Did you get my email via RCL?

In their defense, Cutler broke his finger on the first play, Hall carried twice and both resulted in a fumble, Champ put the clamp on Moss till he left with a pulled groin, then lo and behold, Moss catches a TD.

We can’t win without Cutler and Champ, oh, and our defense sucks, did I mention that?

It’s not de-fault of de-hippo.

Rams are playing good right now because of the coaching change. Trust me, it won’t last. As soon as sombody hits them in the mouth they’ll start losing again.

Cowboys don’t have to do anything to get all the headlines on ESPN. In fact, all they did was lose again, to a woefully pathetic Rams team.

“Who the Rays gotta blow to get some respect around Bristol?” — Not sure now. But Harold Reynolds will always gladly accept a BJ.

What happened with the Cowboys that has them in the news?

Did you watch Sportscenter? Typical ESPN, talked about the prima-donna Cowboys for 15 minutes before even mentioning the Rays. If Boston would have won last night it would be all Sawx talk, all the time.

Who the Rays gotta blow to get some respect around Bristol?

EDIT: Missing word… Word!

Buddy of mine lost a tatoo that way, it still says LOVE on his right hand but the other hand just says HAT.

Who cares about the 40th ranked pitcher?

The big question is: How did that Steve Harvey Show episode end the other night?

I believe the trigger finger point goes for hitters and pitchers. Take Brett Myers. No one held onto him when he went to the minors. He returned with value. But lots of hitters go through awful cold spells too and then have value. I remember one commenter in the beginning of the year asked if they should pickup Victorino when he was dropped. At the time, Werth was starting in front of him. See wasn’t clear cut then.

@BSA: re: new login — ha!

My pre-Razz team was so bad I couldn’t handle posting it due to the onslaught of abuse and the need to reinvent as another login.

a) There are basically four ways to acquire players: 1) draft him ; 2) pick up an undrafted player from the free-agent pool; 3) pick up a drafted player after he’s dropped; 4) acquire him in a trade.

You might think 2 and 3 are the same thing, but there’s an important distinction, addressed below.

Now, my gut tells me that useful pitchers are more easily acquired over the course of the season than are useful hitters. Why? Well, both can be drafted, so that’s a wash. Both can be traded for; again, let’s call it a wash.

But it seems there are many more useful pitchers who emerge from the FA pool every year than there are hitters (this year, depending on league-depth/aptitude: Lee, Dempster, Danks, Saunders, Greinke, Floyd, Baker, Slowey, Gallaraga, Wellemeyer — basically, a large chunk of #s 21-40, above. What undrafted top 40 hitters emerged? Just glancing at Yahoo!’s top 40: Ludwick, Huff, Quentin, Nady, Cantu, McLouth… who else? Did I miss anyone?)

And it seems much more likely you can get a useful pitcher that’s been dropped by someone else than it is that you’ll get a useful hitter that way. I certainly know I was much more patient this year with Frenchy than with, say, Derek Lowe. As mentioned above, Lilly was dropped in my league. Kinda dumb, but a reasonable reaction to a mid-tier starter having a slow start. (In some, dumber leagues, Sabathia was dropped early — but if that happened in your league, get a new league.)

In fact, items 2 and 3 are connected — it stands to reason that, the more appealing alternatives are available as FAs, the more itchy people are with their droppin’ fingers. (See Lowe.)

So: The acquisition of useful (not elite, but useful) pitchers would seem to be much easier over the season than that of useful hitters. From there, it would seem to make sense to focus on drafting hitters. (Again, I’m arguing this in theory, having not had the sack to do it in practice, yet).

Take this argument to its extreme — in the case of closers, who are readily available, always — and everyone agrees. But I think you can apply the same logic to pitchers in general.

The other consideration here is that sometimes you draft not according to value, strictly, but according to where you think you can get someone. If you were psychic and knew Josh Hamilton would return first-round value in ’08, you still wouldn’t have been smart to draft him in the first round, if you knew you could get him in the 10th. For the same reason, you don’t draft Webb 11th overall even if you think he’ll be the 11th-overall most valuable player. You wait, draft someone else, and end up with more cumulative talent (in theory).

One last, obvious point: Again, anecdotally, hitters rarely miss an entire season due to injury. Sure, they might miss whole months, whole halves, or fart out for good (FURCAL!). But I think it seems fairy evident that a pitcher is more like to get a whole-season DNP than is a hitter. (Think Chris Carpenter in the example you linked to, Rudy.) Maybe this is not actually true, if you run the numbers. But it certainly seems like a bigger gamble. If you’ll pardon the expression.

And the reason Grey beats me has nothing to do with draft strategy. It’s because he’s a better in-season manager. I don’t recall the last time he drafted better than me although our top 10 picks this year are frigin’ ugly….

Grey:
1. (3) Matt Holliday
2. (18) Carl Crawford
3. (23) B.J. Upton
4. (38) Travis Hafner
5. (43) Cole Hamels
6. (58) Francisco Rodríguez
7. (63) Adrián González
8. (78) Delmon Young
9. (83) John Maine
10. (98) Rich Hill

1. (10) Jake Peavy
2. (11) Prince Fielder
3. (30) Adam Dunn
4. (31) Aramis Ramírez
5. (50) Carlos Guillén
6. (51) Nick Markakis
7. (70) Aaron Harang
8. (71) Rafael Furcal
9. (90) Mariano Rivera
10. (91) Francisco Cordero

As for pitching vs. hitting, Rudy drafts a Peavy or a Santana in our league a few years in a row (I think 3) and he’s yet to finish ahead of me. As stated above (and many times before), I had the worst luck with pitching this year, Rich Hill, Harang, Hudson, Maine and Wainwright. There was nothing I could do but grab waiver wire guys. I ended up having Volquez and grabbing Guthrie, Buehrle, Greinke, etc (the names are in the post under Lester). Pitching wasn’t a problem for me in any league. When I had to, I even relied on streaming good matchups. I don’t see ever grabbing a Peavy, Webb or Santana in a high round, unless they fall to me. (Which Peavy might do this year, which would be a mistake. He’s still money.)

