NFL – NFFC and Daily Joust

I’m switching things up this Monday. With fantasy football season approaching quickly, I thought I would do two things today.

(1) I’ll present you with an opportunity to join a league at DailyJoust.com in which you can have a shot at winning part of the $1500 Free Roll — for free (it’s in the title).

(2) I’ll review the team that I drafted for the National Fantasy Football Championship because I’m always about transparency with my fantasy squads.

DAILY JOUST – $1500 FREE ROLL

I’ve been telling you all about DailyJoust all baseball season, but you know they also do basketball, hockey and football, right? Here’s an exciting option for the 2012 NFL Season.

DailyJoust is offering a $1500 Tournament in which $1500 prizes are available (top prize is $150.00, and the top-200 places receive a prize as well).

The best part about the tournament is that it is FREE to sign up.

Obviously there is no reason on earth that you shouldn’t take a few minutes out of your day to sign up for a free game in which you can win real cash. Not to mention the fun that accompanies cheering on your fantasy squad as you demolish the competition. So get over to DailyJoust and make it happen (you can easily sign up from the link that takes you to the BaseballGuys/DailyJoust partner page).

NATIONAL FANTASY FOOTBALL CHAMPIONSHIP

On Saturday I was part of a 12-team league in the NFFC 12-team Online Championship (I wrote about the league in Beat Ray Flowers, Win $100,000?). Today I’ll review the squad (you can still sign up for leagues with the NFFC so go ahead and head that way when you get a chance).

League Rules

12 teams, 20 rounds, #10 draft selection
PPR
3rd round reversal (more on that below)
KDS (more on that below)
Starting lineup: QB, RB, RB, WR, WR, WR, TE, Flex, K, DEF
6 points for all TDs

QB: Philip Rivers (7th round), Christian Ponder (16), Tim Tebow (17)

RB: Darren McFadden (1), Adrian Peterson (3), Fred Jackson (4), Roy Helu (8), LeGarrette Blount (10), Ronnie Brown (12), Mike Goodson (14)

WR: Larry Fitzgerald (2), Jeremy Maclin (5), Darrius Heyward-Bey (9), Kendall Wright (11), Danny Amendola (13), Alshon Jeffrey (15)

TE: Fred Davis (6), Heath Miller (20)

K: Matt Prater (18)

D: Atlanta Falcons (19)

Quarterback: As I say everyday on Sirius 210, XM 87 on The Drive (Mon-Fri 7-10 PM EDT), I’m not going to go nuts on the QBs early. This league was a perfect example of that. I’m a huge fan of Matt Ryan and Tony Romo, but they went in the 4th and 5th rounds. I happily waited for Rivers, the 10th QB taken. I grabbed Ponder late, like the foot/arm combo, and then took Tebow. I don’t ever draft three signal callers, but two things. (1) This league drafts 20 players, an extremely deep total forcing more aggressive drafting with so little left on the waiver-wire. (2) I’ve said this since before last season, if Tebow is starting he’s a top-10 QB option every week. I’m not sure that Mark Sanchez will hold him off for that starting spot all year, an if so I got me a great late round bargain, or at least blocked someone else from getting the chance to grab a potential starter at the end of the draft.

Running Back: If DMC and AD are healthy this will be the top duo in the league. If DMC ends up injured and AD lacks his normal boost coming back from knee surgery, my team is in trouble. Go big or go home I say. F-Jax gives me the best RB3 in the league. All this nonsense in Washington — Helu is still the most talented back there. Blount has been undervalued because of the Doug Martin hoopla. I think he carves out a bigger role than most. Ronnie Brown could get a couple of starts while the always brittle Ryan Mathews heals that shoulder. Goodson was my must add handcuff for DMC.

