Fantasy Baseball Advice

With apologies to the great baseball writers that are from KC and/or write about the Royals (Bill James, Rob Neyer, Joe Posanaski), we decided to honor the Royals’ acting like a real sports team for the past 15 years by converting their roster into the best combination of sports and acting there is:  professional wrestling.

C:  Miguel “Tiger Chung” Olivo
1B: Mike “The Snake” Jacobs
2B: Mark ‘The Miz” Teahen
SS:  “Iron” Mike Aviles
3B: Alex “The Commissioner” Gordon
OF:  David “The Man of 1000 Yawns” DeJesus
OF:  Coco ‘B Ware’ Crisp
OF:  Jose “The Animal” Guillen
DH:  Billy “King Kong” Butler

Bench:  “Captain Lou” Alberto Callaspo
Bench:  Kila “Kowalski” Kaaihue
Bench:  Leaping Willie Bloomquist
Bench:  John “Million Dollar Man” Buck
Bench:  Gloadberg (Ross Gload)

P:  Gil “The Rotator Cuff” Meche
P:  Zack “The Missing Link” Greinke
P:  Brian “The Brain” Bannister
P:  Sidney “Gorilla” Ponson
P:  Luke HocheVar Erich
P:  Joakim “Superfly” Soria
P:  The Worthless Relievers – Brandon Duckworth and Kyle Farnsworth
P:  Ravishing Ron Mahay
Best Historical Royals Wrestler:  Paul “Mr. Wonderful” Splittorff

Runner-up:  Dan “Special Delivery” Quisenberry

Juan Pierre is like a piece of paper.  You fold his ABs in half but it just makes him twice as strong.  People scoffed last year when I boldly kept my HR projection for Juan Pierre roughly the same (0.5 from 0.6) despite seeing his projected ABs go from 615 to 350.

Let’s see what happened:

Rudy Gamble’s pre-season projections:
350 AB, 0.5 HR, 24 RBI

Juan Pierre’s actual stats:
375 AB, 1 HR, 28 RBI

Yes, Juan Pierre hit the HR.  Thanks to a 2-run blast on September 15th against a Pirate hurler named Marino Salas to ‘deep RF’.

Pierre increased his HR output by #DIV/0!% vs. 2007 despite a 44% decrease in ABs from 2007.  I’ve looked at the stats for tons of power hitters and no one has been able to increase HRs by that type of percentage even when they increased AB from the previous season.

So what is on tap for 2009?  Well, I have Pierre projected for 280 ABs which is about a 20% drop from 2008.  But I’m going to project him for a Herculean 1.3 HRs.  That’s a 30% increase vs. his 2008 actuals and 160% over my 2008 projection.

I’m doubling down on  you, Juan.  Don’t let me down!

Fantasy baseball fans and bloggers (ourselves included) sometimes fail to appreciate the human toll that baseball takes on its participants.  They are not just statistics, commodities, and tabloid stories.  They are flesh and blood.

Joe Torre and SI’s Tom Verducci recently penned ‘The Yankee Years’, a book that provided a glimpse into the challenges that a manager on a high-profile team must endure – the pressure to succeed, the delicate balance of egos, the difficulties in finding relievers that can pitch 120 games a year and still perform in the postseason, etc.

The career paths of Buddy Bell and Joe Torre had many parallels.  Both followed up 18-year playing careers with some unsuccessful coaching stints (Torre @ NYM + ATL + STL, Buddy @ DET + COL, ) before surprisingly being tapped for the coaching job in which they are most synonymous:  Torre with the Yankees and Bell with the Royals.

Perhaps, then, it is only fitting that Buddy Bell is releasing his first book only a couple months after Joe Torre released his book.  We enjoy learning from coaches – see Tony LaRussa – and were overjoyed to receive an advanced copy of Bell’s memoir on his time with the Kansas City Royals (2005-2007).

Following are excerpts from ‘The Royal Years’ By Buddy Bell and SI (and formerly Kansas City Star) journalist Joe Posnanski:

Dealing with player egos:

Every player on the roster has a different personality and a manager needs to be able to push the right buttons.  In 2006 Spring Training, our star outfielder Emil Brown was coming off a monster season (17 HR / 86 RBI ) and felt a sense of entitlement over some of the other players.  I brought him into my office and told him, “You may be the best outfielder on the Royals but I can think of 29 major league teams and several AAA squads that wouldn’t sign you off waivers if we dropped you.”  He found his edge and had another blockbuster season for us (15 HR / 81 RBI)…….We had a tight squad in 2005.  A team that wasn’t built around stars.  But everything changed when ownership made a big splash in the free agent market and signed Doug Mientkiewicz and Reggie Sanders.  Mientkiewicz, in particular, created a strain in the clubhouse with his 2004 championship ring (from the Red Sox) and expectation of winning.  He just rubbed guys the wrong way and it became progressively worse as he tried to ingratiate himself.  The guys in the clubhouse started calling him ‘Make-a-Wish’ because he always insisted on buying rounds of drinks or paying for dinners and the players felt he was doing it out of pity…

