as a tiebreaker should two teams have similar point totals at the end of the year.

If you want to boast or complain about your team, feel free to comment on this post or, better yet, comment in the dedicated forums section.

Two last items of business:

1) If you want your commenter handle added to the standings, please comment on this post with your RCL team name.

2) Early congrats to ‘Nobody Beats the Wiz!’ and team swpayton who are 1st and 2nd respectively.