Day 1: Early Lines

So the early lines are up (on Bodog and, well, everywhere else) for Thursday's first-round NCAA action. The first round is, supposedly, the greatest gambling day of the year, because public money pushes the lines in all sorts of awkward directions, and reputation means more than results to a large swath of the population. Taking a look at the lines, there are a few that stand out:

[8]UNLV (-1) v. [9]Northern Iowa
It looks like the wrong team is favored here, with both Massey and KenPom giving UNI anywhere from a 1 to 1.5-pt edge. Of course, 2 points isn't a brutal edge, but when it flips the line, we pay more attention. Of course, depending on the money line, that might be the stronger play.

[6]Tennessee (-3) v. [11]SDSU
Both Massey and KenPom list this as closer to a 1.5-pt game . . . that other UT is a little overrated this year, and their "run-and-gun" style has been crippled by the 2nd Amendment (they're about average in pace) ... instead, they've done it with defensive efficiency, crushing 3P% for other teams. Unfortunately, SDSU is not a 3-oriented team (200th in 3PA/FGA), and SDSU crushes the offensive glass with a strong inside game that UT isn't tall enough to counteract. Could be a good matchup.

[4]Vanderbilt (-3) v. [13]Murray State
Massey has this at 3, while KenPom has it at 5.5+, giving some protection here. Vandy is likely overseeded a little, but Ogilvy in the middle may have a field day against Murray State.

[7]BYU (-5) v. [10] Florida
There are some that feel Florida is the worst at-large admitted to the field this year, and both Massey and KenPom think the true line is closer to 7. Good enough for me, even if BYU is, well, BYU.

[7]Richmond (-2) v. [10]Saint Mary's
Again, the wrong team is favored - Massey and KenPom have StM's as between a 1.5 and 3-point favorite. The Spiders have talent, there's no doubt, and this one might not pass the smell test based on matchups - Richmond is a bad O-reb team, a true "one-shot" offense that plays with pace and doesn't turn the ball over, while StM's is pretty bad at forcing turnovers. However, StM's can shoot the lights out, and if flying across the country doesn't slow it down, watch out.

And some quick hits:
-The numbers don't love Kentucky - that (-20) might be a little high, may be value in ETSU.
-Montana isn't particularly good, but nothing indicates that NMU should be a (-9) favorite in that game. May be a good place to pound the dog.
-It's not cut-and-dried, but it looks like KSU might clear the (-16) over UNT with some ease.
-Nobody has any clue what to do with the ND/ODU game. In fact, half the capping sites have ODU as a true favorite and the other half think (-3) is perfectly right. Unreal game really.

Anatomy of a Drinking Draft

So on Saturday, we had our 10-man live draft with my good buddies from home. It's a 5-player keeper league, where each keeper replaces a pick in rounds 1 through 5 - it's normal 5x5 but with OBP instead of BA (because we're progressive like that). Last season, I went into freefall late in the year as my pitching staff became decimated and injuries to key players (hi Ian Kinsler!) took their toll on my non-core stats.

An interesting thing happened - Lance Berkman didn't play a single game in the OF last season, forcing me into a situation where I had Berkman, Fielder and Howard all competing for 2 spots (1B and UTIL). Normally I would be apoplectic about being locked into my UTIL slot so early, but I genuinely feel all three are top-20 talents. In an effort to get younger, I made a trade, sending Howard (less valuable than usual in this league because it ends earlier and usually Howard's end-of-season tear coincides with his team sitting at home watching the playoffs) for BJ Upton (giving me much-needed youth and athleticism, insanely important in a keeper league). This made my five keepers David Wright, Lance Berkman, Ian Kinsler, Prince Fielder and BJ Upton - a very good collection of talent (all rated inside the top 35, with four potential top-20 guys) but not even close to the best in the league at this point, so I'd have to make up some ground in the draft:

Rim Job Larry
Berkman Lance 1B K
Fielder Prince 1B K
Wright David 3B K
Kinsler Ian 2B K
Upton B.J. OF K
McCann Brian C 6
Young Chris OF 7
Dunn Adam OF 8
Vazquez Javier P 9
Lowe Derek P 10
Myers Brett P 11
Tulowitzki Troy SS 12
Santana Ervin P 13
Fuentes Brian P 14
Danks John P 15
Street Huston P 16
Carpent Chris P 17
Drew J.D. OF 18
Duchscherer Justin P 19
Johnson Kelly 2B 20
Dukes Elijah OF 21

I selected 4th, and Dan Haren and Jake Peavy were off the board before it got to me. At this point, I made a snap decision - with basically every top-tier starter off the board, I would try to use a modified version of the old auction-draft move of piling 80% of your resources into position players, then filling your staff with high-K/low-WHIP guys, often using multiple relievers, even middle relievers. With our league having 3 SP slots and no mid-week changes, I wouldn't necessarily be able to run it to its fullest effect - I'd still need something for wins, and with a 10-team league, Ks from starters are still huge since the pool is deep.

