Salient is an excellent design with a fresh approach for the ever-changing Web. Integrated with Gantry 5, it is infinitely customizable, incredibly powerful, and remarkably simple.
DownloadHere are some thoughts while I decompress after staring at spreadsheets for 12 hours a day since November 1.
The Founding Fathers had it right – the best time to conduct your fantasy draft or auction is the weekend after opening day, with only those on 25-man rosters eligible for pick-up. I know, with the number of fantasy enthusiasts playing the game this is logistically impossible, but it provides the truest and cleanest opening of the season. This game should be about how we feel each player will perform, how we value that performance and how we assemble our rosters with the most potential to earn points. Granted, how we feel each player will perform encompasses a playing time component, but the guess is that much more educated after 25-man rosters are established. This may seem trite, but after spending two days a week since December 1 trying to assign playing time, doing it KNOWING the 25-man roster was so much easier.
While I am not rooting against any players, I admit I am sort of hoping a couple of players struggle a bit this season. It is not about wanting to be right; it is about trusting the system and philosophy that I want to be right. Emilio Bonifacio may be a great guy, but I think he is a complete mirage and on behalf of my system, I hope he struggles. Of course if he does, this does not mean the system is right, but it will make me feel better.
Ditto for Brett Lawrie and to a lesser extent Eric Hosmer and Desmond Jennings. Baseball is supposed to be hard to play and we are not supposed to expect that much out of rookies and sophomores. These guys are being drafted ahead of established veterans. I understand risk and upside, but the man-crush on this troika has been a bit over the top. As a fan, I hope these guys kick-ass. As a fantasy analyst – not so much.
This time last year, Matt Holliday was considered a rock, one of the most reliable players in the game. Then he had an appendectomy and a moth fly into his ear and he is suddenly a health risk? OK, he also had a quad injury that cost him some time, but if it were not for those other two flukes, Holliday would not be discounted. Heck, it took us three years to finally downgrade both Nelson Cruz and Kevin Youkilis based on their health history. How come everyone was so quick to lump Holliday into that group?
I know I am not the only one to say this so let me just join the crowd that feels opening day felt so diluted this year.
If the dude on my radio is so good at investing in the stock market, why does he need to sell a book explaining his method? Why isn’t he just cleaning up on Wall Street? Ditto for the guy betting on games in Las Vegas.
I know it means absolutely diddly-squat, but yet I spent about 20 minutes checking the live standings of all my leagues after the LA-SD game ended last night. I was happy when my team was at or near the top of the standings and bummed when they were not. Admit it; I was not the only one.
I hesitate to include this since I oversee a couple of leagues and it may seem self-serving, but it is not. Sometime in the next week or so, shoot your commissioner a note thanking him or her for their getting your league good to go, they deserve it.
We’re not quite there yet, but we are close to the play-by-play guy screaming RUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUN with a chorus of vuvuzelas blaring in the background when a guy crosses the plate.
Yes, Andrew Bailey is injury-prone and a health risk. But come on, his thumb injury was a complete fluke, not a reflection of his character.
Here is a question to all those saying Ryan Braun will struggle because his buddy Prince Fielder is no longer with him – exactly who did Matt Kemp have in the lineup last season?
Is it just me or has the majesty of a great throw from the outfield slowly disappearing?
With Passover falling on Easter Sunday, do Chinese restaurants even bother opening?{jcomments on}
First off real quick, I would like to extend a true heartfelt thank you to a few kind and generous individuals without whom I would not be able to write this review.
I spent the better part of Saturday afternoon in the basement, drafting what I hope is the grand champion of the National Fantasy Baseball Championship (NFBC). Of course there are 419 others with the same goal, but hey, at least my chances are better than hitting the Mega Millions drawing.
By means of quick review, 28 leagues with 15 teams each comprise the Main Event of the NFBC. There will be 28 league champions, then all 420 get lumped together and an overall winner is crowned and gets their picture taken with one of those really big checks, with $100,000 in the amount box.
I was assigned the 15th pick in the first round and was perfectly okay with that. While I would have preferred picking in the first two to start with either Albert Pujols or Miguel Cabrera, I am not a fan of the second round inventory usually available to those picking in the first half of the first round, so if I did not pick first or second, my next desired area was thirteen to fifteen since there are sixteen or so players I would like to start my team with and I would be assured of getting two of them from the back end of the first.