Wide Receiver: My weak link. Fitzgerald is amazingly consistent, and I wouldn’t be shocked if Maclin ended the year as a WR1. I like DHB but would have preferred his teammate, Denarius Moore. That’s a decent trio that I like a lot, but DHB doesn’t give me the warm and fuzzies even though he had some excellent games last year. Wright could be big as a rookie with Kenny Britt’s woes, and Amendola may not score but he catches passes (85 two years ago). Jeffrey was my go for broke late selection. He has the talent, and opportunity, to be a big player as the season progresses.

Tight End: Fred Davis, as long as he stays healthy and away from illicit substances, will be the breakout player at the tight end position this year. I would have preferred Rob Housler as my backup over Miller but Housler shares the same bye week as Davis.

K/DEF: Per usual, I just waited and grab the best available options at the end of the draft.

This league was a Third Round Reversal (3RR). What that means is that after the first two rounds the draft order flip flops.

Picks 1-12 are then followed by pick 12-1 as always in snake drafts. However, in round three the order is reversed so it ends up looking like this: 1-12, 12-1, 12-1.

Since I had the 10th pick I ended up with: pick #10, pick #15, pick #27

Since everyone knows I’m not gonna take a QB or TE that early, I felt like if I ended up with a pick at the end of the first round I would be able to grab a runner in round one, a pass catcher in round two, an another runner in round three. Guess what? I did exactly that.

How did I know I was going to end up with a late first round selection? Because the NFFC allows you to bid on which pick, #1-12, you want by use of the Kentucky Derby Style process. In this setup, each player submits their list of preferred draft slots (in my case, I went 10, 11, 12 etc.). Players names are then randomly drawn and they are assigned their highest preference on their draft list based upon which spots remain. Luckily for me I got the spot I wanted at the end of the round and my strategy played out perfectly. Now we’ll have to wait and see if my strategy was sound or not.

*** DON’T FORGET TO GET YOUR COPY OF THE 2012 NFL FANTASY FOOTBALL GUIDE.

By Ray Flowers

Around the Horn: July11, 2012

FIRST HALF DISAPPOINTMENTS

(1) Tim Lincecum has dreadful first half.

(2) Evan Longoria continued leg woes.

(3) Dustin Pedroia weighed down by thumb issues.

(4) Carl Crawford – where have you been?

(5) Jacoby Ellsbury missed significant time for 2nd time in three years.

(6) Brett Gardner’s quest for elbow health.

(7) Dan Haren hits DL for first time.

(8) Mariano Rivera finally fails.

(9) Albert Pujols’ OPS is down .250 points.

(10) Carlos Santana failing miserably to match expectations.

DAILY JOUST CONTEST – TAKE ON THE ORACLE

It’s time for me to put my reputation on the line. Are you ready for the challenge of taking me on in a fantasy baseball contest? You think you can take down the Oracle? $50 HEADS UP VS. ME!

MLB – Tournament – Fri, Jul 13th – Ray Flowers 50/50 Challenge Friday 7/13

$5 Entry Fee. Top 10 win $9 prize.

Top score gets to play a free $50 prize heads up against me, Ray Flowers, on Friday July 20.

All you have to do to take me on is to prove yourself this week. Do that, and next week it’s me against you in a battle of fantasy titans.

For those of you interested in the scoring, here are the rules of the event.

Scoring Breakdown

Scoring for hitting (C, 1B, 2B, 3B, SS, OF, LF, CF, RF)

•Total Bases (TB) = 1 pt for each base (Single = 1, Double = 2, Triple = 3, Home Run = 4)
•Hit (H) = 1 pts
•Run Scored (R) = 2 pts
•Run Batted In (RBI) = 2 pts
•Stolen Base (SB) = 2 pts
•Walk (BB) = 1 pt
•Hit By Pitch (HBP) = 1 pt
•Sacrifice (SAC) = 1 pt
•Strike Out (SO) = -1 pt
•Grounded Into Double Play (GIDP) = -1 pt

Scoring for pitching (SP or P)

•Inning Pitched (IP) = 1 pt for every 1/3 Inning Pitched (e.g. per out)
•Strike Out (SO) = 1 pt
•Earned Runs (ER) = -2 pts
•Hit (H) = -1 pt
•Walk (BB) = -1 pt
•Hit Batsman (HBP) = -1 pt
•Win (W) = 7 pts

Can you take down The Oracle? If so, here’s the link to give it a shot.

