Hidden Bloggers know that each baseball season I traditionally launch five fantasy squads. Four of the teams are basically created for mock draft purposes - they give me a sense of how good my player pre-ranking is. I pick them early in spring training, when there's still time for major injuries to occur. Then within a few days of Opening Day, I draft the "real" team.
The Fake Teams
1. Slappy McPopup - named this team for the derisive nickname Los Angeles Dodgers fans assigned to the weak-hitting left fielder Juan Pierre. This was also my first league ever as commissioner. The fantastic device let me and Jack join go head-to-head, along with ten of our favorite strangers. Jack's team was loaded with hitting and relief pitching, but suffered from extreme manager indifference. By my calculations he would have ended up in second place merely by choosing to field a full lineup every day. But alas, fantasy baseball is a game of attrition, and it would have been a fairly DISTANT second. That's because, in fact, nearly the entire league was in slumber.
Grabbing a rejuvenated David Wright and Miguel Cabrera in a career year got things off on the right foot. Nonetheless my top ten picks contained several flameouts... Mark Reynolds (3), Ben Zobrist (4), Adam Jones (7), Javier Vasquez (8), and Scott Baker (9). In fact, only half of my remaining picks were still on the roster by year's end. Fortunately, two of those were superstars Adam Wainwright and Carlos Gonzalez. Fortunately, the competition's apathy allowed me to snag several studs off the waiver wire. In some cases these guys - Paul Konerko, Jose Bautista, Kelly Johnson and Buster Posey - were sitting out there for weeks. And what do you know? None other than Slappy McPopup himself contributed 68 stolen bases to the cause. The 107 points at the end were my largest amounts, and could have been larger still, had there not been other teams demanding more attention in my quest for a perfect season. I took the lead on April 20 and never looked back.
2. Test 2 - I named all my other teams "Test" as I do every year, an indication of their second-class status. But there was no second-rate performance by this squad, which rolled to the largest margin of victory, 21.5 points, of the bunch. Only three of my top ten picks failed, and one of those was due to Kendry Morales' freak injury. Mark Texeira and Troy Tulowitzki were my top two picks and got off to miserable starts (Tulo due to injury). So miserable, in fact, that this team trailed first place by 25 points on my birthday! The dominant winning margin is all the more spectacular as a result. Resisting the urge to dump underperforming players made all the difference. By August 1 we grabbed the lead for good. The 96 wins by the pitching staff was the best I can ever recall from one of my teams, who traditionally are high-strikeout, low inning types. Shrewd midseason pickups of a resurgent Aramis Ramirez helped fuel the rally.
3. Test 3 - This team rated well for most of the season behind the likes of Gonzalez, Konerko, and Ryan Braun at the plate, Mike Napoli and Ty Wiggington plugging in power at typically weak positions, and the pitching of Wainwright, Phil Hughes and Matt Cain. Rafael Soriano anchored the bullpen, as with several of my teams. This would have been an easy win if it weren't for another tenacious opponent who traded 1-2 positions with me for the season's final five months. After zooming to a double-digit margin by September 1, I found myself frantically presiding over a near-epic collapse near the end as the entire team went into a funk. The lead was down to 2 on the final day of the season with a scant advantage in multiple categories. Fortunately the second-place team had a rotten final day, and the battle was won.
4. Test - The rebound of Test 2 was remarkable, but this is the comeback story of the year. The early draft picks - oh, what a disaster. Besides the impotent results from Texiera in the first half, the second pick was Ian Kinsler, who spent half the year on the disabled list. The next three were Derek Jeter, Jayson Werth, and Dan Haren... all of whom absolutely tanked in the early going. Andre Ethier was never the same after a broken pinkie finger. Vasquez pretty much sucked the life out of every start until we cut him. Ditto Adrian Beltre (one of the few players I cut too soon... he had a super second half). My starting catcher also hit the DL in the first month. So except for Clayton Kershaw as a starting pitcher and a trio of outstanding relief pitchers, my entire infield was in ruins, and only Carlos Gonzalez provided any value in the outfield.
Plus, the competition was fierce. Two opponents were highly active on the trade market, constantly proposing multi-player deals. Midway through April, I had 40 points. Repeat, 40 points. A full 50 points out of first place. My team ERA of 5.00 was awful. Scant hitting power.
The opponents rained offers in my direction. I could've given up Jeter, Texeira, Soriano, or Kershaw a dozen times. Basically, they thought they could lure a desperate team into being pillaged. But in every case, there was just not enough value offered in return. In my mind, the cards with the best odds were already in hand.
I was, however, active in the waiver wire for pitching help. After running through no less than 11 pitchers whose ERA exceeded 4.00, I struck gold at last by grabbing Max Scherzer, Wandy Rodriguez, Carlos Zambrano, and Gavin Floyd during incredible hot streaks. Then I finally found a trade I liked, grabbing Brett Anderson and Chad Billingsley from an overeager opponent for a floundering Bobby Jenks. Those six starters gave me 350 innings with an ERA of under 2.50... and by season's end that previously cancerous stat had fallen to 3.22, second best. Pierre bolstered the stolen base total. Texeira got hot. And the deficit melted away:
7/1: 30 points
7/15: 20
8/1: 12
8/15: 5
It was a dogfight among four teams at that point, with me in 4th place.
9/10: 3rd place
9/15: 2nd place
9/20: 1st place tie!
9/25: 1st place alone!
And there it stayed! If only there were an award for general manager of the year, in the category of free fantasy baseball leagues at the easiest level.
Real Team - Pure Hustle 12
Admittedly, I was so engrossed in the dramatics of the Test teams that my real team - named for my famous intramural basketball team and representing the 10th edition of the fantasy baseball spinoff - got stuck in a rut. It wasn't entirely of my own making... the other teams were active and tough, and the market to fill in my talent gaps was as dry as I can ever remember. And there were a lot of gaps, at least on offense. My mock drafts ended up teaching me nothing, as only four of my top ten picks were hitters, two of which were injured often and a third which underperformed. Yes, my hitting was bankrupt. All that kept my engine running at all was the supreme pitching staff: Johan Santana, Josh Johnson, Francisco Liriano. Dan Haren and Zack Greinke... who actually underperformed, but had enough name recognition that I was able to pawn him off in exchange for Hanley Ramirez. That turned out to be the spark we needed, as Ramirez went on a tear for two months and rallied us from a 10-point deficit in less than two weeks. We took first place on September 1 and mostly coasted to the finish line.
Summary
No doubt my saving grace was Gonzalez. Ranked 119th pre-season, he's the only player I grabbed on all five teams. That was no accident, but dead-on foresight, as he ended up the highest-rated player in the league. Waiver wire transactions are a must in order to win, and while drafts are erratic they make an undeniable difference if you can pluck hidden undervalued gems in the lower rounds. And nothing may be more important than focus, the constant search for improvement and the knowledge that almost no gap is too large or too late to overcome.
So draws the end of a historic season. At least until more history is made next year!
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