Coming in to the draft, my plan was as usual: to strive for balance in terms of stats and positions so during the latter two-thirds of the festivities, I would be choosing the best player available and not chasing a position or a category. While I am by no means married to the average draft position (ADP) reports the NFBC provides based on its earlier drafts, I do use them to get a feel for the market value of certain players and when I can expect runs to occur.
The 15-hole has its advantages and disadvantages. One advantage is the possibility of players you really like falling to you at the 15/16 turn. Another is the ability to force runs on players, most likely closers, by doubling up at a position later in the draft. Personally, I happen to like picks close to the wheel as I will often choose the players in tandem as it helps me piece together the big picture. A major disadvantage is the strong possibility of missing out on a run, again, usually closers, as there are 28 players chosen between your picks when you are 15th.
When I was mocksterbating from the 15th hole (to mocksterbate is to do a mock draft by yourself), I came to the realization that something had to give. I don’t care who you are and how good a drafter you may be, after 10 picks, you are not going to have a thunderous offense, lights out starting pitching and shutdown closers. You may think you do, but you don’t. Unless you are drafting with a bunch of morons, if you go through the other 14 teams, each one will be better than you in one of the three areas. And if they are not, they tried too hard to be solid in all three and ended up mediocre instead. Please don’t get me wrong, I don’t mean to imply the draft is won in the first ten rounds, far from it. But the idea is to have a thunderous offense, lights out starting pitching and shutdown closers by the end of the 23rd, so what you do in the first ten sets you up for that. I came to the conclusion that you can draft an edge in two of the three areas, while you need to work hard to realize that edge in the third, unless you get extremely lucky.
The most likely means of getting lucky was to wait on closers and hope a couple of reliable stoppers slip, but the danger of that is as suggested, not having it happen and completely missing out on runs. And, while I know closers are constantly emerging during the season, those advising to troll for saves are overlooking a couple of important things: there will be others fishing and for every guy that emerges to save twenty games, there were twice as many that failed to hold the job. Not to mention, the impact closers have on your ERA and WHIP is more important now than a few years ago as the ratios categories are now more tightly bunched top to bottom and these in-season closers often have suspect peripherals. A such, I made the conscious decision to make sure I had to closers I really like by the end of round ten, even if I (hopefully) started the run.
Based on that, it was apparent my entire draft would be predicated by what I did at the 3/4 selection turn. As many of you know, my spring crusade has been to contradict those suggesting the smart strategy is to “wait on pitching.” However, I do not consider not taking an arm until the 5th round to be waiting on pitching. In the week leading up the draft, I was waffling between doubling up with stud starters at 3/4, taking one arm and one stick or eschewing hurlers all together and starting with four bats. Ultimately, I decided I would let the draft dictate my direction, but with the overriding thought that between hitting and pitching, it is easier to rely on the old axiom: bully hitting, manage pitching. I may get out of my comfort zone not taking a top-eight or so starting pitching, but it is easier to overcome that than make up offense.
With that as a backdrop, here is the team I will be taking into battle, with a brief description of the thought process at each pair of picks.
1/2 – Prince Fielder and Evan Longoria: Scarcity is so misunderstood in today’s landscape. I decided I was not going to get hung up at all on positions and leave potential stats on the table early by reaching for a middle infielder. My top remaining hitters were Fielder, who was #8 on my board and Longoria, #15. As it happens, I indeed had a better player fall to me, at least according to my rankings, though I am certain the ADP will have both right around that area.
3/4 – Hunter Pence and Brandon Phillips: I was all set to take Cole Hamels and Jered Weaver here, but Weaver was plucked two picks previous to my turns. I then thought about Hamels and Dan Haren, but ultimately fell back on bully hitting and manage pitching. Phillips may have been a reach based on ADP, but he was right where he should have been according to my numbers and I like Pence as an early round upside play.
5/6 – C.J. Wilson and James Shields: For a second I thought I was actually drafting with morons (he says tongue in cheek, this was a strong group) as Haren and Matt Cain kept falling, but alas, they were both selected before my turn so I took the two highest ranked guys on my cheat sheet. As an idea of how my earlier drafts have gone, Shields is my THIRD starter in several, now he is my co-anchor. This is my virgin experience owning Wilson. The more I look at his numbers, the warmer I am becoming to the Angels new starter. I think I have a decent shot at the target 400 K’s from my first two arms.