Battling with GMs/front office:

I had been hired by Allard Baird and I always knew where he stood.  If we had a blue-chip outfielder that we weren’t sure we could afford to sign, I knew Billy Beane would take him out for ribs and get him to accept a crappy shortstop in return (see Damon and Dye trades).  But I never had that same chemistry with Dayton Moore.  From the first time we met and I accidentally called him Dinty, I felt he never trusted me.  He’d send me notes throughout games like “Is Mike Sweeney sitting on the specially designed ergonomic clubhouse seat?” or “Can you go to the bullpen and see if Zack is okay?”….I remember in June 2007 when we were already out of the playoff race and ticket sales were down so the board decided on a 5% layoff in every division.  Next thing I know, our ‘25-man roster’ was cut to 24 men and Dayton came down to the clubhouse and was giving a pep talk about “doing more with less” and “try to use less pitchers per game so we can keep the water bill down”.

Managing relationship with a difficult owner (ex-Walmart CEO David Glass):

I had our training staff take a look at a sore neck I developed from watching our pitching staff in action and they wrote me a bill saying that I wasn’t covered under the team’s health insurance plan.  I marched into The Boss’s office and asked whether this was a mistake and he told me, “Buddy, I think you’re a great manager but I’ve managed plenty of managers over at Wal*Mart.  These guys worked 60 hours a week, 52 weeks a year.  You work only a little more than 6 months a year.  If I start giving you health insurance, all the part-time employees are going to want health insurance.  You know how much it would cost to provide health insurance to all the peanut slingers and grounds crew we employ?”  Sometimes there was no getting through to him……When I went in at the end of 2007, I told Dayton, “Look, this was a tough year.  This isn’t about the money.  I can’t go through another year as a lame duck.  Just tell David to give me a two year contract but I’ll probably be committed to a psyche ward after the first year.”  But when I got into the meeting, they came back with a 1 year offer at minimum wage with incentives based on overtime and time-and-a-half on weekends.  I was flabbergasted.  I mentioned how demeaning it would be for a major league coach to accept an hourly wage – let alone minimum wage – and David replied, “You said it wasn’t about the money.”  I suppose he had me there but at least they could’ve offered the 2nd year!

Which one is Peter Gammons? You make the call… (They are best played simultaneously.)

Today we are going to examine the most important fantasy baseball-related decision you will make all year: Choosing a team name.

Now, some of you will read this and say, “Dude, I’ve been calling my team the Jim Rice-A-Ronis since ‘82 and I ain’t gonna change that now.” To which I say, “Godspeed, sir! You are a San Francisco Treat!”

Others will say, “Dude, the kind folk at Razzball have offered up this handy fantasy baseball team name generator for the team-name-impaired, and I’ve made good use of it, christening my 2009 squad the Rabid Booty Shorts.*” To which I say, “Godspeed to you too, sir! You are also, in your own way, a San Francisco treat.”

(*Real-name suggestion I actually received. Excellent.)

However, there are those of us who are constantly, heroically, obsessively striving to find that better, perfect name. For example, as an impressionable teenager, the Baron would sit in his bedroom while other kids were chasing skirts and lighting bottle rockets and I’d study the original Rotisserie League Baseball guide (represent!). I always marveled at the clever team names contained therein. Dan Okrent ran the Okrent Fenokies! Steve Wulf piloted the Wulfgang! Michael Pollet captained the Pollet Burros (think Soviet Russia)! Cork Smith helmed the Smith Coronas!

My favorite team name by far, though, belonged to Rob Fleder, who ran the Fleder Mice. This was a pun on Die Fledermaus, an operetta by Johan Strauss, the title of which means “The Bat” or, translated literally, “The Flutter Mouse.” DO YOU SEE HOW CLEVER THAT IS? Yes! Did I understand that reference at all when I was sixteen years old? Of course not! I barely understand it now!

But from that moment on, I was hooked on fantasy names like some kids are hooked on heroin and others are hooked on phonics.