Either way, I took the plunge, picking for value at 54 with the best catcher available (since I figured ESPN's hype would make Weiters/Ianetta/etc. overhyped; I was wrong) and possibly the best player available. I then capitalized on undervalued resources to fill my OF slots (OF is startlingly shallow this year, even in 10-team leagues) with Young and Dunn, who I likely should have selected in the reverse order, but since it was on the wheel no one cares.

Now that I had my position players solidly filled (and with what might be the best position-player lineup I've ever had in fantasy baseball), I started on the pitching. Vasquez is an obvious choice, in hopes that moving to the easier league and out of US Cellular knocks down the gopher balls while increasing K:BB ratio slightly, although he's still been valuable for years, while Myers fits exactly the role we're looking for while giving a good shot at Ws on a solid second-place team. Lowe goes exactly against the grain of the high-K lineup, but the value was way too solid at that position, and his WHIP plus ERA should still help. Tulo was the only non-garbage SS left (and was likely a steal), Drew shouldn't go that low even with his injury history, while Carpenter would have never made it back to me and thus forced my hand. I grabbed Dukes on a flier, knowing that I could DL Upton and add Jason Motte to get another reliever into the starting lineup.

Overall, I'm pretty damn happy with the draft - it's yet another all-offense/questionable-pitching RC team, but that's been my MO for years, and I'll just have to run waiver-wire games to keep the staff solid (or ditch SP for the Royce Rings of 2009; which I'm fine with).

On Balancing Ranges in an Auction-like Nerd Setting

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Understanding in a FFL trainwreck

OK - the dust has settled, and I'm finally able to discuss the hot mess that was my first Fantasy Football draft of the year. I'm also going to attempt to post more here, and this is as good a start as any . . . it's that time of year, to make money off retards (aka "friends").

The squad (obviously "Bad Newz Kennels") shaped up as such, starting with the #5 overall pick in a 12-team money league with only about 2 real decent players and basically standard scoring with a slight emphasis on TD passes (QB yardage could also be huge, but tough to exploit):

1.	(5)	Joseph Addai	RB
2.	(20)	Maurice Jones-Drew	RB
3.	(29)	Chad Johnson	WR
4.	(44)	Lee Evans	WR
5.	(53)	Donald Driver	WR
6.	(68)	Philip Rivers	QB
7.	(77)	Chris Cooley	TE
8.	(92)	LenDale White	RB
9.	(101)	Vernand Morency	RB
10.	(116)	D.J. Hackett	WR
11.	(125)	Donte' Stallworth	WR
12.	(140)	Alge Crumpler	TE
13.	(149)	Stephen Gostkowski	K
14.	(164)	Byron Leftwich	QB
15.	(173)	Oakland	DEF

Note that at #5 I had the choice of Gore or Addai - although Pro Football Prospectus's KUBIAK ratings have Gore #1 overall (Addai is still top-5), I couldn't pull the trigger, instead choosing the (relatively) steady production that has followed Colts skill players over the last few years. This pick may come back to haunt me.

The lap back essentially made me choose between Jones-Drew and Chad Johnson, which really wasn't difficult considering the league includes scores for special teams TDs to the actual player, and plus I got Ocho Cinco on the way back anyway (because I play with tards - +EV uber alles).

My plan this season in FFL is to go for low-risk players at the top of the draft for RB/WR, then try to take a flier on a QB - the hope was that either McNabb or Vince Young's stupid ass would fall to me in the 5th, which may be slightly greedy, but I know pretty much exactly what I'll get out of Rivers every week so I'm not quite punching myself in the sack (yet).

Also, I want high-variance, high-reward backups as filler - guys like Morency and White are probably only playable against the very worst defenses, but luckily I have a fantastic subscription to FO.com to fill me in on when this will happen (COLTS), i.e. the Ron Dayne Corollary.

Hackett and Stallworth are veritable shots in the dark, as I'm not 100% sold on Driver in the WR/RB hole - hopefully one gets hot and I can ship ship mcgipp for a RB in that slot. Matchups are really weak at WR (unless, you know, Champ Bailey), so I've kind of hamstrung myself there, but obviously it will be super easy to cut any of those schmoes for the flavor of the week.

