Opening Day

Well now that the season has begun, life is back to normal. They teach in elementary school that the Earth has four seasons: Summer, Spring, Autumn and Winter. That is false. There is baseball season and not baseball season. Simple as that.

Now to look at how my fantasy team did on Opening Day.
Studs:
David Riske: 1IP no hits or walks or Ks - got the save after Eric Gagne blew a 3-run lead and had trouble throwing strikes. Looks like I hit gold on guessing who will be a closer by May.
Gary Sheffield: 1-5, 4BB and 1 RBI - seeing we use OBP, this was awesome. Include him with Miguel Cabrera who also hit a home run
Brian Roberts: 2-2 2BB 1SB/1CS and Run scored - I didn't get to watch any of this game, but it's great to see my 2B off to a great start and being "aggressive" on the basepaths, even if it counts as 0 NSB on the scoreboard.
Josh Willingham: 1-4 with a 2run HR - it was off Johann Santana, nuff said.

Duds:
Rafael Betancourt: 1.2IP 3H, 1BB, 1K, 0ER and the win - the win was lucky, but that doesn't help the WHIP at all
Matt Diaz: 1-9 1 RBI - there is a reason he was a 27th round pick for my bench. Hopefully he can turn it around, seeing as it is only 9 ABs.
David Ortiz: 0-7 2BB 1run - Yes, it was in Japan a week earlier, but it was still on openers and not good at all
Peter Moylan: 1.2IP 1H 1ER 1HR 2K - He has pitched better than his ERA would show, but gave up the game-winning HR to Ryan Zimmerman. I'm not too worried.

In other news, I'll give a shout out to my Marlins, who got 4 great bullpen innings from Ricky Nolasco and Matt Lindstrom. Too bad the Marlins signed pitching dud Mark Hendrickson. The innings eater pitched only 5 innings. Isn't that his only purpose? Can't wait to see Chris Volstad in the rotation come June or July. Marlins lost 7-2 to the Mets if you haven't heard already.

Never Do a Facebook Draft

The first 14 rounds of this draft were done on Facebook so that we didn't have rosters with 30 autopicked players. 14 rounds took about 14 days. NEVER DO A FACEBOOK DRAFT IF YOU HAVE OVER 6 LEAGUE MEMBERS!!!

I have two major fantasy baseball teams, the rest are just fillers. One is AL-Only on ESPN, the other, which I shall mention here, is a mixed-league Roto league with 12 members and 6x6 scoring (Runs,RBI,HR,OBP,SLG,NetSB and Wins,Saves,ERA,WHIP,Ks,Holds) and a 30 acquisition limit.

And this is what I drafted: (People who I have already replaced will have replacements in ()

Round 1: Miguel Cabrera
Round 2: David Ortiz
Round 3: Carlos Beltran
Round 4: Troy Tulowitzki
Round 5: Cole Hamels
Round 6: Brian Roberts
Round 7: Gary Sheffield
Round 8: Paul Konerko
Round 9: Takashi Saito
Round 10: Matt Cain
Round 11: Hideki Matsui
Round 12: Rafael Soriano
Round 13: Jeremy Hermida (put on D.L. replaced by Ian Kennedy)
Round 14: Dustin McGowan
Round 15: Jeremy Bonderman
Round 16: Kelly Johnson
Round 17: Josh Willingham
Round 18: Jack Cust
Round 19: Jeremy Accardo
Round 20: Brian Wilson
Round 21: Rafael Betancourt
Round 22: J.D. Drew
Round 23: Carlos Ruiz
Round 24: Jon Lester (traded for Travis Buck)
Round 25: Nomar Garciaparra (replaced by Jose Bautista)
Round 26: David Riske
Round 27: Matt Diaz
Round 28: Brian Bannister
Round 29: Adam Jones
Round 30: Shawn Hill (put on D.L. replaced by Peter Moylan)

Analysis: Most of the picks I'm very happy with with the possible exception of about 3. I regret having taken Matt Cain over Rich Hill, but I was feeling sick that night and didn't want to hold up the draft. Lester over Harden now looks like a complete bust and Garciaparra is a useless pick, especially when I went against my draft strategy of hogging DHs, where I could've taken Millar. Everything else I am happy with, even Konerko over Smoltz, at least for now...
And Adam Jones in round 29 is the steal of the draft bar NONE.

Over/Under

There was a question on an ESPN Fan Board about who was the most overrated and underrated players in MLB. Sticking to batters only, here's what I found out, which seems to be the opposite of many people.


Over/Under on Batters

Overrated - here are ten players with a career SLG under .450 and a OBP under.350 and yet are given way to much hype as good or great players... meaning these players are actually quite crappy in the long run. (and one was voted MVP last year)
1. Khalil Greene
2. Jose Reyes
3. Juan Pierre
4. Jimmy Rollins
5. Mike Cameron
6. Shane Victorino
7. Brandon Phillips
8. J. J. Hardy
9. Michael Young
10. Carl Crawford

I also want to note that Torrii Hunter has a career OBP of .324 and is a great player if what you are looking for is outs.

My Underrated: If you think I'm crazy, look up their career stats on baseball-reference.com
- J.D. Drew
- Chipper Jones
- Derrek Lee
- Adam Dunn
- Pat Burrell

I'm starting with the Brewers???

My response to the ESPN fantasy predictions for the Milwaukee Brewers

As for Brewers players, I love Fielder and Braun, not super high on Hart, though he did have the 6th best OPS among NL OF last year and 4th best SLG among NL OF, so maybe I really am. Gallardo over Sheets? by 5 rounds!?!?! umm... no.

I think Weeks can be good, but not so much as a fantasy player. His OBP last year was .374, (compared to .326 by Dan Uggla, whom I still love only cuz im a huge Marlins fan) which means he might score you a few more runs than your avg player, but I'll try getting Utley or Phillips instead a little sooner in my drafts.

In addition, my reasoning for Sheets over Gallardo is that, since assuming injuries is just stupid (I haven't studied which ones linger and which one's don't yet, but I don't really care, either.) that Sheets is, well, the better pitcher and has better numbers. It's value, and Gallardo's value is too high and Sheets is nice and low after a couple of injury riddled years.