Fantasy Gods Draft

I’m asked to participate in a few “experts” leagues draft each year, and this year was no different. One of those leagues that I was asked to enter was a 12-team, mixed league auction that drafted the other night. Here are the participants in The Battle of the Fantasy Gods Draft.

Mike Kuchera – The Fantasy Man
Scott White – CBS Sports
Tim McLeod – RotoRob
Todd Farino – Fantasy Baseball Search
Jeff Boggis – Fantasy Sports Empires
Chris McDonnell – Fantasy Baseball
Tony Cincotta – Fantasy Pros 911
Paul Greco – Fantasy Pros 911
Grey Albright – Razzball
Ryan Hallam – Fighting Chance Fantasy
Scott Swanay – Fantasy Baseball Sherpa
Ray Flowers – FanBall

* Note. Each team had $260 dollars to spend to field a traditional lineup of 14 hitters (C, C, 1B, 2B, 3B, SS, MI, CI, 5 OF, UT) and nine pitchers. There was no reserve draft held, so each team was only comprised of the 23 men drafted, and therefore every player selected will obviously be in the active lineup.

I entered the draft playing on spending $180 on hitting and $80 on pitching. I also planned on being patient as people sometimes blow their wads early.

Here is how my team turned out.

Catcher: Kelly Shoppach ($3), Yadier Molina ($3)
I probably overpaid for Shoppach who I grabbed early, but he brings enough power to be useful. Molina is better than you think, and a safe play in batting average.

First Base: Miguel Cabrera ($35)
One of two big ticket items. Cabrera is about as steady as they come. He and Albert Pujols are the only two men in the game to have hit .290-25-100 in each of the past six seasons.

Second Base: Brian Roberts ($20)
Love this guy, and he was the last of the top tier second basemen to go. Roberts is the only player in baseball history to have 3-straight efforts of 100-runs, 30-steals and 40-doubles

Third Base: Michael Young ($9)
I think this was one of the best bargains of the draft. Doesn’t have the traditional third base pop, but he owns a .302 career average, has scored 80 runs in six of seven seasons, and knocked in 80 runs 5-straight years before falling to 68 last year as injury struck.

Shortstop: Stephen Drew ($7)
Drew is one of just four shortstops to have 10 homers, 65 RBI and 70 runs the past two seasons.

Middle/Corner Infield: Howie Kendrick ($8), Lance Berkman ($18)
Kendrick will hit .300 in his sleep. If he finally makes it out there for 500 at-bats, he could swipe 15 bags while going deep 15 times. Berkman had a down season last year, mostly because of injury. If you give him another 100 plate appearances to reach his normal level, he would have been right at 30 HR and 100 RBI.

Outfield: Jacoby Ellsbury ($29), Shane Victorino ($15), Alfonso Soriano ($10), Jason Kubel ($8), Johnny Damon ($5)
Ellsbury is a beast and has as good a chance as anyone to lead the league in steals. Victorino does everything well, and has been money the past three years. Soriano is a risk, no doubt, but with health 30 homers still seems doable. Kubel is a safe choice. He’ll likely regress a bit from last season’s numbers, but should still be solid. And I have no idea why no one loves Johnny Damon – not only in real life but also in the fantasy game.

Utility: Vlad Guerrero ($1)
Got my guy here. Drafted him really late when others were low on cash. With the Rangers I really think he could still hit .300 with 25 homers, totals he had reached 11-straight years before last season.

Pitcher: Joe Nathan ($16), Josh Beckett ($16), Brian Wilson ($12), James Shields ($10), Scott Baker ($9), Tim Hudson ($8), Chad Qualls ($8), Max Scherzer ($5), Matt Thornton ($3)
Beckett is an ace. In each of the past three seasons he has posted a K/9 rate of at least 8.43 while keeping his WHIP under 1.20. He is the only AL hurler who can make that claim. Shields, Baker and Hudson could all win 15 games with solid ratios, and I think they form a great base behind Beckett. As for Scherzer, he just might be the most dominating hurler of the bunch if he can ever learn to throw strikes. Nathan and Wilson should get me 75 saves. The Qualls selection caused some to snicker, but he could save 30 if healthy. After all, he led baseball with a 6.43 K/BB ratio last year. Thornton may not get saves, but he will provide ratio help, strikeout a ton of batters, and could move into the closers role if/when Bobby Jenks is traded.

Total: Hitting $171, Pitching $87 (I was left with $2).

