[Read the whole thing]]]> I was able to make it up to Wondercon only for Saturday last weekend because my fantasy baseball league decided to hold our annual draft on Sunday. 5 of our local owners gathered in a conference room at Apple and spent close to 10 hours drafting our teams. I probably put less effort into this draft than any one I’d ever done before.

My strategy, such as it was, mainly involved drafting younger. Last year’s team was awful, though not so much due to age as due to a lot of marginal players with low upside. I think I did well drafting for youth and guys with upside (but I did draft a few old players; I think some old guys are worth picking in the right spots). Secondarily I wanted to avoid drafting hitters in pitchers’ parks and pitchers in hitters’ parks. I didn’t do a great job at that, although I think any choices were fairly defensible.

Here’s the team I ended up with:

Overall I think I executed fairly well. I’d really like to have a better shortstop, and to have found someone less risky than Lowe and de la Rosa to rely on. The outfield has a lot of potential but might not realize it. Otherwise I don’t have many complaints.

Last year’s team was a disaster – I finished next-to-last in the league – and I think this is clearly a better team. But our league is intensely competitive, so finishing in the money (among the top 7 of 16 teams) is not guaranteed.

I’ve been getting burned out on fantasy baseball, so this might be my last season in the league. Then again, I’m more excited about this team than I have been for a couple of years, so maybe I’ll be back. Especially if my prospects start developing.

[Read the whole thing]]]> Yesterday we performed our annual ritual of picking real baseball players to join fake teams. Last year was a disappointing year for me as I had a really good team, traded my 3rd-round pick in 2010 for Jason Bay, and then my whole team decided to take June and half of July off. I struggled my way back and finished in 4th place, which ain’t bad (the top 7 spots out of 16 teams pay), but I failed yet again to beat my 1999 performance, when I finished 3rd. Frustrating.

I headed into the draft with the best hitter in baseball, one of the 5 best pitchers, a top third baseman, and another good pitcher. But also down one pick, and with no true prospects in development. So here’s how the draft shook out for me:

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I hoped to go back to taking a big bopper with my first-round pick, but there weren’t many left when my 13th-overall pick came around, thanks to our deep keeper rules, so instead I took Yunel Escobar, who is a strong-hitting shortstop who has additional upside. I used my 4th round pick to take Josh Willingham, who can rake when he’s healthy. And I beefed up my rotation with John Lackey and Scott Baker, which should make it quite good.

The first ten rounds of my draft went pretty well, I thought. As I said, my main regret was not having a better plan in case Scott Sizemore doesn’t work out, and not having a quality multiposition backup. Otherwise I have a pretty balanced team, albeit with my usual less-than-dominating bullpen. And I’ve restocked with some high-upside prospects.

Our league continues to get more competitive, as once again I was scrounging for guys to pick with my last few picks. But my list of prospects was very deep this year.

And as always I have no idea whether I’ll truly compete. I have some injury risks here and there (Lackey, Willingham, a couple of old guys), but I’m by no means relying on everyone being completely healthy. I’m just hoping I can come out of the gate strong, since struggling to get back in the hunt after a slow start always sucks.

Here’s the team I ended up with:

[Read the whole thing]]]> If it’s April, then we must have had our fantasy baseball draft by now, right? Right!

Here’s the team I ended up with:

The draft this year was really weird: We got down to the end of the draft, where last year I took Paul Maholm and Zach Duke with my last two picks, and the year before I took Josh Hamilton with my last pick. This year, though, there was no one left I wanted, not role players with guaranteed starting time, not second-tier prospects, nothing. So I passed my last 5 picks. I’m not sure whether the player pool is smaller this year for some reason, or if the league as a whole is drafting better. Or maybe I’m just too picky. But I felt I’d do better waiting to see how roles change in April than drafting guys with those last 5 picks.

