Fantasy Draft Recap #3

I’m not sure who is reading this right now, or who could possibly care that much about my analysis of my own fantasy drafts, but really it’s more about practice for me at this point. I’d like to possibly write about this sort of thing for money some day, so the more I write the better. Here goes:

ESPN 5×5 roto league, 12 teams. 20 players, play 6 pitchers, 5 bench spots. I had the first overall pick, typical snake draft.

Without any further ado, I give you the Charlottesville Wahoos:

1. Albert Pujols (1B-StL)
There really shouldn’t be any argument about this one. Really the only other player you could possibly consider is Johan, but I’m not about to go there here. Plus, picking Pujols here allows me to focus a little bit more on pitching later on.

2. Joe Mauer (C-MIN)
This is the first draft this season I haven’t gone with Bard late for my catcher. I would have probably picked Manny here, but he went at the pick immediately previous to mine here. Mauer’s a great player, and I’m certainly not unhappy with him here at this pick. He posted a .324 EQa last season and BP’s PECOTA projects him to keep it up around there again this season. An absolute beast. From BP 2007: “We’re guessing all that talk about the Twins making a mistake by taking the hometown boy over Mark Prior with the first pick of the 2001 draft has calmed down a bit.”

3. Chris Carpenter (SP-StL)
PECOTA’s comparables for Carpenter? Gaylord Perry, Roger Clemens, Fergie Jenkins, and Esteban Loaiza. For the record, that’s three Hall of Famers and Esteban Loiaza. I’ve never been a huge Carpenter fan, but you can’ t argue with the numbers. He’s been as productive as any pitcher not named Johan over the past few years, and I justify picking him here because I got Pujols in the first round. He’ll pick up a bit of the slack from the missing hitter I would have picked here.

4. Hanley Ramirez (SS-FLA)
The two prospects Boston sent to the Marlins in the Beckett deal last offseason? Anibal Sanchez (he of the no-hitter last fall), and Ramirez. Speed is gonna go early, and Pujols and Mauer aren’t gonna help all that much in that department. Ramirez is going to end up being a poor man’s Jose Reyes, and it’s gonna hurt to watch him have all that success and not in a Red Sox uniform.

5. Joe Nathan (RP-MIN)
Rivera was gone at this pick, and I would have picked him instead, breaking my long-standing rule of not picking any Yankees. However, over the past few years Nathan has been just as good if not better than Mo at the end of the game. In my last draft, he was the first pick in the second round. I’m feeling really comfortable at this point. Even if Minnesota isn’t as good as they were last year, they’re still going to win a lot of games, and Nathan will be there at the end.

6. Bill Hall (SS,OF-MIL)
Hall’s been a big favorite of mine this season, and with good reason. He had a great year last year, with a VORP of 44.3, and bucked his previous trend of being a free swinger by seeing 4.15 pitches per plate appearance. He’ll be the Brew Crew’s starting center fielder, despite only being eligible at short in ESPN’s format to begin the year. His bat would be decidedly below average if he were playing left or right, but he ends up being an extremely valuable hitting center fielder, and has the wheels to adequately defend out there.

7. Daisuke Matsuzaka (SP-BOS)
First off, I refuse to refer to Matsuzaka-san as “Dice-K.” That is a pronunciation guide, not a nickname. But I digress. Finally, I get the big guy in one of my leagues. There are a lot of newfound Matsuzaka haters out there, using the excuse that he gave up two home runs to non-roster invitees on the Orioles the other day to compare him to Hideki Irabu (George Steinbrenner’s famous “Fat Toad”). Give me a break — Yankee fans are just scared. Repeat after me: it’s spring training. This guy is going to be straight money this year. He’ll win at least 15 games, and is gonna put up some impressive strikeout numbers to boot. I’ve said it before in this space, and I’ll say it again: the Red Sox rotation is just sick this season.

8. Alex Rios (OF-TOR)
Rios had a breakout season last time around which was unfortunately derailed by a staph infection in late June. The power he displayed early last season should come back with instruction during ST, so I expect Rios to be a real valuable player once again. The one troubling sign is his almost 3:1 K-BB ratio, so he’s gotta learn some more discipline at the plate to really take the next step.

9. Chipper Jones (3B-ATL)
Chipper is one of those players that you always forget about, then you look at his numbers and remember that he’s been one of the most productive players in the league for a long time. He’s been hampered by injuries the past two seasons, so hopefully the 35-year-old can stay healthy — despite those injuries, he put up a .332/.411/.592 EQ line (that’s EQA, EQOBP, and EQSLG respectively). He’ll be a 20-25 homer, 75 RBI guy if he plays most of the season. A drop in production to what you want at the hot corner in terms of a fantasy team, but that is offset to a certain extent across the diamond by Mr. Pujols.

