matthearn.com

This is probably a good opportunity for those of you who have no interest in sports to skedaddle over to Lileks.com and read something by a writer who is much, much better than I am at, well, almost everything. Today’s lengthy post is on a sports topic, and as you know if you read my Phillies pre-season outlook and my rant against Bighead Barry Bonds, I really don’t know what I’m talking about, and it’s not like it’s quality prose. So…have a nice day!

Okay, now that they’re gone, this probably a good opportunity for those of you who have no interest in baseball to skedaddle over to espn.com and read about the latest NFL signings or something. I’ll rap at you later.

Whew. Now that we’ve gotten rid of THOSE schmoes, now is the time I should warn you that this is probably a good opportunity for those of you who have no interest in fantasy baseball to skedaddle over to mlb.com and get the latest updates on the WBC and Spring Training and whatnot. If you do like fantasy baseball, stick around. Things are about to get AWESOME.

Now that I’ve whittled the audience down to the hardcore fantasy baseball fans, I should probably let you know that this might be a good opportunity for those of you who aren’t members of my particular fantasy baseball league to skedaddle over to Fantasy Sports at Yahoo and set up your own league. This particular column is aimed at the 10 members of my actual league, which has a very dirty word in its name and so thusly I can’t mention it on here in case my aunts didn’t leave after paragraph 1. Of course, if all 10 members of the league actually read this, that would rougly quintuple my daily readership, so you can see why I might focus my efforts thusly.

At any rate, we had our baseball draft on Monday evening, with 8 of 10 managers present, and with the other two drafting players through the magic of auto-drafting. There’s no need to share detailed player-by-player results, but for the benefit of pissing off as many of my leaguemates as possible, I ranked the teams from worst to first.

(A note about my statistical analysis: what I basically did was take ESPN’s preseason projections for each player, and then performed a little Excel Spreadsheet magic in which I averaged all the statistics out for what they would be for a 9 player batting roster, and an 8 player pitching roster. Then I sorted. Our league is using the following batting statistics: Runs, Runs Batted In, Stolen Bases, Fielding Percentage, Average, and OPS (On-base Plus Slugging); it’s using the following pitching statistics: Wins, Losses, Saves, Strikeouts, Earned Run Average, and Walks/Hits per Inning Pitched. ESPN’s projections do not, sadly, include Losses, Fielding Percentage, or OPS; for the batters I’ve substituted Home Runs for OPS since Home Runs make up a large portion of the Slugging Percentage that makes up half to 2/3 of a player’s OPS. Also, keep in mind that any waiver/free agent moves made since Monday night are not reflected in this summary since I have neither the time nor the inclination to keep up with them.)

10th – Bo Fulginiti’s “South Philly Blazers” – 9th Draft Position

Bo’s team is characterized by upside. Which means, of course, that he drafted unproven players who might make the leap this year, or who might be back in AA ball by June. This is a risky strategy that frequently doesn’t work, but when it does work, usually carries a manager straight to the championship as everyone sits around and wonders “Holy crud, how did he know those guys were going to be so awesome?”

Unfortunately, he seemed to be taking risks on players that he didn’t need to. It’s not just that he drafted 8 players outside ESPN’s top 200; 3 other managers did the same. It’s mostly that he spent a lot of fairly early picks on what The Worldwide Leader considers to be weaker players. Example: Bo spent his 10th round pick on Jose Vidro, the first pick outside the top 200. I have nothing against Vidro, he’s a quality 2nd baseman, but here’s a short list of guys in the top 200 that were still available at the time: Tadahito Iguchi, Brian Roberts, Rickie Weeks, Placido Polanco, and Mark Ellis.

On the other hand, Bo is the only manager in the league that actually works for a professional baseball team (the Stockton Ports in California), so me second-guessing him has got to be horribly insulting. So, uh, sorry about that Bo. I’m sure your team will be in first place by August.

Strong points: Batting Average, .294, 2nd in league, and Wins, 84, also 2nd.
Weak points: Home Runs and RBI; last place in the league in both categories, and 100 RBI behind 9th place.
Average statistical rating: 7.5 of out 10. (The lower the number, the better the ranking.)