As usual I ended up with a bunch of quality hitters, and a pretty weak pitching staff. It seemed like the pitchers I wanted kept getting taken just before I wanted them, and there was always a good hitter I wanted more than the next other pitchers. I had especially hoped to get Josh Beckett with my first-round pick (14th overall), but he went 2 picks before me.

I feel like the rest of the league is passing me by in drafting prospects who stick, as it’s been a while since I’ve drafted a young impact player at a premium position, so I keep spending early picks on 2B, 3B, SS and even catcher (although the “two decent catchers in tandem” strategy has worked surprisingly well). And I still haven’t worked out how to draft pitchers.

But I don’t think I have a bad team. And I did finish in third place last year (out of 16), and I finish in the top half more often than not.. So maybe I’m overly pessimistic.

One thing fantasy baseball does for me is gives me a little more connection to players I’d otherwise be somewhat indifferent towards – well, to the extent that one can be indifferent towards the best player in baseball. Back in 2001

[Read the whole thing]]]> Great article by Joe Posnanski about Cardinals slugger Albert Pujols. (via Rob Neyer)

One thing fantasy baseball does for me is gives me a little more connection to players I’d otherwise be somewhat indifferent towards – well, to the extent that one can be indifferent towards the best player in baseball. Back in 2001 during our league draft I decided to take a flyer on a guy named Pujols, who had spent most of 2000 in A-ball, and was filling in at third base while Bobby Bonilla was on the DL.

Someone in the room said, “They’ll send him down as soon as Bonilla comes back.”

A couple of weeks later, Bonilla came back. Rather than sending down Pujols, the Cardinals released John Mabry. Pujols has since gone on to beat the living daylights out of National League pitching.

I drafted Pujols in the 16th round that year (this is a keeper league, so that’s like taking him in the 21st round in non-keeper leagues). Overall he was the 248th player taken in the draft – 362nd if you include the keepers.

And I’ve had him on my team ever since.

Anyway.

If anything, I think Pujols is underrated. He’s been hurt in one way or another for most of his career – he has a bad elbow which may eventually need reconstructive surgery, and for which he had surgery this offseason to correct a nerve problem and hopefully alleviate the pain he feels in it. That’s the main reason he plays first base, to avoid aggravating his elbow by having to throw more often. He came up as a third baseman and played all four corners (first, third, left field, and right field) his first two seasons. Last year he played one game at second base. Okay, events like that are flukes. But still. How great would it have been if he’d been able to spend his career at third base or in the outfield and been fully healthy?

The only thing he can’t do is pitch. As far as we know.

Since I don’t believe in god (in my Facebook profile my “Religion” field reads “unbeliever/heathen”), it’s strange for me to read about his clearly deep religious beliefs. It’s an aspect of him I can’t realte to or even really understand. “He played baseball, and he went to church, and that seemed about all that interested him.” On the other hand, if it works for him and his life, then that works for me.

I hope – for his own peace of mind – he’s telling the truth that he doesn’t care whether people believe that he’s not using steroids. The steroid witch-hunt has been such a disaster for baseball – to my mind much worse than any actual use of steroids has been. I hope the reigning Best Player in Baseball can escape the witch-hunt. Because I just want to see him play.

[Read the whole thing]]]> Ah, another year of fantasy baseball. Last year was extremely frustrating, since I came out of last year’s draft with what I thought was one of the best teams I’d drafted in this (very competitive) league, and then my pitching imploded and various other things went wrong. Mid-way through the season I decided that if I didn’t finish in the money that I’d drop out of the league. I ended up finishing 7th (out of 16 teams) which was the last spot in the money, so here I am, back again!

As always, the draft was held at Chris’ house down the street. I got there at 11 am to set up the wireless, which ended up going flawlessly – it worked the first time! Internet connectivity was actually great, and the draft went very smoothly. We were doing each round in about 25 minutes for the first 10 or so rounds, and it speeded up after that. It took us a little less than 9 hours to do the whole draft, which is about average. A long day, but it’s a lot of fun – which is why I do it!