7/8 – Alex Avila and Jason Werth: This was a small risk as many closer runs occur in the next couple of rounds, but one I was willing to take as Craig Kimbrel was the only closer off the board thus far and it would take a TREMENDOUS run to lock me out. I wanted to draft a catcher at this spot, hoping for Matt Wieters or Miguel Montero but happily setting for Avila. Werth was strictly the proverbial value pick and someone I had identified as a likely selection since my rankings have him higher than the NFBC ADP.
9/10- Joel Hanrahan and Jason Motte: YAHTZEE!!! These names may not seem that sexy, but they profile perfectly for what I wanted – I consider then both secure in their jobs, they are minimal health risks and fan a goodly number of hitters. I really need the reliability because they are in effect helping me recoup some of that edge I lost by waiting a little bit for starters. To this point, only Kimbrel, Mariano Rivera, Jonathan Papelbon, John Axford and Jose Valverde were off the board. Hanrahan and Motte were my 4th and 5th ranked closers, so I was quite elated. And I would be even more ecstatic if this double dip forces a run.
11/12 – Anibal Sanchez and Neil Walker: I LOVE it when a plan comes together – of the 28 previous picks since my last one, a whopping 15 were closers! While I am not sure I took advantage, it did give me the opportunity to think long and hard about Sanchez, a guy completely off my radar as I usually have three quality starters at this point and am looking in other directions. Suffice it to say I saw enough in Sanchez to make him my SP3 and I think he has upside. Injury is a concern, but he has notched over 200 stanzas each of the past two seasons. Walker closed out my middle infield but I like his potential as a clean-up bat in an improving lineup and there were at least three shortstops I still liked available.
13/14 – Wilson Ramos and Gaby Sanchez: This was a combination of figuring if I passed on pitching at 3/4 I should probably make sure I keep the hitting edge along with there being no starters I liked here. Ramos is a guy I have picked a lot lately while Sanchez is solid and the last corner man before the injury risks top the lists.
15/16 – Alejandro De Aza and Justin Masterson: I need some speed, but did not want to do it at the complete expense of homers and De Aza has a shot at double digits albeit very low double digits. If Masterson can retain the gains he made versus lefties, he is a solid SP4.
17/18 – Ian Desmond and Ted Lilly: I really did not expect to end up with Desmond, figuring to get Marcos Scutaro or Zack Cozart. I played chicken with Scutaro and ultimately lost. Cozart is a bit of a wild card so I went with Desmond, who should provide excellent counting stats and I should be able to absorb his average, since he is my first player to really be deficient in the category relative to the position. I like the Lilly pick as a balance to the Masterson choice. Fly ball guys like Lilly have a better WHIP but worse ERA while the opposite is true for worm burners like Masterson, so overall my ERA and WHIP should stay in sync.
19/20 – Michael Brantley and Jeff Samardzija: Once it was announced Brantley would be atop the Tribe order, those extra plate appearances and stolen base opportunities vaulted him up my rankings several spots. This brings us to Samardzija. It is cliché, but he is a complete wild card with tremendous upside, which is something this staff needs. I am going to be throwing pitching darts all summer, why not start now?
21/22 – Dayan Viciedo and Nolan Reimold: Viciedo is a site favorite and Reimold is another wild card of sort, but again, hitting at the top of the order is enticing. I consider these spots somewhat fungible, but like the upside potential of both.
23/24 – Sean Rodriguez and Ty Wigginton: The NFBC allows Friday activations for hitters, so I like to have some multiple eligibility guys to afford some flexibility. Save catcher, I now have everything covered.
25/26 – Andrew Cashner and Jonny Venters: Remember that whole manage pitching thing? One way to do it is to deploy solid set up men with high strikeouts while you search for the emerging starter. And with Cashner, it doesn’t hurt that he is behind Huston Street, not known for his ability to avoid the disabled list.
27/28 – Kris Medlen and Mark Melancon: Medlen is an arm you want regardless of role and Melancon is the probable understudy of the American League’s version of Street in Andrew Bailey.
29/30 – Kyle Seager and Chris Narveson: Lawr is very high on Seager so this pick was an ode to my esteemed partner while Narveson is a guy whose underlying peripherals are promising and prescient of an increase in strikeouts.