9th – Dave Isaman’s “Beareded Maniacs” – 3rd Draft Position

Dave was sadly absent from Monday night’s draft, so he can hardly be blamed for any bad drafting that occurred. On the other hand, I think he probably ranked his players first, because the only other person who didn’t live-draft was Mike, and he drafted way fewer “potential stars” than Dave did. Dave didn’t spend high draft picks on them like Bo did, however, which is why I think he’ll do better.

Unfortunately, whereas Bo’s technique did yield an above average team in three categories, Dave’s team is only above average in one: Saves. On the other hand, he’s so far ahead of everyone that he can probably trade some of his star closers to improve in the other categories by the time games start being played; with 168 projected saves, he is nearly 3 times the league average of 67.4. If he trades 40+ of those saves (in the form of, say, Chad Cordero, who is predicted by ESPN to have 47 of ’em) for, say, Placido Polanco (predicted to bat .331), he’ll improve in many batting categories and still be the class of the league in closers.

Surprisingly enough for a team with 5 of the top closers in the league, Dave’s squad is last in WHIP and 7th in ERA.

Strong point: Saves, 168, 1st in the league.
Weak points: WHIP, last, and Strikeouts, 9th.
Average statistical rating: 7.1 out of 10.

8th – Craig Harms’ “Pedro in 06 (METS)” – 1st Draft Position

Craig parlayed a phenomenal draft position into a team with a glimmer of hope in a few statistical categories but an absolute darkness of despair in the rest. Worse, unlike Dave, Craig doesn’t have a massive statistical advantage in any one area that he can use as trade bait to improve the overall squad. On the other hand, Craig always is a pimp-daddy on the waiver and free-agent wire, and always seems to pick up steam late in the season when injuries start to become a factor and Craig’s already got every starter’s backup. Whether it’s luck or savvy I don’t know, and I don’t care, but however he does it, it drives me crazy.

Also: he has Pujols. So all bets are off.

Craig does have above-average hitting; the problem is that the range of batting averages goes from .274 to .298, not exactly a wide swing in quality. Craig is ranked 3rd in the league in batting average, and that’s his best category. He’s 5th in predicted stolen bases (84), but is below average because three managers have predicted SB counts over 120. Craig has a chance to move up just by luck if some of those managers trade away speed for other attributes, though. Other than batting average and a certain amount of speed, the team is pretty abysmal in the other aspects of batting, with no better than 9th in the league in Runs, HR, and RBI.

Craig’s pitching situation is just weird; he’s above average, although not anywhere close to league-leading, in ERA and WHIP, but ranked no better than 7th in Wins, Saves, or Strikeouts. I guess he was concentrating on ground-ball throwing middle-relievers, which is a great strategy in real life, but not a way to pad fantasy stats. The only upside I see here is that those middle-relievers can eat up some innings (we have a minimum of 30 innings total pitched per week; if you don’t meet that, none of your pitching categories count) and he can put in some low-inning closers late in each week to get the strikeouts and saves.

Strong point: Batting average, .293, 3rd in the league.
Weak points: Runs, 557, last; RBI, 565, 9th.
Average statistical rating: 6.8 out of 10.

7th – Brian Loewen’s “The Late Term A’s” – 10th Draft Position

Brian L. may have been slightly hamstrung by his late draft position, but he did manage to get two quality top-15 players, Miguel Tejada and Carlos Beltran. Oddly enough, he didn’t get Beltran until the 4th round. It was a weird draft, I tell you.

Brian’s team is stellar in one category: ERA. At 2.98, he has the only sub-3.0 pitching staff in the league. He seems to have concentrated on relievers, because his WHIP (1.2) is 4th best, and his Saves (91.6) are 3rd best, but he’s last in Strikeouts and 2nd to last in Wins. If he trades one quality closer for a good first-string starter, his pitching staff could become the best in the league.

His hitters are another story. He’s 4th in the league in HR (182, tied for 4th) and RBI (678), and that’s about as good as it gets. He’s so far below average in everything else that trading some power for stolen bases and runs is almost a requirement to make it past the first round of the playoffs.

On the other hand, in real life, pitching is a HUGE asset in a playoff situation. Does that translate to fantasy ball?

No.
Strong points: ERA, 2.98, first in the league; Saves, 91.6, 3rd in the league.
Weak points: Strikeouts, 761, 10th; Batting Average, .277, 9th.
Average statistical rating: 5.9 out of 10.

