Wednesday Fantasy Update - The Awful League, Second Half Pushes, and New Beginnings

Have any of you ever drafted an all-awful team?  It's actually pretty tough - like with a regular draft, you run out of talent fast, just in the reverse.  WRs like Greg Little and Darius Heyward-Bey fall off the board early, as do RBs like Andre Brown and Rashard Mendenhall.  Jake Locker is a first round pick.  It's a weird, bizarro world.

Anyways, on the Blowout Forums recently we verbally (well, in the comments) drafted such a league.  The requirement was that you needed to draft a QB, two RB, three WR, and a TE, and that they all had to have started eight games last year (three guys drafted didn't start eight games...but the commissioner okayed it).  We originally had larger rosters, but a lot of guys had trouble making their picks, so we cut the draft short.  But the teams are all fairly awful, and it was a fun little one off exercise that we voted on after we finished.

Only I wanted to really see who was worst.  So I made an ESPN league with all 10 of our teams that you're all welcome to follow this Fall if you wish.  It can be found here: http://games.espn.go.com/ffl/leagueoffice?leagueId=439131&seasonId=2014

My team, which I think will easily compete for the championship of worst team, is as follows:

QB: Terrelle Pryor (Backup in Seattle who may not even make the team)

RBs: Bilal Powell (Jets backup) and Trent Richardson (Colts starter, but wow was he awful last year)

WRs: Santonio Holmes (Free agent), Denarius Moore (Currently 5th on the Raider WR depth chart), and Cecil Shorts III (In a relatively poor offense, and was 2nd in the NFL in dropped passes last year)

TE: Craig Stevens (purely a blocking tight end who caught 2 passes for 5 yards last year).

I think my team could really dominate!  Either way I'll let you guys know how things progress!

In other news, my attempt at my playoffs in my baseball league is doing...okay.  Last week I won, but when I pitched Sonny Gray I figured he'd be like this:

Instead he was all like:

When the dust settled in Tampa, Gray had 4.1 innings pitched with 10 hits allowed, one homer, four walks, and a hit batsmen.  In my league that's good for -15.2 points, and since I typically expect like 30 points out of Sonny, it was a 45 point swing...which isn't good when you're scramblin' for the last playoff spot.

Luckily my other pitchers pitched well, and my opponent got a -33.7 game from John Lackey (Lackey gave up three homers...homers cost you a lot in my league) and so I beat him by about 80 points.  The division leader won and remains one game ahead of me, the guy who was tied with him lost and is now tied with me, each of us being 8-10.  I need to keep winning, so let's hope my guys can finally pull it together and stay consistent!

Finishing this thing off, I'll mention that, very happily, my football league now has 12 teams!

I originally got stuck at 9, so I cut it to 10.  Then I was still stuck at 9, so I cut it to 8.  My wife saw this and said "Mooss...8 teams is way too few."  Which, it is.  So I did an all call on Blowout and got 3 guys I interact with a lot to join (and then one random guy).  So it should be a fun little league, and I'll probably do a "How did I draft?" recap when the time comes!

Oh yeah...I did have that other baseball league...the one where pretty much everyone quit.  How's that going?

Good riddance.  I will now never mention it again! *

* Unless I win the championship!

Wednesday Fantasy Update - A football league invite, and fun with keepers

I don't know what kind of fantasy sports ya'll play, but I'm a baseball, football, and basketball guy.  I had quit for years back in the day because I didn't like how it sometimes took over my life, but then my family started a basketball league and almost immediately I became re-hooked.  I now do two baseball leagues a year, one basketball league a year, and one football league a year (all ESPN, screw that Yahoo nonsense!).  This post will be about the baseball and football.

First football:

I actually have two openings currently in my ESPN fantasy football league.  It was originally conceived as a Wives and Girlfriends (aka WAG) league, but has kind of just become a several girls with a lot of guys league.  12 members total, with fairly standard scoring except we have punters.  Last year the rules were a lot more insane but a lot of them didn't work too well so I dialed it back this year to hopefully be more consistent.

Anyways, fairly fun and fairly competitive.  If it goes well this year next year might involve money and/or keepers.  But like I said I still need those two spots filled - so if you've ever wanted to be in a fantasy league with me speak now or forever hold your peace!

Now onto baseball:

I'm in two leagues, so I'll address them one by one.

The first league is "Rasmus' Cold Shoulder Inaugural," which is actually pretty poorly named since you can't rename leagues and next year it won't be the Inaugural.  My team name there, which is constantly changing, is Sonny Gray Real Estate, a reference to both Oakland A's young ace Sonny Gray and the emo band Sunny Day Real Estate.  Clever I am.