C: Avila, Ramos |
1B/3B: Fielder, Longoria, Sanchez |
2B/SS: Phillips, Desmond, Walker |
OF: Pence, Werth, De Aza, Brantley, Viciedo |
UT: Reimold (S Rodriguez, Wigginton, Seager) |
SP: Wilson, Shields, A Sanchez, Masterson, Lilly, Samardzija (Narveson) |
RP: Hanrahan, Motte, Venters (Cashner, Medlen, Melancon) |
I’ll spare you the trouble.
Zola, your pitching sucks and your outfield ain’t so hot either.
I agree. But I also feel both areas can be addressed in-season and I have plenty of high K relievers to hold down the fort with respect to pitching, while the bats should be strong enough to get by until I can get one more quality stick in the lineup.{jcomments on}
Hey gang, sorry I missed Tuesday’s scheduled posting. This one’s going to be a little short as well, I am trying like the dickens to finish the bulk of the premium content by the weekend so we can focus on being as up to date on playing time situations as possible.
There are a couple of things I want to get off my chest, one is the continuation of the manner pitching is still being misread and the other is a bit of a rebirth of an older pet peeve that I have seen manifest a lot this drafting season.
With respect to pitching, the take home message is not going to be to draft Roy Halladay, Clayton Kershaw and Justin Verlander with your first three picks. Please keep that in mind as I reiterate this thought process.
The faux pas that is being bandied about everywhere is because MLB pitching is better than it used to be, fantasy pitching is better and deeper, therefore you can continue to wait until well into the draft to get your pitchers, and perhaps wait even longer because the inventory is so deep. I won’t sugar coat it, that is plain and simply horrible advice doled out by “so-called” experts (oh yes I did just write that) who are not doing their homework and following the herd, unfortunately the herd in this case is stuck in the mid 2000’s when waiting on pitching was indeed the smart manner to approach things.
Here’s the deal – VALUE IS RELATIVE. Come October, the team with the best ERA and WHIP in your league is going to sport marks lower than the first place total than in previous seasons. The second place total will also be lower and it goes all the way down to the last place team. But here’s the kicker. The 20th best pitcher is still the 20th best pitcher. The 3oth best pitcher is still the 30th best pitcher and so on. The numbers of the 20th and 30th best hurler are superior to their counterpart from a few years ago, but the impact they have on your fantasy team is the same. The 40th best pitcher influences your ERA and WHIP exactly the same as the 40th best pitcher influenced it a few years ago. Does he have better stats? Yes, he does. Is he more valuable? No, he isn’t. The better stats are worth the same.
The second part of this rant deals with the difference between drafting cheap pitching and drafting pitching on the cheap. The reason for waiting on pitching back in the mid 2000’s had to do with the availability of GOOD PITCHING cheap. By good pitching, I mean GOOD FANTASY PITCHING. Presently, no one can dole out fantasy advice without using the words lucky or unlucky. While I have another issue with the misuse of that concept which I will save for another day, the point is, overall, the manner the fantasy populace evaluates pitching has improved by leaps and bounds the past few years. Most serious fantasy enthusiasts are able to recognize when a pitcher pitched better or worse than his peripherals and do not project future performance based solely on ERA and WHIP. The result is this is pitchers that used to be available late in the draft because their ERA was high the previous season due to misfortune with their BABIP, HR/FB or LOB% are projected with a regressed ERA and are no longer available later in the draft.
Previously, if you waited and knew what you were doing, you could draft good pitching on the cheap. Now if you wait, all you will do is draft cheap pitching. This dynamic occurs throughout the draft. The SP1 you used to get in the 8th round is going in the 3rd or 4th. The high skilled SP2 and SP3 you used to get in the teens are no longer there. The 15th round is knocking and James Shields is no longer at the door. The end game gems you used to snag are now going in the teens and the sweet reserve arms you picked up are now end game fodder.
I have two challenges for those still refusing to believe me. First, next time someone advises you to wait on pitching, ask them what round they took their first pitcher in last season then ask them if they won? When they tell you they didn’t and start making excuses, interrupt them and ask them what round the winner drafted their first pitcher?