By Ray Flowers

Daily Joust: Take on Ray Flowers

Are you ready to test your fantasy baseball acumen against one of the best in the business? Well you may not ever get the chance to do that, but I can guarantee that you will have your chance to take on Ray Flowers in the BaseballGuys / DailyJoust $250 Free Roll this Friday, May 18th.

WHEN IS THE EVENT?

May 18th, Friday

WHAT IS IT?

A one day fantasy baseball tournament. Play the nightly matchups and get a chance to win the $250 MLB Freeroll for Friday May 18th.

The best part, it’s 100% FREE to sign up (look for the green ENTER NOW tab under the MLB – Fri, May 18th – King Arthur’s $250BB MLB Free Entry Tournament).

WHAT DO YOU HAVE TO DO?

You’ll receive a $1 million dollar salary cap to roster the following positions:
C, 1B/DH, 2B, 3B, SS, OF, OF, OF, SP.

Rosters must be set by 7pm EST.

PRIZES

You’ll not only pick up a chance at unseating me as a fantasy baseball champ (imagine how cool you will sound when you can brag to your friends that you whipped up on that blowhard Ray Flowers), you will also get a chance to win cash prizes totaling $250 — and again, it’s FREE to sign up.

**BEAT MY SCORE AND RECEIVE AN ADDITIONAL $5 IN BONUS BUCKS FROM DAILYJOUST. Also, 40% deposit bonus up to $400, refer a friend and both get $20.**

Are you ready for the challenge? If so, simply click on the provided link to DailyJoust, sign up with the site if you haven’t already (and shame on you if you haven’t), and register on the right side of the page for the MLB – Tournament – Friday, May 18th – King Arthur’s $250BB MLB Free Entry Tournament.

Think you can take be down to gain bragging rights while at the same time winning cash, for FREE?

Who wouldn’t want to do that?

So sign up for the daily fantasy baseball league and take your shot against me. Let’s see what you got.

*Must have less than 1 MLB win on DailyJoust to compete in contest.

By Ray Flowers

Daily Joust – Wk 1: Did We Learn Anything?

There is finally a week of MLB games in the books. It might have two weeks for MLB to get all the teams on the field and playing, but how nice was it to see some action that actually counted? Did we learn anything in the first week of action? We learned that closers all over the place will have a hard time keeping their jobs if they keep this up. We learned how damaging losing one of your bullpen arms can be (see the Red Sox disastrous meltdown in the 9th with Andrew Bailey on the shelf after thumb surgery). We also learned that miracles can happen as the Mets started the year 3-0. What else did we learn that you might be able to apply to your Daily Joust fantasy baseball teams? So glad you asked.

LOSER OF THE WEEK

Anyone who rostered Clayton Kershaw ($319,000 DJ Salary) on their DailyJoust club.

Kershaw, suffering from the flu, managed to toss just three scoreless innings before he had to remove himself from his Opening Day start. You pat him on the back for giving it the old college try, but he simply killed everyone who had him active, and that was a large amount of folks given that Kershaw was coming off a season in which he led NL hurlers in wins (21 – tied with Ian Kennedy), ERA (2.28) and strikeouts (248). Kershaw should be ready to take his turn in the rotation Tuesday in the Dodgers homer opener and the expectation is that he will be able to pitch as long as his performance dictates.

ALREADY MASHING

Yoenis Cespedes ($90K): His opening series, highlighted by that 462 foot bomb he blasted to dead center field, showed just what type of hitter Cespedes can be. However, pitchers will find his weaknesses. They will exploit his weaknesses. His swing is still very long and has holes. He’s never faced this level of competition on a daily basis. Speaking of that, he’s never played a season with 162 games. Cespedes has produced a nice prologue, but this book still has 25 chapters to go.