Sadly, the Baron’s Christian name is not as pun friendly as, say, Steve Wulf. And my knowledge of Strauss is lacking. So I have been forced to adopt other fantasy-team-naming strategies. Over the years, I’ve scoured the globe to collect the deadliest, wickedest, most fearsome team-naming techniques (as well as some absolute clunkers), which I will share with you today. (Then, in the comments, I hope you will share your favorite/most regrettable team names of yore, so they can be celebrated/mocked accordingly.)

Without further ado, here is everything you ever wanted to know about how to – and how not to — name your fantasy team:

1. The Pun-On-Favorite-Player’s-Name Names. Personally, I just don’t get this approach. I mean, I understand the part about how you love Ichiro Suzuki or Cole Hamels or Albert Pujols. I even see the charm of names like Honey-Nut Ichiros or Hamels Toe or Albert’s Poo Holes. What I don’t understand is WHAT HAPPENS IF YOU TRADE THAT GUY? Seriously, you have a whole team of players walking around with HONEY NUT ICHIROS emblazoned on their chests, and Ichiro’s not even on the team? That is bad for clubhouse morale. Plus, if you ever meet Albert Pujols in a bar, do you really want to start the conversation by saying, “Hey, I once had a team called the Poo Holes.” No, you do not. GRADE: C

2. The Pun-On-Your-Hometown-Team’s-Name Names. I think this is more popular in Fantasy Football, or at least that’s what I gathered from that pretty amusing ESPN commercial with those teams named Behind the Steel Curtain and Boston TD Party and what not. The Baron doesn’t play fantasy football. Is this site called RazzFootball? If this method appeals to you, go over to a fantasy football site, read about Anquan Boldin, then name your team The Boldin The Beautiful. You’re welcome. GRADE: D

3. Dirty Sports Puns. Ah, an old chestnut. (In fact, the team name The Old Chestnuts could conceivably belong in this category, if this was 1852.) Here’s a more current example: The Backdoor Sliders. Think about it! Personally, the Baron doesn’t go this route, being a gentleman of refined humors. But he fully respects that there’s a good argument to be made for simply calling your team Balls Deep every single year. GRADE: B

4. Timely References to Current Events. This is probably the most popular naming convention in my current league. Our winner last year was called the B-12 Chewables, which I liked. (I liked his name from the year before even better: A-Rod Drinks Zima. It’s funny because it’s true.) Last year, mid-election, we had two different teams with puns on Obama-related hope slogans. The upside: People think you are smart about politics. The downside: You spend all year with a team called the Audacious Hopers. Worth it? I think not. GRADE: C plus.

5. Olde-tyme baseball players. Now we’re talking! Olde-tyme players have funny names/nicknames. Also, this scores you points with other players who assume you are some sort of tweedy baseball historian, when all you did was Google “old-time baseball player nicknames.” My favorite such player’s name? Urban Shocker. My favorite ever personal team name? The Urban Shockerz. We urbanely shocked our way to a championship. P.S. I added the Z to attract the kids to our merchandise. Kidz love the Z! GRADE: A

6. Arcane baseball rules/slang. Another good way to fake-impress your buddies. (You know who this will not impress? Ladies.) My favorite arcane rule: “Fielder’s Indifference,” i.e. an official scoring decision that a runner should not get credited with a stolen base because the fielders let him advance uncontested. It also sounds like a play by Samuel Beckett starring Vance and Rudy Law. As RCL alum will remember, my team last year was called the Indifferent Fielders. Trust me, they played like they were indifferent. Verdict: Too clever by half. GRADE: B minus.

7. Walt Whitman quotes. There’s a good one about baseball – they used it in Bull Durham. (Cue Susan Sarandon): “I see great things in baseball. It will take our people out-of-doors, fill them with oxygen, give them a larger physical stoicism, tend to relieve us from being a nervous, dyspeptic set, repair those losses and be a blessing to us.” The Baron regrets to inform you that, in a fit of toxic pretentiousness, he once called a team the Dyspeptic Set. As karmic payback, he got saddled with Jeff Francouer. Thanks a lot, Walt Whitman! GRADE: F

8. Humiliating Childhood Nicknames/ Derogatory Personal Slang. This is my new favorite source of team names. It’s like you’re turning the table on the bullies by winning some fantasy league they will never hear about! WHO’S THE DORK NOW? The Baron, as all the finest concubines of Europe are aware, is a natural redhead. Apparently, in Australia, there is a derogatory slang term for redheads: “Fanta Pants.” Get it? ‘Cause Fanta, the drink, is orange. Orange in the pants. Personally, the Baron thinks this is more derogatory toward Australians. But no matter! I’ve flipped the script and found my team name for ‘09. Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you: The Fighting Fanta Pants. GRADE: AWESOME.