Well holy shift Batman! This season marks my 19th year writing for Razzball. It’s hard to think back to 2001 and my chance encounter with Grey in the mens room at Yankee Stadium. True story, one of the worst things that could happen to a sports fan happened to me. It was an extremely hot Sunday afternoon after a long Saturday night of celebrating my 55th birthday. I knew I shouldn’t have eaten that bacon double cheese at 4am. Well sure enough after a few tall boy PBRs my stomach was twisting up something awful. I tried to hold it, but there was nothing I could do. I was going to have to drop Bill Cosby off at the pool at Yankee Stadium. I don’t know about you, but I’d rather make out with the 300 pound, overweight (redundant) lady selling the Hebrew National hot dogs than put my bare ass anywhere near the toilet seat in a public bathroom at a ballpark. Had it been pregame perhaps it might not have been so bad (somewhat freshly cleaned), but we’re talking about the 5th inning here. I’ve learned a lot in my many years on this planet and one of them is that human beings are beyond vile and have absolutely terrible aim when going to the bathroom. How is it possible that so much human waste winds up outside of the bowl? Often I believe that it’s just got to be on purpose. Well there I was, sitting on about fourteen layers of toilet paper eating a cheesesteak. In case you’re wondering I just didn’t have the strength to hover, and about the cheesesteak, that’s a story for another day. Get in and get out I said to myself. I was just about done when my stall door was kicked open, nearly off its hinges. One might have thought Daniel LaRusso was practicing his crane kick. The ironic thing was a simple push would have done the job as, lost in all of the shuffle, I neglected to lock the stall door. There, standing in front of me, was a middle-aged dude wearing a “SAGNOF” shirt who took one look at me and my cheesesteak and asked if I’d be interested in writing points league posts for his up and coming fantasy baseball website. I agreed, we did NOT shake hands and that marked the beginning of a my “professional” writing career. Since then I have slowly worked my way up the company ranks and have settled in as the points league guy. My how far I have come. Lastly, if you believe a word of that story I’ve got a league I’d like you to join. Please be sure to provide your contact information in the comments section.
The 2020 Razzball Commenter Leagues are now open! Free to join!
For those of you non-programmers reading this post (likely most of you), “Hello, World” is traditionally the first program a developer writes when introduced to a new language. Getting those two simple words to appear on the screen means that their code can compile, load and run. It also might mean that you are a nerd. According to Google, my “go to” for information about everything, Brian Kernighan wrote the first “Hello, World” program back in 1972. If only he was able to collect a penny every time a developer wrote a “Hello, World” program, he’d have quite a few pennies!
I’d like to think that a lot of the points league content I have provided over the years has proven useful to my 27 readers. However, I am no fool. I realize that that thing you all most desire from me is my points league spreadsheet. I could write zero posts all season, but as long as I share my spreadsheet, you’d be content. Fear not fellow “friends”, as I started working on it about over a week ago. It still won’t be ready until some time in March, but it is in the works. And to that matter, I am “planning” some decent upgrades to the spreadsheet. Just keep in mind that I put quotes around the word planning, as I might have bitten off more than I can chew and you might just end up with the same old spreadsheet. My gut tells me that would be A-O-K with the lot of you. We’ll just have to wait and see. As some of you may or may not know, the amount of work it takes to crank this thing out is mind boggling. For the curious minds, the spreadsheet was released on March 12th and 11th the last two years respectively.
Given today’s “Hello, World” theme, I’d like to take several steps back and provide you with the basics. Fantasy Baseball Points Leagues 101 if you will. For many of you (I’d say about 21 of 27) this might seem trivial and unnecessary, but even for you I’d recommend going back and reviewing. And instead of attempting to rewrite nearly 90 percent of the content I’ve already written about with a 2020 spin on it, I’m going to take the simple way out and provide links to my previous posts that I believe are the most useful for points league players.
Accounting for the negative effect of strikeouts for hitters
Maximizing points based on your league’s rules
The key stat: points per plate appearance
Evaluating your league’s scoring system
Overall position adjusted rankings
Using points per game to determine lineup
Best player available approach
Making the most of your draft picks
Generic points league rankings are mostly useless
It’s possible to create a team with undrafted players and win your league
One size does not fit all points leagues
Because Billy Butler is awesome
Using Excel to create league specific rankings
There’s too much luck in head-to-head leagues
I feel a little bad not providing you with any new content today, but given how much effort it actually took to put that list together I’m not going to lose any sleep over it, and neither should you. Hopefully it’s enough to keep you at bay for the time being. If it’s not, read the rest of the posts on Razzball as you will find they can be the right combination of informative and entertaining. In case any of you are wondering what the take away should be from my opening paragraph, I’ll tell you. Some of you might think it’s to make sure you lock that stall door. Those of you would be wrong. My point is that opportunity knocks (or kicks down the door) at unexpected times and the same can be said about any player in the player pool.
Follow malamoney on Twitter at @malamoney