Felix had more face-time in the majors in ’05, but was otherwise a similarly touted phenom with huge expectations for his first full year, and people overpaid accordingly.

That said, look at Linc this year — he definitely took a quantum leap forward. I could see Price landing somewhere between Linc in ’07 and Linc in ’08, adjusted to the AL — like, maybe, 12 wins and 3.75 – 4.25 ERA. Felix, for his part, was still hella young in ’06 (20, I think) whereas Price is 23 and pitched a full career in college, a la Linc.

As for Rays pitchers on the whole, the only one I’ll be looking toward is Shields, who I think could still take another significant step forward and may be the best of all four (at least next year).

Otherwise, the prospect of an AL pitcher in the East is too scary, given the natural mark-up all Rays will receive post World Series. (And, for the record, Rays in 6.)

Garza will definitely be overpriced next year, and I’d much rather take a flyer later on an upside guy like Scott Baker, who didn’t throw bee-bees in front of a national audience and win ALCS MVP.

P.S. Delmon for Garza — how smart does that look now?

Any question about how many early round picks will be going to Price?

I can imagine you and your rookie nookie are already drooling at Price in your lineup.

It will be a moral dillemma for me to select Rays pitchers next year but, it has to be done. Based on that offense and season long analysis they’re just plain good. Forget all these fair weather fantasy ballers who will select Willie Aybar and a Ray’s pitcher just because.

I’m sure this has been said before, but Price in ’08 = K-Rod in ’02 = Rivera in ’96: the untouchable middle reliever as X Factor.

(That said, the Miracle Sox need to shore up the bottom end of that lineup. It was like, “Due up next: Jason Bay and three automatic outs.”)

How sick is it to think of the Rays circa 2010, or even 2009? A rotation of Kazmir, Shields, Garza and Price*? Garza, ALCS MVP, as arguably your 4th best starter? I know Price hasn’t done much yet (except look phenomenal) but this has a chance to be the best foursome since the Braves in the 90s.

*And Wade Davis waiting in the wings.

After reading Grey’s thoughts and driving to work I had a similar thought about the drafting process. How much of a hit is it in the beginning of a season to draft pitching lower?

That said, Price made Drew look silly.

re: Pitchers and volatility. The gentleman who won my league this year has an interesting strategy: He never picks pitchers before round 7 or later. This is based basically on the widely accepted tenets that a) pitching is too volatile to spend a high pick on; b) the pitching pool is deep enough to build a good staff in the later rounds (we’re 12 team, both-leagues roto, so it’s a deep pool); and c) good pitchers are readily available on the waiver wire throughout the year.

He targets high-upside guys or small-team guys or injury-risks: basically, the kind of guys who are available in the mid-rounds or later. This year his staff was built around Kazmir (round 7); Sheets (10); Clay Buchholz (13); Gil Meche (18) and Jon Lester (19) — he also picked up Lilly (a personal fave of his) after he was dropped early in the year, and also picked up Danks and, for a time, Contreras.

Now, you may look at his picks and think, “He got lucky with Sheets and Kazmir staying healthy and Lester blossoming” — just as you might look at someone who picked Peavy in the 2nd and Bedard or Verlander in the 3rd and think “He got unlucky with Peavy’s wins and Bedard’s health and Verlander’s crap-out.”

Personally, I committed awhile ago to a strategy by which I select at least one top-flight pitcher in the first 5 rounds (this year, Hamels in the 4th), then try to have at least my top 3 starters by Round 12 (Smoltz — 6th; Cain — 11th). I do this mostly because in my first year of fantasy, my pitching blew up big time early, and I found it really hard to acquire a top-flight starter on the trade market.

However, I think next year I’ll convert to the other strategy, outlined above. I’ve become convinced that volatility from year to year makes high-picks on pitching simply too risky. If I had skipped Hamels (who was good) and Smoltz (who blew up), imagine the extra hitters I could have acquired in rounds 4 and 6, and I could have targeted Lincecum, Billingsley, Dice K, AJ Burnett, Tim Hudson in later rounds.

Sure, worst-case scenario, I could have targeted, and wound up with, Rich Hill, Myers, Maine and Bonderman. But even so, I’d have been no worse off than if I’d picked Verlander, Bedard, Harang, etc. And in the other scenario, at least I’d have used my picks in rounds 4 through 8 for offense, offense, offense.

In fact, just anecdotally it seems to me that, year to year, pitchers are much, much more likely to outperform their draft position than are hitters. You could easily put together a list of 20 pitchers off the top of your head that, next year, will be drafted anywhere from three to ten rounds ahead of where they were picked this year. My gut says the same isn’t true for hitters. In other words, for every Josh Hamilton, there’s roughly four Lincecums.

I don’t doubt that Rudy’s Win Shares theory is correct, in hindsight — that, at the end of the season, the best pitchers are worth more than the best hitters — but I’m not convinced you should draft according to this strategy. Because, simply put, it’s much harder to identify who the top pitchers will be next season than it is the top hitters.

A case in point is Iowa in the RCL with his test of picking up pitchers and building from there. Because that league was full of razzers he couldn’t move those pieces to make big enough trades to help him get off the mat.

Am I wrong Iowa?