The second is to sit down and do a little exercise. Using last year’s league as a guide, find out what ERA and WHIP were necessary to finish 3rd or 4th in the category. This usually suffices to compete. Now assemble what you feel is the perfect staff to accomplish your goal, top to bottom, calculating the staff ERA and WHIP to make sure it is within range of your target. Now objectively determine where you need to draft those pitchers. Next, map out two different plans, one starting with a better pitcher as your SP1 and the other with a worse pitcher as your SP1 and determine what those staffs would have to look like to meet your goal. The point of this is not to demonstrate the staff with the worst SP1 can never meet the goal, it can. You will just have to focus on pitching for the next several rounds, completely ignoring hitting and picking from an inventory less reliable from the better pitchers. You see, that’s the part many are forgetting, or do not even realize. Pitching at the top is actually fairly reliable. At minimum, it is as reliable as top hitting. It used to be another reason to take hitting was its reliability. This gap has significantly narrowed if not disappeared. This is going to be a project I undertake, investigating this.
Anyway, back to the point, take a look at the three pitching staffs and decide which one is most likely to actually meet the goal at the end of the year in concert with what kind of offense you can put together. Maybe you still opt to wait on pitching and that is fine, but at least you did some evaluation and decided in your league, you could pull it off and not follow archaic advice spouted by people who advise what other people advise and do not do the research on their own to see what works and what does not.
My second little harangue deals with the notion of taking a player at a perceived scarce position because the drop-off to the next player at the position is larger than the drop-off at other positions. More often than not, those espousing this little ditty of advice pick out an arbitrary player and make a comparison like, “who would rather have, Green and Black or White and Brown?”
Here is my issue. The real question is “do you prefer your entire roster if you choose Green or White?” It is not a two on two comparison, but how your entire roster would have developed with one player versus the other. Who is to say you would have had to take the arbitrary player the person chose to make their argument work and not someone better?
Keep in mind the premise here is drafting a player with lower potential production over a better player, just because of the drop off in talent at the position of the lesser player. I have a little secret for you, some close. YOU ARE MAKING MORE PICKS BEFORE YOU WOULD HAVE TO DRAFT THIS ARBITRARY PLAYER DESIGNED TO MAKE THEIR POINT (yes, I am yelling). Trust me, at some point in the draft, a player at this weak position will be at or near the top of your cheat sheet. If you insist on doing the two by two comparison, this is point to make it, when you are drafting the player at the position. Keeping in mind that my contention is eventually this player will be available to you at value, this means the other players are of similar value, including those at the position you bypassed way back in round 1 or 2. Now, who do you prefer, a top first baseman better than a top shortstop then a shortstop as good as the available outfielders at the time or a top shortstop inferior to the top outfielder or first baseman and an outfielder on a par with the shortstops available at that time?
Just as the first rant will be misinterpreted as draft Halladay and Kershaw, this diatribe will turn into “Zola says take the best player available at all times, even if you fill your outfield, corner and utility by round eight." That’s not what I am saying. I am saying in the first round or two, do not leave stats on the table just to get a so-called scarce position filled. The delta between players at the top of a draft is pretty significant. This difference gets smaller and smaller as you transverse the snake. Once you get to the 4th round, the difference is nil, meaning you can now jump the shortstop over an outfielder and a first baseman, because they are fundamentally the same player.
Well, I guess it wasn’t so short after all. Thanks for indulging me{jcomments on}For some, Labor Day marks the end of the summer. For others, LABR Day signifies fantasy baseball drafting season has begun. Last weekend, I was privileged to participate in the first ever League of Alternative Baseball Reality (LABR) mixed league draft. Last Tuesday, I wrote about my general strategy for drafts in general and LABR in particular. Today I will present my squad and offer a thought or two regarding each pick.
Mixed LABR is a 15-team league using standard 5x5 scoring with the regular 14-man hitting, 9-man pitching active roster plus a 6-man reserve. Trades are allowed and my spidey sense says this league will be more active than your standard industry league.
So without further ado, here is the squad I will be taking into battle:
1.07 Troy Tulowitzki – I am not as high on Tulo as others, though he was hard to pass up at this spot. I thought long and hard about Robinson Cano due to his combination of reliability and productivity, but in the end I opted for Tulowitzki feeling there was a better chance of getting a second baseman I like later as opposed to a shortstop.