Zack Cozart ($76K): The Reds’ shortstop killed it in Week 1 going 6-for-11 with a homer and four RBI. That’s as good as it’s going to get. Expectations are very high for Cozart heading into his first full season. The good news is that his recovery from Tommy John surgery on his non-throwing arm is complete. The bad news is that he isn’t as good a hitter as some think. Just look at his minor league numbers that include a .270 batting average, .332 OBP and .421 SLG. In 506 career games he hit 50 homers, stole 55 bases and produced that blah slash line. He’s simply not a prime time performer with a bat in his hand.

Rafael Furcal ($87K): After four games and 19 at-bats Furcal is hitting .526. As recently as 2010 he hit .300 with 22 steals, but he also appeared in 97 games that season, one of three years in the past four campaigns in which he didn’t appear in 100 games. That’s the key for the 34 year old – health. When he’s out there he can still produce, but the battle to drag his body out onto the field continues to be one that he often loses. Ride the hot hand, but realize that it’s all downhill from here.

Nick Markakis ($98K): Worries about his recovery from offseason abdominal surgery have been put to rest. It’s just three games, but Markakis has a triple, two homers an is hitting .556. One of the more stable commodities in the game, Markakis has produced at least 182 hits in each of the past five years. He plays everyday which helps to lead to the production, but he’s also failed to hit more than 18 homers the past three years, has seen his RBI total fail to hit 75 the past two years, and the last time he scored 80 runs was 2009. He’s consolid, but he’s unlikely to become a megastar in 2012.

ORIOLES PITCHERS

Through three games the Orioles are the best staff in baseball with a 1.00 ERA and a 0.85 WHIP as they led the club to a 3-0 start against the Twins. The real question though is – are the Orioles arms that good or are the Twins bats that bad? Go with the second choice. The Twins just didn’t hit the ball – at all – in the opening series of games. Here’s a quick run down of each of the Orioles hurlers who started those three games.

* Note: All three hurlers were/are great values given that the elite arms can approach or surpass $300,000.

Jake Arrieta ($151K): Win, 7 IP, 2 H, 0 ER, 2 BBs, 4 Ks
Jason Hammel ($144K): Win, 8 IP, 1 H, 2 ER, 3 BBs, 5 Ks
Tommy Hunter ($150K): Win, 7 IP, 6 H, 0 ER, 1 BB, 3 Ks

All three dominated the Twins and cost virtually nothing. If you were crazy enough to start any of them, the payoff was massive. Alas, none profile as strong long term options.

Arrieta is the best arm on this list. However, he struggled mightily at times during his first two seasons, an eventually had to have elbow surgery. He throw hard but still only struck out batters at a league average rate last season. He also walked batters like he was Jonathan Sanchez with a 4.45 per nine mark. Through 226.2 big league innings he has a 4.73 ERA, 1.46 WHIP, 5.14 K/9 and 2.00 K/BB. It doesn’t get more bland than that.

Hammel is slightly intriguing. Freed from Colorado, perhaps he will live up to expectations with the Orioles (though pitching in the AL East isn’t exactly going to be easy). Unfortunately he’s coming off a putrid season that resulted in career worsts in K/9 (he lost nearly two batters off the mark he posted in 2009-10), while his BB/9 rate climbed by more than a batter per nine innings. He does a decent job in limiting the fly balls, but nothing in this skill set raises the flag up the pole at the moment.

Hunter is as average as you get when you look at his skills – worse than that actually. His K/9 rate is 4.96 for his career, more than two batters below the league average. At least he doesn’t beat himself with the walk so the result is a rather impressive 3.00 K/BB ratio. Still, he doesn’t miss any bats, is slightly below the league average with a 1.00 GB/FB mark (1.10 is the league mark), and he was never able to convince the Rangers to given him more than 128 innings of work in a season which should tell you something.