6th – Kasiem Lewis’ “gizzondemhoztoez” – 6th Draft Position

Kas has some freakin’ pitching, yo. I am not even playing around. Tied for first in WHIP (1.18). 2nd in ERA (3.18). 2nd in Strikeouts (1046). Just under the average in Wins (Kas has 78, average is 78.7). This team is built to blow batters away and make them cry a little for mama.

As to hitting, um, not so much. Last place in both batting average and stolen bases, so he’s going to need to upgrade his speed at some point. The only category in which he’s above average is Home Runs (182, tied for 4th), and that’s only because the average is just 177. Like Brian L., he’s probably going to have to trade some of his unbelievably good pitching to get some speedy batters who can hit for average.

Strong points: WHIP, 1.18, tied for first in the league; Strikeouts, 1046, 2nd.
Weak points: Batting Average, .274, last; Stolen Bases, 35.5, last.
Average statistical rating: 5.4 out of 10.

5th – Tim Lau’s “The Hurlers” – 2nd Draft Position

Tim is the only person in the league who is larger than I am, so I am taking a risk criticizing his management skills. Luckily for my health, he acquitted himself well in the draft. Craig passed up on universally-#1-ranked A-Rod, so Tim snapped him up like a lake turtle on a fat girl’s toe. After that, though he seemed to concentrate on his pitching, which is above average in 4 out of 5 categories, to the detriment of hitting, which is ranked no better than 3rd in any category.

He somehow managed to balance his pitching such that he is 3rd in Wins with a predicted 83, and 2nd in Saves with a predicted 129. He doesn’t have a lot of strikeouts, and he’s ranked 5th in both ERA and WHIP, but in the latter two he is close enough to the league leaders (his 1.21 is just behind the 3 league-leaders tied at 1.18) to be a serious threat week-to-week. Like Dave, he has a pretty significant advantage in Saves (129, with a league average of 67.4), and can probably trade a closer.

Hopefully he can use him to land some hitting power; he’s projected to have 160 Home Runs (8th in the league) and 615 RBI (7th). He does have a strong advantage in stolen bases; just 3rd in the league with 122, but the average is 85.5, so he could probably trade away some of that and still be above-average, while improving in other areas.

Overall, Tim is 5th, but with some pitching luck and one or two decent trades, he could climb up the ladder quickly. It’s worth noting that he’s above average in 6 out of the 10 categories I’m tracking in this column (there are actually 12 for the purposes of the league, but my statistical source only had data for 9.5 of them (Home Runs being the .5, since I’m counting them in place of OPS)).

Strong points: Saves, 129, 2nd in the league; Stolen Bases, 122, 3rd.
Weak points: Home Runs, 160, 8th; Strikeouts, 879, 8th.
Average statistical rating: 5.1 out of 10.

4th – Mike Smith’s “Team America” – 8th Draft Position

Mike was the other participant that couldn’t make the draft, and I don’t believe that he pre-ranked his players. What this means is that his team is basically set up to be strong according to Yahoo’s ranking system, which isn’t what I used for this column. What this also means is that he has a lot of the “usual suspects,” and will probably do well this season. A lot depends on who has the most luck with sleepers; Bo has a lot of them, and if enough of them pan out, he’s going to run away with the league. Mike is going to be more consistently good.

Mike’s autodraft finished very oddly. He picked up 4 starting pitchers in the first 7 picks, and yet statistically his hitting is the strongest part of the team. Mike is one of just two managers that are above average in every hitting category; his 760 predicted RBI leads the league, and he’s 2nd in Stolen Bases, and 3rd in Runs and Home Runs. He doesn’t have much room for improvement here, and he can definitely trade away some speed or power to shore up his pitching, which despite all the early picks, isn’t quite as stellar.

In pitching categories, he’s above average in just two categories, Wins (79.3) and Strikeouts (1005), and he’s still just 5th in the league in both. He’s also last in the league in saves (just 21.1; league average is 67.4) and 9th in ERA (3.89), although the ERA battle close; the average is a within-reach 3.42. If Mike can trade away a backup speedster or power hitter (the 4th outfielder he picked is Willy Taveras, who’s predicted to have 34 steals, and his backup for Alfonso Soriano is Brian Roberts, who is predicted to hit 18 round-trippers), he could pick up a closer to help both ERA and Saves.

Strong points: RBI, 760, first in the league; Stolen Bases, 140, 2nd.
Weak points: Saves, 10, last; ERA, 3.89, 9th.
Average statistical rating: 4.9 out of 10.