2.09 Mark Teixeira – Get this, I made this pick without even knowing he was adding bunting to his repertoire. That’s exactly what I need, Tex fouling bunts off trying to beat the shift. Maybe I should have taken Emilio Bonifacio instead. Lame jokes aside (as my league-mates will attest, I made plenty of those in the chat room), I am not a fan of the second round inventory of drafts of this size. Once you get to the latter part of the round, the players all carry more risk than normal in a 15-team draft. In fact, Teixeira was the final player going in the neighborhood that I would have been comfortable drafting, though I’m pretty sure I would have taken someone and not passed on my pick. I have heard all the spring talk if Big Tex being not so big anymore and looking to use the whole field when hitting from the left side, but I am not counting on anything more than he has delivered the past few seasons. Anything else would be gravy. Actually, I don’t like gravy; make that icing on the cake.
3.07 Felix Hernandez – Just after I clicked the draft button and King Felix magically jumped from my queue to my roster, my cell phone rang. It was the Seattle police department, informing me that if I pick Hernandez one more time, he is going to slap a restraining order on my ass. Good thing I am playing National League Tout Wars this season. Long story short is Hernandez is coming off of a perceived down year, but in fact he pitched better than the previous season. He was just snake bit. This is probably going to be my last chance to get Hernandez at a discount since this time next year, he will be toting around the AL Cy Young trophy.
4.09 Brandon Phillips – Remember when I wrote I expected to pick up a second baseman I liked? I hope so, it wasn’t that long ago. Anyway, I have drafted Phillips so much he calls and asks me “What round this time?” I’m no longer expecting 30/30 or even 20/20. Phillips is now one of those guys that you count on for 15/15 then light some candles, cross some fingers, etc. For what it’s worth, I’m taking the over.
5.07 Jon Lester – I swear, if I hear Jock Thompson of Baseball HQ make one more chicken joke I am going to rip out a couple of pages of his Forecaster. Here’s the deal, I’ve had chicken from the Popeye’s near Fenway Park and it is mighty tasty. But the cook there goes a little overboard with the Cajun spices so not only do I not blame the boys for enjoying a little fried treat, I understand why they felt the need to wash it down with something cold to dull the Cajun sensation. As far as Lester’s mound work, while I am not a fan of cherry-picking samples to make a point, I am going to do it anyway. Here are Lester’s monthly ERA’s from April to September: 2.52, 5.50, 2.31, 1.56, 2.78, and 5.40. A closer look at the splits reveals Lester was almost the same guy each month, except May and September when his walks ballooned. The moral here is not take away May and September and Lester had a fantastic season but rather his campaign was not as bad as some make it out to be and all it is going to take is for the southpaw to bear down for all 30-plus starts and not have a couple stretches of lapses. If the guy can beat cancer, he can certainly beat chicken-gate.
6.09 Kevin Youkilis – I know he never plays a full season. I know he is a little arrogant and has a real messed up stance and is coming off of a down year. But this is the sixth round, not the third where he has been going for the past several seasons. I don’t need him to play the whole year, I don’t care if he is a d-bag and he gets himself into the proper hitting position when it counts. Did I mention this was the sixth round, not third?
7.07 Alex Avila – Confession time, this is my least favorite pick of the draft. Well, my least favorite pick I made. I can’t believe KFFL’s Tim Heaney passed on Ryan Braun then took Starlin Castro in the second. Not only am I a fan of lame jokes, I have no issue intending them for an audience of one – hiya Tim. This actually is my least favorite pick, but I was sniped on both Matt Wieters and Miguel Montero and if you read my introductory strategy manifesto, I want to draft an edge at catcher and Avila is the sole survivor of my second tier, so now he is my first catcher.
8.09 Ricky Romero – Chicks may dig the long ball, but fat guys that play fantasy baseball dig the strikeout and Romero makes this fat guy very happy. I think he is still maturing as a pitcher and has shown he could give a fig about facing the AL East umpteen times a season.
BREAK TIME – one of the strategy points was my goal of having C1, 1B, 2B, 3B, SS, OF1 and SP1 filled within my first eight selections. Well, I fell a little short as I have an extra starting pitcher and am short an outfielder, but one of the other points was draft the pitcher, not the round and I wanted Romero and was afraid he would be taken soon, so I opted to break one rule in order to adhere to another. That’s the cool thing about making your own rules; it is OK to break them when necessary and since a third rule is to be fluid and ready to adjust on the fly, I really didn’t break the first rule, which is more like a rule of thumb anyway.