It's our first year of a keeper auction league following a massive cheating scandal in last year's league that blew the league up and led to three new leagues being created.  This is by far the most successful one, with 12 guys all gunning for the top spot.  I'm currently in the weakest division and one game out of a playoff spot.  Only four teams make the playoffs though (with 3 divisions), so basically I need to win the division or the playoffs won't happen.  Which is rough, but doable.

Our trade deadline was coming up last week, and I had the option to fold and "play for next year" or push my chips in and hope for the playoffs.  I weighed the options and decided I'd go for it.  It was basically like

I traded Joc Pederson, $35 in future money, and some roster fodder for Gio Gonzalez, David Price, and Stephen Vogt, all on rental (that means at the end of the year I give them back).

I traded Anibal Sanchez, Bartolo Colon, and some roster fodder for Jose Altuve and Todd Frazier.

And I traded Addison Russell, $10 in future money, and Dylan Bundy for Mike Trout on rental.

A lot of prospects headed out, as well as a lot of money (luckily I had some to spare in our $250 a year league and some is spread out to 2016), but I think the intakes were great.  Basically I spent $45, Sanchez, and some prospects on two aces, a starting C, a starting 2B, a starting 3B, and a starting OF.

Now my lineup looks like this:

C: Vogt

1B: Was Paul Goldschmidt, but he's out for the year/on my DL so right now Jon Singleton

2B: Altuve

SS: Arismendy Alcantara

3B: Frazier

OF: Trout, Josh Harrison, and J.D. Martinez

Bench: Billy Hamilton, Kris Bryant and Fransisco Lindor (prospects) 

SP: Price, Gonzalez, Gray, Johnny Cueto, Adam Wainwright, Julio Teheran, Michael Pineda (on the DL)

RP: Jake McGee and Tyler Clippard (it's a points league so holds are about equal to saves)

SP/RP (guys who gain RP points at SP): Yusmeiro Petit, Chase Whitley, Ross Detwiler, Esmil Rogers, Tim Stauffer

Not a bad little roster.  1B is an obvious weak point with the Goldschmidt injury, and C, SS, and 3B aren't crazy hot.  But my SP are dominant, which helps.  Last year I pulled a similar strategy and won my league, so here's to hoping!  As is I'm 7-10 coming off a close loss last week, but I'm currently winning 145.3-107.5 this week thanks to a beastly complete game 56.6 from Johnny Cueto!

My other league is a disaster

So I said that the destruction of last year's league led to three leagues.  One is the one above, one is another I'm not in, and third is "my" league.  I got really ambitious and made it 16 teams, and then struggled to fill those 16.  I had a few friends, my wife (who had never done a daily league), and then a ton of random guys from the Blowout forums.  As you very predictably could've guessed, this led to like zero chemistry and now there are maybe 6 teams actively checking their day-to-day events.

My team, "Against the Ninja" (a Miami Connection reference) is awesome though.  I'm 13-4 and currently winning this week 4-3-3.  I should easily win the championship, though again it's not like that would be hard.  My current roster:

C: Wilson Ramos (who is actually hurt haha)

1B: Freddie Freeman

2B: Tommy La Stella

SS: Elvis Andrus

3B: Adrian Beltre
INF: Alcantara

OF: Hamilton (stolen bases are a stat in this league), Kole Calhoun, Colby Rasmus, Josh Willingham

Bench: Mike Napoli and George Springer, who is on the DL

SP: Gray, Marcus Stroman, Yu Darvish, James Shields, Corey Kluber, and Hisashi Iwakuma (I had Clayton Kershaw too prior to the season starting but I traded him for something dumb)

RP (we start four, and this is a category league with saves and holds): Steve Cishek, David Robertson, Addison Reed, Dellin Betances

SP/RP (guys who gain RP points at SP): Wade Davis, Brandon Maurer, Aaron Sanchez

The nice thing about this league is that the active guys might be able to replace the weak links in my keeper league next year.  I may keep the 16 team league alive next year, but if so it'll be with massive changes, including losing like half the league's teams.  If anyone wants to play in that league next year let me know...that'll help make my decision haha.  It's also intended as a potential WAG league...I just like friendly competition!

So that does it for my first rambling Fantasy post.  Like my other new posts, we'll see if I narrow it down/find a system in the future or if I always just babble!  Odds are on #2!