DAILY CONTEST

Today you can sign up for the King Arthur’s $50 Free Roll on DailyJoust. No entry free is required to get a chance to play the game and earn your free chance to take home part of the $50 prize pool. All games that start at 7:05 PM EDT or later are open to add players to your daily fantasy baseball squad. So get over to DailyJoust, put together your one day lineup, and get ready to win some free $.

By Ray Flowers

BBGuys Partners With DailyJoust

 It’s that time people. In the words of Michael Buffer, Let’s Get Ready to Rumble!

The 2012 baseball season is underway with the Athletics and Mariners playing baseball in Japan (a terrible decision in the opinion of this scribe), but the “real” start of the major league season comes next week when the Cardinals take on the Marlins on April 4th. However, that’s still a mere appetizer for the first full day of games in major league baseball for the 2012 season, and that’s April 5th. Let me tell you why that date should be important to you – and it’s not just because you’ll have a chance to play hookie all day watching baseball.

BaseballGuys.com and DailyJoust.com have partnered for the 2012 baseball season. What is DailyJoust? “Daily Joust is a fantasy sports web site that lets you pick a fantasy team any time you want and win real money [based] on its performance.”

If you’re a traditionalist maybe you like the grind of 162 games in 180 days. However, the trend these days it to more immediate gratification. You can get a feel for that in H2H leagues as you get your weekly results (a winner and loser each week), but DailyJoust takes things a step further – you can select a new team every day. You don’t have to worry about your fantasy season being sunk if Albert Pujols blows out his knee or Cliff Lee needs Tommy John surgery. The reason is that you can choose a new team every single day if you want to with DailyJoust. DailyJoust allows you to set a roster of players for a single day using a salary cap game (players are giving set values, and you construct your roster with players until your allotted dollar amount runs out). Don’t like how your team did the first time around? Well go ahead and switch out the whole roster if you want the next time you play. No longer are you merely tied to whether or not you made the right choices on draft day.

The best part? You can win money playing the game. Show your skills at putting together the best fantasy sports squad, and DailyJoust will reward you with cash prizes. How do you win cash? Again, you do it by putting together the best daily fantasy baseball team in a league with the following scoring system (it’s a points league for those of you who really love that setup).

Scoring Breakdown

Scoring for hitting (C, 1B, 2B, 3B, SS, OF, LF, CF, RF)

Total Bases (TB) = 1 pt for each base (Single = 1, Double = 2, Triple = 3, Home Run = 4)
Hit (H) = 1 pts
Run Scored (R) = 2 pts
Run Batted In (RBI) = 2 pts
Stolen Base (SB) = 2 pts
Walk (BB) = 1 pt
Hit By Pitch (HBP) = 1 pt
Sacrifice (SAC) = 1 pt
Strike Out (SO) = -1 pt
Grounded Into Double Play (GIDP) = -1 pt

Scoring for pitching (SP or P)

Inning Pitched (IP) = 1 pt for every 1/3 Inning Pitched (e.g. per out)
Strike Out (SO) = 1 pt
Earned Runs (ER) = -2 pts
Hit (H) = -1 pt
Walk (BB) = -1 pt
Hit Batsman (HBP) = -1 pt
Win (W) = 7 pts

I’d also like to draw special attention to the $250 Bonus Bucks Freeroll that is set to run on April 5th (located on the right hand side of the page underneat the BaseballGuys logo), that first day on the schedule with more than one game being played. Here is the payout breakdown for that Freeroll.

Top Prizes
1 – $50.00 BB
2 – $35.00 BB
3 – $30.00 BB

Don’t worry if you don’t finish in the top-3, the $250 Bonus Bucks Freeroll pays out all the way down to 16th spot, so you have plenty of chances to rack up some dough.

Obviously I’d suggest going to DailyJoust.com to get the ball rolling for 2012 for your Salary Cap experience. Get your Fantasy Baseball season off to a winning start.