10. Takashi Saito (RP-LAD)
Saito did an admirable job closing last year for the Dodgers, proving that he could succeed in the Major Leagues. I’d be a little worried if he were my first closer, but see Joe Nathan above. He was an absolute beast out of the bullpen down the stretch, and is a fantastic second option for closer.

11. Ian Kinsler (2B-TEX)
Another Fantasy 411 favorite, Kinsler provides some great value at 2nd base in the 11th round. He projects to hit around 20 home runs this year, playing half his games at launching pad Ameriquest Field. He has a higher career on-base percentage than Alfonso Soriano, which is impressive until you consider the fact that I do too. Anyway, it comes down to the fact that I’m getting really good value for my pick here, and he’ll probably start at 2nd for me for the foreseeable future.

12. Magglio Ordonez (OF-DET)
Like Chipper before him, Ordonez will be productive as long as he remains healthy. I figure if he’s my third outfielder, I’m in good shape. The good quality lineup around him will help, especially given the addition of the aging-but-still-f#$&ing-scary Gary Sheffield.

13. Frank Thomas (DH-TOR)
It might be too much to ask for a repeat of last year’s monster year as the full-time DH in Oakland, for which he garnered some MVP consideration. The move to the Rogers Centre (park factor of 1.026) from Oakland Coliseum (.984) should help him.

14. Adam Wainwright (SP,RP-STL)
A downright hero in last year’s playoffs for the World Champs, Wainwright threw that nasty curveball that struck Carlos Beltran out looking to end NLCS game 7. He’s moving back to the rotation this season with the return of a healthy Jason Isringhausen, and has had a monster spring. He’s not Chris Carpenter, but he’ll definitely be effective this year. There is a possibility as well that he’ll move back to the bullpen if Izzy can’t stay on the field.

15. J.D. Drew (OF-BOS)
Hey, if he stays healthy, he’ll be a great value here in the 15th round. If not, I can get rid of him for someone who is. It seems that I have a lot more flexibility in his case than the Red Sox do.

16. Jonathan Papelbon (SP,RP-BOS)
Either way, I get a productive pitcher. Paps has shown flashes of brilliance as a starter so far this sring, and has been projected as a starter for his entire career. His phenomenal success in the bullpen last season will make the Sox brass think long and hard if the closer competition between Joel Pineiro, Brendan Donnelly, Mike Timlin, and Julian TAVAREZ doesn’t work out. If that happens, I get another extremely valuable closer.

17. Dave Bush (SP-MIL)
I’ve written about him before, and this was probably a much better round to get him at than in the 11th in my last draft. I have a real good feeling about him this year, and he’ll certainly win more games given the development of the Brewers offense.

18. Alex Gordon (3B-KCR)
I’ve always said that the your success in fantasy is inversely correlated to the number of Royals you have on your roster. However, Gordon is set up to be such a dominant player at his position that I couldn’t pass him up. Even if he doesn’t win the starting job right out of camp (which he should), he provides valuable insurance for the injury-prone Chipper.

19. Bob Wickman (RP-ATL)
This just in: I have a glut of closers. I’ll definitely be looking to trade one of them for perhaps some outfield help. You never know how many games the Braves are going to win, and Wickman stands to save the lion’s share of those wins. If he stop being effective, look out for Mike Gonzalez or Rafael Soriano to step into the role.

20. Ian Snell (SP-PIT)
Once again, a Fantasy 411 big time favorite for late-round value. Well, it doesn’t get much later than this– Snell was the last pick in the draft. This allows me to also perhaps package a starter in with one of the aforementioned closers in a trade. Snell puts up passable strikeout numbers, but got killed by lefties last year. That makes him a conditional starter based on what sort of lineup he’s facing.

All in all, I’m really happy with the way this one turned out.  I have good pitching depth, which I can probably trade out of to get some help on offense if some of my earlier picks decide to not pan out.  I have another draft tomorrow, so heads up for that.  Until then, happy drafting!

Fantasy Draft Numba 2: The Big ‘Un

This was the big one. Brew Balls IV. This league has been running all four of my years at Vassar, and features some of the more epic smack talk you’ll see this side of, well, anywhere. I had the 4th overall pick (and the 21st), and I think I came out pretty well. There are definitely areas I need to address (the back end of the rotation and the bullpen, specifically), but I’ve got some strengths to deal from, notably speed (once again).

The League: 12-team, mixed, H2H. 19 players (3-bench).

The Categories: R, 3B, HR, RBI, SB, GIDP, E, AVG, OPS for offense. W, L, SV, HR, Ks, HLD, ERA, WHIP for pitchers.

Here we go:

I just don’t care!

This is a short rant, but I think that it needed to be said.

I will never, ever, EVER, care one iota about anything involved with the death of Anna Nicole Smith.  CNN, isn’t there some other news you could be covering instead?  Last I heard, there was a war on.