9.07 Joel Hanrahan – My second least favorite pick but not because I don’t like Hanrahan, I do. I just like Ryan Madson more and missed he was still available.
10.09 Torii Hunter – Hunter may be old and boring, but he has something left in the tank.
11.07 Jason Kubel – Kubel may be old and boring, but he has something left in the tank. What? Cut me a break, I’m a green analyst and am just recycling some analysis. I did it to save the environment to make sure this is not the only mixed LABR draft ever and we are all here again next year.
12.09 Wilson Ramos – Note to our Platinum subscribers, I apologize for not conveying how high I am. Hmm, that sentence would be funny if I stopped there, but I am actually being serious here. I apologize for not conveying how high I am now on Ramos. The more I look at things, the more I like the power potential and prospects for a lot of playing time.
13.07 Gaby Sanchez – Corner infield is not as plush as it has been in the past and I like Sanchez to be a solid contributor.
14.09 Josh Willingham – This guy must like challenges. Let’s see, first he plays in Florida, then Washington and then Oakland, not exactly parks conducive to a guy whose main skill is hitting ball real far. So after conquering these locales, where does he go? Minnesota, of course.
15.07 Justin Masterson – All that was keeping Masterson from going from a guy who was really good but struggled against lefties to a guy who was really good was not struggling against lefties. Last season, Masterson markedly reduced his walks against lefties and the rest fell into place. It is a bit of a leap of faith to assume he maintains last season’s success, but it is a leap I am willing to make (insert Lords a leaping joke here).
16.09 Marco Scutaro – Not much to say, I am a low risk drafter and Scutaro is a solid option to fill my middle (insert too many donuts joke here).
17.07 Giancarlo Brantley – Excuse me? Really? Sorry, I thought all outfielders named Michael changed their name to Giancarlo, my bad. Michael Brantley (got to get his full name in so it gets properly linked) is one of my favorite later picks for solid average and steals, and with the news about Grady Sizemore, he is even favoriter.
BREAK TIME – I recently participated in an ESPN mock draft (I am doing some freelance work for the World Wide Leader) and got my indoctrination of sorts, being publicly ridiculed for my efforts:
I’ll save gujuguy83 (if that’s his real name, it’s probably Michael) the trouble. My outfield is a complete joke.
However, as I discussed in the introductory essay, I believe there are positions where you draft an edge and there are positions where you look to improve as the season progresses. It is my experience that outfield is easiest position to pick up surprise talent since there are more platoon and fourth outfield types that get more playing time than expected, which unto itself is enough to make them fantasy relevant. So gujuguy83, the joke’s on you.
18.09 Dayan Viciedo – And sometimes you don’t wait for in-season to find the playing time break-outs, sometimes you draft them.
19.07 Grant Balfour – If this were a no-trading league, my outfield would be even more of a joke as I would have made sure to secure a more reliable closer earlier, but with trading, I am willing to take some speculative shots and my feeling is Balfour ends up with the Oakland closing gig.
20.09 David Carpenter – Eff you, Brad Mills
21.07 Henderson Alvarez –There is a pretty good chance Alvarez would have lasted a round or two longer, maybe more. But I decided I was going to be the one to be “that guy”, you know, the one who can’t wait to tell everyone “I was right about Henderson Alvarez.” You guys can have your little Hosmer’s and Lawrie’s and Jennings’ and Moore’s – Alvarez is MINE. Now take Alvarez out of your queue, let go of your mouse and slowly back away from the PC.
22.09 Chone Figgins – I mentioned in part one that I am not going to chase speed; I look to get a little bit here and a little bit there. Thus, it is not surprising that my comedic outfield is largely devoid of stolen base potential. Figgins is a late round upside play that I can put at utility, or maybe trade to Heaney since he seems to like to overpay for speedy infielders.
23.07 Sean Rodriguez – There are a ton of starting pitchers I like as streamers still on the board so I decided to start my reserve list early and S-Rod covers both middle and corner.
24.09 Brian Bogusevic - Basically looking for the outfielder with the funniest name still on the board, because my outfield is, you know, a joke.