In this league I also made a stark error by not playing for an earlier defense - BAL and CHI outscored all but about 10 players last season by the scoring system we're using, and while neither will repeat that, I should have done a little more homework. Oakland's D should benefit from a craptacular schedule, though, and could be a solid sleeper here. Alternately, I'll just play the "whoever plays the Texans/Browns" game at DEF and should wind up OK.

Many of the ESPN "sleepers" were getting ripped really early - I would read everything on espn.com and pay attention, and devalue your own expectations to match. A guy like Lee Evans is somehow undervalued, while (non-rapist) Chris Henry went in the 7th and Vincent Jackson in the 8th.

The warm-up draft . . .

Today we had a quick fantasy baseball draft with my buddy Fitz, who moved to Texas, got married and became the butt-end of jokes (all unrelated I'm sure). It's not a money league, and it includes two wives and such platinum hits as "Roy Oswalt 4th" and "Joe Mauer 6th" but I made some interesting decisions, and I thought walking through it would be illustrative. Plus, the errors these guys made are good prep for your money league - most don't really have any idea about some key points regarding FBB on draft day, which is why these leagues are a gold mine if you gamble.

I picked third, which this season is kind of a rough spot - the obvious first two players, Pujols and Santana, are just popular enough to really put you in an awkward situation, and I honestly think the 3-hole can be one of about 8 different players depending on your league parameters. This league used just about every category (including such ridiculous stuff as K/9 and using all of AVG, OBP, H and BB - Jesus), so that made for an interesting decision.

It's a head-to-head league - and here's a pro tip for you: in relatively deep head-to-head leagues, you can basically punt steals. Steals are generally overrated anyway, and unlike true Roto leagues, you only have to win more categories each week - it's hard to get buried, especially with 11 or more categories. Plus, steals are really a 'singular' category - guys with power add multi-dimensional aspects (HRs obviously lead to RBI, OPS and etc), but steals don't really correlate with anything else. However, this also means it's an easy category to win . . . my rule: don't pick steals-only guys, but look for a few guys who add 10 or 15 SB a year, and try to 'patch together' a few wins in the steals category. For a Roto league, throw this advice out the window.

For that reason, I punted on platinum hits like Reyes and Soriano, and went with Miguel Cabrera 3rd . . . BPro's Player Forecast Manager had him listed 4 (Ortiz was ahead), but I felt his all-around numbers and extremely positive health history pushed him ahead. Plus, he's basically mini-Pujols.

Another important point: 3B isn't really a difficult position to fill anymore . . . especially with guys like Alex Gordon going late, there's just no positional scarcity anymore. It's essentially equivalent to 1B now - however, 2B is rough, so I went Utley on the way back, then had to pick between Hafner and Sizemore next . . . I went Sizemore for overall numbers, but I'm not sure that's the right pick there.

Basically, so far my strategy has been to try to pick upper-echelon infielders early but recognize that SS and 3B can be filled on the cheap later - between Stephen Drew and others, you shouldn't need to sacrifice numbers on the alter of positional scarcity. Once the run on pitchers starts, I try to jump on the early end so I can fill for depth late, and unless you're getting BJ Ryan or Joe Nathan, don't waste a high pick on a reliever unless your league is way above average (if you have to think about it, it's not).

The draft:

1.	(3)	Miguel Cabrera
2.	(14)	Chase Utley
3.	(19)	Grady Sizemore
4.	(30)	Jason Bay
5.	(35)	Matt Holliday
6.	(46)	Jake Peavy
7.	(51)	Brian McCann
8.	(62)	B.J. Ryan
9.	(67)	Prince Fielder
10.	(78)	Jeremy Bonderman
11.	(83)	Félix Hernández
12.	(94)	Garrett Atkins
13.	(99)	Dan Haren
14.	(110)	Curt Schilling
15.	(115)	Carlos Guillén
16.	(126)	Chris Capuano
17.	(131)	Chris Ray
18.	(142)	Delmon Young
19.	(147)	Brian Fuentes
20.	(158)	Javier Vázquez
21.	(163)	Howie Kendrick
22.	(174)	Cliff Lee

Don't expect to get Atkins that late, these kids are basically functionally retarded - also note that I may have overdrafted McCann, but the next pick was a total Braves homer and the drop-off after Mauer/McCann is kind of sick. Honestly, I think in a 10- or 12-team league I might even go as high as the 4th or 5th round, but he's pretty underrated by casual fans so try to let guys like him slide if you can.

MAKE MONEY MONEY MAKE MONEY MONEY MONEY