My biggest regret of the draft was not taking Kurt Suzuki when I had a chance, as that left me with the true dregs for my catching slot, without even much upside. I also regret just missing out on prospect Brandon Wood. But those are fairly small regrets; overall I was pretty happy with how it turned out. I expect I’ll have a middle-of-the-road pitching staff with some upside, and a potent offense. My team is generally young (which is typical of my teams in recent years) so it could be better than I project.

It takes a fair amount of luck to win this league, not to mention a better pitching staff than I usually have. But I still have a fun time putting the team together. Hopefully the dice will roll more in my favor than they did last year.

As I said, I spent most of last week preparing for

[Read the whole thing]]]> My insane month of March is now over. Thank goodness. Even though it was mostly a lot of fun, it was so packed that I didn’t have a lot of wiggle room in what I had to do or much time to relax.

As I said, I spent most of last week preparing for my fantasy baseball draft. But before that, Subrata and I spent most of Saturday playing the final ultimate tournament of the season. It was warm and sunny (and windy, as the day wore on), and there was enough turnout for 2 games with enough subs to keep me reasonably rested. Only five people from our team turned out, so we merged with another team, and our team won 2 games out of 3!

I had a pretty good afternoon personally, making a couple of blocks and a few good throws. My game got more erratic as the day went on and I got more and more tired, but at least I was still running and not exhausted on the sideline by the end of the day! Then the league had a barbecue to finish off the season, and we all got our league disks for the year, as well as some other goodies (I got a bag for my cleats and a lanyard).

Boy, I sure was stiff afterwards, though. Even with doing some stretching!

And then Sunday I got up and Subrata and I headed over to our fantasy baseball draft. Our league has 16 owners, 6 of whom showed up locally, and everyone else drafted remotely over Internet chat. (Most of the others are on the east coast, especially around Boston.) We started promptly at 11 am Pacific, and made good time for the first 3 hours, and then bogged down considerably, and finally finished up around 9 pm. Yes, it was a long slog. But then, the second half usually is. I did my best to not be the guy slowing down the draft, and did better than in past years, I think.

I’ll likely post an entry about the team I drafted, but suffice to say that I think I executed my plan much better this year than I did last year. Things could still go wrong, but I think I have the potential to finish near the top of the league this year.

Finally, today I took my car in for its 75k service. It was also time to have my timing belt changed, which turns out to be a fairly pricy proposition for my 2000 Civic. But the car should be good for a number of years yet. Now I just need to get some new tires, which hopefully won’t be hard. I need to do that soon, so I can have everything in shape for when my Mom visits me later this month!

But for now, I’m just happy to have some unstructured time.

Because unstructured time is time I can spend watching baseball!

[Read the whole thing]]]> Well, most of my free time is going towards preparing for the fantasy baseball draft. Which has mostly involved remembering how to use the software I wrote for last year, and trying to fix the things which didn’t work so well for me last year (which is a lot of things, since I finished 10th out of 16 teams). It’s going, but it’s not going very quickly.

Keeper rosters were due yesterday at noon. These are the list of players each team is keeping from last year to this year. Our league has a budget based years of service in the Majors, and each team typically keeps 4-to-8 players. I kept 8. I was fortunate to be able to make a couple of last-minute trades which sent some players I didn’t plan to keep to other owners for some draft picks. Consequently, I have 5 extra draft picks, which is kinda nice.

Now I just have to figure out who I want to draft!

I had planned to spend this evening playing the pick-up Ultimate game, but I got to the field (a different one from our usual field) and there was no one I recognized, and no one with a frisbee – just lots and lots of soccer players. I stayed there for 15 minutes and then bagged it. In any event it was cold and very windy so it wasn’t a great evening for frisbee. But still, I would have been happy to play for a bit.

Debbi’s doing well, by the way. She’s back at work this week. Her mouth is still a bit sore, but she’s taking fewer painkillers and is eating a few foods she can chew – just nothing crunchy yet.