I darn near hit my pre-draft goals in terms of spending, and put together a strong team. I was especially pleased with my pitching staff considering how long I waited to jump into that mix for starters. Still, are you wondering why I had $2 left over? Let me tell you a story.

I had targeted Vlad for my UT spot late, and I had that spot and one final OF spot open with $11 left. I tried to draft Corey Hart and Nate McLouth, but both times the bidding went to $10. I could have paid that amount, but then (a) I wouldn’t have been able to get Vlad (there is no way anyone could have known he would go for a dollar), and (b) I HATE having $1 players. It’s not like they can’t be productive players, in fact they are often the most productive given how cheaply they come on draft day, but the problem is you have no say in who it ends up being. Think about it. All someone needs is $2 and they can lock you out of the bidding on that player. I want to be able to dictate who is on my team, not be stuck with a player no one else thinks is worth a dollar bid.

In the end I feel good about the club. I will need Damon/Soriano/Guerrero to come through on offense, but given their illustrious track records, I feel pretty strongly that they will. The pitching staff is also a solid group who I would go to battle with in any mixed league.

So there it is. Wish me luck as I battle all year long with the “Gods” of fantasy baseball.

By Ray Flowers

Woe is Me

Today I’ll touch on a couple of baseball injuries in the Lone Star state, and then delve into two NFL stories that really got my ire over the weekend. Oh yeah, the one bright spot will be a certain right-handed pitcher who you wouldn’t think would be an ace, but in fact he’s almost pitched like one in the early going.

Brandon McCarthy is DL bound yet again, this time due to a stress fracture in his right shoulder (a very similar injury to the one that sidelined him two years ago). Doug Mathis figures to take his roster spot. McCarthy, one of the more dominating starters in the minors in recent times, has just never been able to stay healthy, and even when he has, his performance has merely been average. Through 81 minor league appearance he owns a 3.35 ERA, 1.09 WHIP, 10.1 K/9 and a superb 5.69 K/BB mark. Alas, those numbers did not translate to the bigs as he has posted a 4.61 ERA, 1.38 WHIP, 6.10 K/9 and 1.74 K/BB rate. Think about that – McCarthy’s strikeout to walk ratio is literally less than one third of what is was in the minor leagues thanks to the fact that he has lost four Ks per nine innings off his dominating minor league number. Oh well. Guess that’s what happens when you share a pitching staff with Kris Benson – guilt by association or something?

Josh Hamilton will undergo surgery for his strained abdomen and miss something like 4-6 weeks. “Given what it could have been, I think it’s probably better than what some of the alternatives are,” general manager Jon Daniels said. Hamilton had no shot to duplicate his numbers from last season (.304-32-130) in my mind, but that doesn’t mean I expected him to be this awful (.240-6-24 in 125 at-bats). As you might guess, this leaves the Rangers in a bit of a pickle on offense, even with the depth they have as they can hardly hope that Andruw Jones suddenly reverts to 2006 form when he hit .262 with 41 home runs and 129 RBI. Still, Jones has had a nice comeback season batting .272/.400/.533 a year after he hit about .100 points below his weight at .158, and he figures to see a few more at-bats along with David Murphy.

Don’t look and just answer me this question – who leads the NL in victories? If you said Johan Santana you would be wrong. If you said Jason Marquis, remarkably, you would be right as he is 8-4 on the year. Only twice in his eight wins have the Rockies scored as many as five runs so it’s not just like he has thrown his glove out there and picked up victories because of massive run support.

Manny Ramirez is still sitting in fifth place amongst NL vote getters for a starting spot in the All-Star game. He is a good deal back of Carlos Beltran some 250,000 votes behind the Mets’ star (Alfonso Soriano is fourth). If you didn’t catch my thoughts on the whole all-star matter, read The All-Star Fallacy.

Now, two football notes…

In case you were tempted to draft Chad Ochocinco, formerly Chad Johnson (and yes, that is his real name), don’t. Listen to the words of that joker in a recent interview with the Cincinnati Enquirer. “I’m not even going to lie to you, I’m going to say it. Last year, the off-season, I didn’t lift one weight, I didn’t run one route, I didn’t exercise,” Chad said. “I didn’t do nothing because my focus was on getting out of a situation I didn’t want to be in. I’m not going to lie.” Gotta give him an “A” for his honesty, but he gets and “F” for life, so I want him nowhere near my fantasy team given the air of negativity that follows around that buffoon. If he had just played football he could have had a glorious career. Now he will have to beg the league to let him in the Hall of Fame.