Celebrate the Year of the Pig in style… philately style!

McHale named top GM by Forbes.com, Bill Simmons has coronary

TWWL is reporting that Forbes.com has named Kevin McHale of the Minnesota Timberwolves the top general manager in sports, based on a simple formula taking into account, “performance vs. the performance of their predecessor, and payroll relative to the league median when compared to their predecessor.”

Frankly, I give McHale barely any credit at all for the recent success (read: a few years ago, not now) that the T-Wolves have enjoyed.  More of that credit belongs to Kevin Garnett, and McHale ruined the best team they had by getting rid of Sam Cassell and Latrell Spreewell a few years ago, not to mention the awful Wally Szczerbiak trade last season with the Celtics.

Other notable things about Forbes’ list: no baseball GM was in the top 20, the highest being Oakland Athletics GM/Revolutionary Billy Beane at 26th.  Dallas Cowboys owner/GM Jerry Jones is 13th, Boston Red Sox GM/Wunderkind Theo Epstein is 30th, and New York Yankees GM/Tool of the Aristocracy Brian Cashman is 61st.

Three NFL GM’s ranked at the bottom of the list, Matt Millen of Detroit, Mike Brown of Cincinnati, and Michael Lombardi of Oakland.

I question the validity of any formula that puts McHale at the top of a GM effectiveness rating.  Any thoughts on what could be a more effective formula to gauge this sort of thing?

The Best Show on Television

…is without a doubt, Battlestar Galactica.

Zodiac

Just went to the movies with K for the first time in a while (the last movies we saw in the theater were a double feature of Oscar winners The Last King of Scotland and Pan’s Labyrinth at the little independent movie theater in Rhinebeck, about 30 minutes north of here. We’d heard some good things about Zodiac (starring Jake Gyllenhall, Mark Ruffalo, Anthony Edwards, and the newly by-me appreciated Robert Downey, Jr.), including an A from Entertainment Weekly, of which K is an avid reader and subscriber. So we trucked off to Regal (I got free popcorn — thank you Regal Crown Club!) and sat down for a good-’ol-fashioned thriller flick.

In that regard, it definitely didn’t disappoint. There is nary a thriller movie which actually makes me nervous and squirm around in my seat, but at times, Zodiac did just that. It was probably too long by half, but a lot of director David Fincher’s work is on the long side. It’s a fascinating story, and one with a lot of twists and turns, and down and dirty police work. It’s no L.A. Confidential when it comes to those aforementioned twists and turns, but it does the job nicely.

Gyllenhall is hyped as the lead actor, but he really only becomes such later on in the film. In fact, as K said as we were leaving the theater after I remarked that it was too long, it really seemed like two separate movies. One, during the early days of the Zodiac killer’s reign, while he was still presumably murdering people and sending letters and ciphers to the San Francisco Chronicle, and the other, after Zodiac had gone into hiding/seclusion for a few years. Ruffalo and Gyllenhall probably have the most screen time, with Gyllenhall picking up most of his in the second half of the movie, when Robert Graysmith is really becoming obsessed with writing his book and finding out who Zodiac really was.

The last thing about this movie really worth mentioning is that it was a “That Guy” hall of famer hall-of-fame movie. A “That Guy” hall of famer (thanks to Bill Simmons for the term) is an actor that, whenever you see him/her on screen, prompts you to yell “Oh, it’s that guy!” Well, this movie had so many parts like that, it was insane. You had Dermot Mulroney, Donal Logue, Philip Baker Hall, John Mahoney (who I missed the first time), Zach Grenier,…heck, it had Anthony Edwards!!! What has he done lately (oh that’s right, basically nothing since ER)?!?!? At one point I thought “hell, why didn’t they just cut the crap and cast William H. Macy?” — Macy being a charter member of the “That Guy” HOF.

All in all, Zodiac was definitely enjoyable, but you have to know what you’re getting into. The movie’s about two and a half hours long, and can drag towards the end. If you have trouble following complicated stories with lots of characters, it might be better to wait until the DVD release. However, in the end it’s a good flick and most certainly worth seeing no matter what.

Ultimate Galactic Dragon Gyroball Pitch Power Explosion

From a fantastically funny article on The Onion:<– (links to article)

“Daisuke is the pitching master!” said Boston Globe baseball columnist Bob Ryan, hopping from one foot to the other as he described videotape footage of Matsuzaka’s otherworldly pitching power and control banishing a flock of evil, conniving, left-handed-batting carp-spirits to the netherworld during a 2003 Seibu Lions game. “His Ultimate Galactic Dragon Gyroball Pitch Power Explosion breaks three feet inside before cutting sharply toward the dugout, where falsehood and cowardice are forced to shrink before it!”