BREAK TIME – As suggested and discussed in the associated strategy essay, I favor streaming starting pitchers with forgiving home parks. OK, break over, I hope you didn’t have to go to the bathroom, besides, we’re almost done.
25.07 Jarrod Parker – Oakland has a big park.
26.09 Hector Noesi – So does Seattle.
27.07 Bartolo Colon – That Oakland thing plus we fatties stick together (insert leather chaps joke here).
28.09 Dustin Moseley – I forget if he plays in San Diego or San Francisco, it’s getting late. But either way it doesn’t matter – park big.
29.07 Travis Snider – Hoping he helps prove my outfield is no joke.
We're done.
{jcomments on}
Where the hell have I been the past thirty years or so? I was literally floored last week following an e-mail exchange I had with my buddy, business partner, co-manager and co-editor, Lawr. Along with authoring multiple columns a week for the site, Lawr and I share editing duties along with Zach Steinhorn, for whom I am pinch-hitting for with this unscheduled posting of “Chaos.” I was commenting to Lawr that I have noticed more and more articles are being submitted with only one space after the period denoting the end of the sentence and it was driving me crazy, going through everything, adding the second space. In a rather kind and soothing manner, Lawr gave me a cyber Gibbs head slap and informed me one space between sentences is the accepted means of writing on the Internet. My sister, who is a teacher, then embellished by letting me know that is now accepted in all but the most traditional formal writing, even in legal documents.
SHUT THE FRONT DOOR – I had no idea!
While I admit I am nowhere near the writer of my esteemed colleague Lawr (but I bet I am better with a test tube and Erlenmeyer flask), I can hold my own, especially when it comes to proper sentence construct and grammar rules. To me, the rules of writing are sort of like math, and believe it or not, the way I learn things is to convert them to math. Yeah, shocking. For instance, music is really nothing more than math that has evolved to be aesthetically pleasing to our oratory sense. Well, except for Thelonious Monk.I may not be able to paint the same picture as Lawr. Heck, I do not even have quite the inventory of paint that he does, but I get by.
So when I learned that one of the basic tenets of writing has been effectively changed since around 1989, I was floored. Why did not anyone tell me? Did I miss the meeting? Someone could have at least sent me a memo! Of course, those were my drinking years, so perhaps someone did.
So I do what I always do in situations like this – Google.
Lo and behold, I discovered there were several other alterations to the foundation I learned back in Middle and High School, while I was forced to slog through such literary nightmares as Wuthering Heights. Good Lord, I hated that book and even though I dig Kate Bush as a singer, I cannot stand the song by that name. Not only that, once I found out Dr. Huxtable’s real name was Heathcliff, I stopped watching The Cosby Show.
Uh oh, I better check on that underlining thing.
Oh no, I was supposed to use italics. Damn!
I also learned that – hold on, I need to be strapped in as I write this – I also learned that it is now acceptable to end a sentence in a preposition. Do you know how many times I have awkwardly worked the word “which” into a sentence so that I would not end it with “with”?
453,234 times
And get this, beginning a sentence with “and” or “but” is also now fine. But, it is recommended to use it sparingly and only to draw extra attention to a point for emphasis.
Now here is the biggie. For years, I have gone out of my way to avoid using contractions. That is how I was trained. I was not permitted to write using contractions. I cannot believe how many apostrophes I have deleted over the years. Had I known, I would have saved so much time, not to mention bandwidth. I am glad that I do not have to worry about that ever again. Not to mention, I will not have to spend time editing contractions out of the articles anymore.
The reason for the contraction thing is the flow of the writing is theoretically smoother and easier to read with contractions, especially on a computer monitor. I’m (that’s my first official contraction, and look, now my second as well) a scientist by trade, so let’s (three) do an experiment. Read the above paragraph again, and then read it as written below to see which flows better.
Now here’s the biggie. For years, I’ve gone out of my way to avoid using contractions. That’s how I was trained. I wasn’t permitted to write using contractions. I can’t believe how many apostrophes I’ve deleted over the years. Had I known, I would’ve saved so much time, not to mention bandwidth. I’m glad that I don’t have to worry about that ever again. Not to mention, I won’t have to spend time editing contractions out of the articles anymore.
I vote #2, and it ain’t even close.
What?
Really?
Ain’t is still frowned upon?
Phew!
At least having to read Wuthering Heights did not, um, didn't completely go to waste.{jcomments on}