And lastly, from the IT’s FLAT OUT IMPOSSIBLE file there is this little diddy to mention. Kenny Phillips, a second year safety, is noticeably bigger this year. Here are his own words. “Sixteen pounds since the season ended,” he said. “I don’t know where it came from,” Phillips added, “but I’m proud if it.” I’ll tell you where you got it Kenny, you bought it from some drug dealer in Tijuana. OK, that’s harsh, and of course what I just wrote is mere supposition on my part, I have not one iota of proof that Phillips has done anything illegal to gain size, so let me be clear on that point. But I will tell you flat out that it is IMPOSSIBLE for a professional athlete, already in amazingly physical shape, to gain 16 lbs in a mere five months. Again, let me be clear – it is impossible. Which leads me to my last point. If Phillips was a baseball player he would be the lead story on ESPN as a certain PED user, but he’s a football player so no one, no one, cares. Gotta love the way we castigate baseball players and try to strip them of their dignity for potential PED use while paying absolutely zero attention to the seedy side of football where that stuff certainly goes on. Just keep laying hat on people Kenny, no one will care what you do away from the field as long as you perform on it.

By Ray Flowers

The Injury Bug

As we get ready for the weekend, there are a whole host, and I mean a boatload, of players dealing with injuries. In what follows I’m briefly dissect a few of those injured ball players as well as touching on a potential lineup change in the Windy City.

The MVP of the 2009 season may be the doctor/trainer that can determine why seemingly half of the players in the majors are dealing with an oblique strain of some kind. I never heard of a fat guy straining a side muscle, and while I’m not calling him fat, when was the last time that Miguel Cabrera missed a substantial amount of time? The answer is never as he has been in the lineup for at least 157 games in each of the past five seasons. Maybe those extra 20 lbs that he is carrying on his frame actually help him in that he isn’t as tightly wound as a yo-yo on the verge of the walking the dog maneuver. All that musculature of the modern day player maybe actually be harming their ability to stay on the field. Strength is great, but perhaps the players should spend some more time working on their flexibility and less trying to look like a Muscle and Fitness reject. Just a thought.

Cole Hamels had further tests done on his shoulder and they confirmed the original diagnosis of just a bruise. Don’t know about you, but even with this good news I’m starting to get the feeling that this might just be one of those years for the Phillies hurler. Hopefully you aren’t counting on him to be your fantasy ace. I’m not saying he is going to collapse or anything, but I think he will be hard pressed to come even close to last year’s numbers (14-10, 3.09 ERA, 1.08 WHIP, 196 Ks).

Adam Miller’s season, and possibly his career is over. He will have surgery to repair an injured middle finger on his throwing hand, and there is some serious concern about whether or not he will ever be able to make it back to the hill to fire his filthy stuff at batters. The reason is that the surgery is very tricky, and with a high incidence of scar tissue resulting from similar surgeries on others, follow up procedures are almost always called for. The bottom line here is that this golden arm has never been able to stay healthy long enough to make his mark, and that’s a shame.

Joakim Soria will miss the weekend series and possibly some time next week as well due to some shoulder discomfort. An MRI revealed no structural damage which is good news, though we cannot rule out a potential DL stint. Which Royals name do you want to grab? There are two names in the mix in Kyle Farnsworth and Juan Cruz. The Royals seem to have an unhealthy love of Farnsworth and his game blowing skills. For my money, I would roster the superior hurler, i.e. Cruz (163 K in his last 119.1 IP, good for an amazing 12.29 K/9 mark), and hope that the often scattered brain trust in K.C. makes the right call. Cruz only has one save in his career, and often breaks down, but that stuff is Carlos Marmol-like, and that is saying something.

Alfonso Soriano will move to third in the Cubs’ lineup on Friday with Milton Bradley continuing to be sidelined with a sore groin. Ryan Theriot will be inserted into the leadoff role. I doubt this is a long term change, even though Soriano’s skills say that he is a better bet for a middle of the order spot than his customary leadoff role. Honestly though, he isn’t a third hitter either. In truth, if he didn’t have the speed that sets him apart from others, the rest of his skills would scream out dynamite fifth hole hitter. In 631 career ABs in the third hole, Soriano owns a .761 OPS, .135 points below his .896 mark in 3,097 career at-bats as a leadoff hitter.

Alex Rodriguez is a bit ahead of schedule in his rehab from hip surgery, and he figures to be back on the field with his Yankee teammates in about two weeks. Perhaps he has been doing some yoga and meditation with Madonna.