3rd – Brian Smith’s “Matt is Gay” – 7th Draft Position

Brian S. always whines and moans about his draft, usually because while drafting he’s frequently working on something else and misses a pick here and there. Still, he managed to grab 21 players of the top 200 (theoretically, with 10 teams, the average should be 20, but so many people started grabbing sleepers in the early rounds that in reality the average is about 18.6), and compiled a team that’s above average in 7 out of the 10 categories I’m considering today.

His best side is pitching (he should probably get with his brother Mike and iron out a deal, since Mike’s pitching is abysmal, but his hitting is phenomenal). He is tied for first in the league in WHIP with 1.18, and is below average only in Saves, with 28.4 (the league average, if you’ve forgotten, is 67.4). His ranking in ERA (3.30) is just 6th, but the ERA competition is so tight that it may not matter. He’s also 3rd in Wins, with 83; Bo is at 2nd place with 84, so Brian’s in fine shape.

His hitting is not as strong, but if he finds one speedy guy (such as, for example, Willy Taveras from Mikey) he’ll improve both his batting average (.278, 8th) and Stolen Bases (65.6, 7th). He’s in the top 5 in Runs (702), Home Runs (210), and RBI (724). This is a team that’s one trade away from unstoppability.

It’s worth noting that he’s no worse than 8th in any statistical category.

Strong point: WHIP, 1.18, tied for first in the league; Home Runs, 210, 2nd.
Weak points: Saves, 28.4, 8th; Batting Average, .278, 8th.
Average statistical rating: 4.7 out of 10.

2nd – Kyle Anderson’s “An Alien Joy” – 4th Draft Position

As usual, Kyle had a righteous draft. He’s no worse than 8th in any category, and that one is ERA, which is so close that you might as well roll 1d10 to see who’s going to be the best. His starting pitching rotation will be ungodly; he’s first in Wins with 101 (2nd place is at 84), and first in Strikeouts with 1053. Closing won’t be a problem either; he’s 4th in the league with 71.3.

When it comes to hitters, Kyle seems to gravitate to guys like himself; speedy guys who put the bat on the ball and almost never strike out. He’s first in Batting Average (.298), and first in Stolen Bases (staggeringly, 150; league avearge is 85.5), and is only below average in Home Runs with 163 (7th in the league).

Luckily for the other teams in the league, Kyle can usually be expected to submarine himself a bit with crazy trades and waiver moves.

Strong points: Wins, 101, first in the league; Stolen Bases, 150, first.
Weak points: ERA, 3.75, 8th; Home Runs, 163, 7th.
Average statistical rating: 3.7 out of 10.

1st – Matt Hearn’s [Horribly nasty team name goes here] – 5th Draft Position

Of course I’m first. This is because my ego is large enough to affect tides. More importantly, it’s because I used the ESPN rankings as a resource during my draft, so naturally using the same system to rate the teams is going to skew the results my way. I took a long hard look at this problem, and realized two things:

1. Using a non-Yahoo and non-ESPN ranking system would cost me money, and
2. I don’t give a crap for journalistic integrity. It’s not like this is a real sport.

In the end, it’s not going to matter much, because trades, injuries, streaks, and slumps are going to invalidate this entire thing by April 5th.

Still, you have to admit, my draft was pretty strong. I concentrated on grabbing as many starting pitchers as I could, because this year we’re allowing roster changes every day (instead of once a week), so I can maximize my strikeouts and wins by swapping my starting pitchers every day. This will probably do bad things to my ERA and WHIP, but I’m 3rd in the league in the former and tied for first in the latter, so I should be okay. I may top 70 innings per week, which is technically more, most of the time, than a real-life team would play. I am below average in wins and saves, but I’m hoping that my constant swapping of pitchers will help with at least one of those.

Despite my concentration on pitching, I’m first in the league in Runs (803) and Home Runs (220), and like Mike, I’m below average in no hitting category.

On the other hand, I don’t really have any clue what I’m doing on a day-to-day managerial basis, so look for me to bench a player just as he goes on a 7 game .380, 5 HR tear.

Strong points: WHIP, 1.18, tied for first; Home Runs, 220, first.
Weak points: Wins, 76.3, 7th; Saves, 49.2, 6th.
Average statistical rating: 3.3 out of 10.