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…
