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).

Auction Draft: Teams Breakdown

First off, this is amazing - absolutely ridiculously funny. Hat-tip to HighHeat on SoSH for this. Sick.

Here's how each team wound up in the auction team draft:

RC-
Milwaukee $3.75
Yankees $8.50
Oakland $3.50
St. Louis $2.75
San Diego $1.50

DD-
Cubs $8.25
Colorado $1
NY Mets $8
Pittsburgh$1.75
Washington$1

DM-
White Sox $5.50
Reds $3.25
Florida $2
LAA $8
Toronto $1.25

JJ-
Atlanta $3
Baltimore $1.75
Cleveland $7.50
LAD $7.50
Seattle $2

MM-
Arizona $4.25
Detroit $3.25
KC $3
SF $1.50
Tampa Bay $8

GR-
Boston $8.25
Houston $1.75
Minnesota $3.75
Philly $4.25
Texas $2

If the season plays out exactly according to the PECOTA predictions, my team's wins alone will be worth $51, with at least another $20 in playoff earnings and assorted bonuses based on division leads at the milemarker points - can't complain about that. At least not until the first major injury to the Yankees - and let's be honest, I'm freerolling the AL East with this setup. Life is good.

On Balancing Ranges in an Auction-like Nerd Setting

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Fantasy Baseball

So, it's that time of year again. I'm in two leagues this year, both largely made up of friends from college. The first draft was today, and I was able to participate live on-line. Our friendly blog owner is in the same league, so I'll stay out of too much strategy analysis. It's a 10 team league, so the pickings got rather slim towards the end of the draft.

The A-Roids
Round Pick Player Position
1. (4) David Wright 3B
2. (17) Ian Kinsler 2B
3. (24) Lance Berkman 1B
4. (37) Dan Haren SP
5. (44) Brian McCann C
6. (57) Chad Billingsley SP
7. (64) Stephen Drew SS
8. (77) Corey Hart OF
9. (84) Jonathan Broxton RP
10. (97) Ricky Nolasco SP
11. (104) Nate McLouth OF
12. (117) Justin Upton OF
13. (124) Chris Iannetta C
14. (137) Lastings Milledge OF
15. (144) Kelly Johnson 2B
16. (157) Hunter Pence OF
17. (164) Chad Qualls RP
18. (177) Scott Baker SP
19. (184) Ubaldo Jiménez SP
20. (197) Cristian Guzmán SS
21. (204) Alex Gordon 3B

Overall I was happy with my draft. I waited a bit to get in on the pitching, and when I did I made my picks in spurts. My starting offense is fairly low-risk, although it's also for the most part only moderate reward. I probably reached a bit for a back-up catcher (in Ianetta), but I try to have two good catchers on the roster because of the injury risks. My outfield is deep but not particularly outstanding...I'm hoping that the numbers put up by Wright, Kinsler, Berkman and McCann will supplement my strictly-average outfield.

I got caught without a closer last year at the end of the year, and it cost me in some close contests, so I wanted to give a good effort at the position this year. I'm hoping that I made good choices in balancing draft position with productivity. Again, I'm very happy with my starting pitching, and I'm hoping that Baker's fly ball issues are the worst of my starting pitching problems this year.

I was also happy to get Johnson so late in the draft. I couldn't really turn down Guzman and Gordon with the last two picks. Overall I made a few reaches, but nothing too crazy.

My next draft is this week, but as I'll be in class, I'll be relying on the auto-draft option, which I hate.

It's Schadenfreude, Bitches!

If there's anything those wacky Germans have done to make our lives infinitely better, other than (obviously) giving idiots the ultimate endgame to any online discussion, it would have to be the concept of Shadenfreude, allowing me a justification for my near-constant reveling in the difficulties, downfalls and disasters befalling others.

Well, Milwaukee fans, welcome to the shit show that is Eric Gagne circa today. While the Brews eventually pulled out the game in the 10th (War Plan Orange, anyone?), it was not before Kosuke Fukudome played Admiral Yamamoto to Gagne's USS Oklahoma,
rocking a 3-run bomb in the bottom of the 9th in his first MLB game. Fukudome went 3-for-3, accounting for all of the Cubs' offense.

The Fukudome signing was an inspired move by the Cubs, to be sure, but most projections show The Admiral (as I will now fruitlessly refer to him for about 3 weeks, until I am beaten by everyone I watch games with) as someone with about 15 HR power over the course of the season (but with great OBP - pretty much exactly what CHC needed, to be honest, which is why the signing was stunning at best). However, the $10 million to let Gagne get Pearl Harbor'ed by a moderate-power guy playing his first game against true major-league talent . . . well, that's not so much a great move. After watching dipshit have the confused look in the photo above for the Sox for a couple of months, I couldn't be any happier for the fine cheese-eating, beer-drinking, hedgehog-of-a-wife-fucking denizens of Wisconsin. Love your lineup, hate your closer, dudes - enjoy the 85-win season and underplaying your Pythagorean record by about 5 games (or, the difference between yourselves and the Cubs).

In other notes, Ben Sheets looked great, Josh Willingham needs to be on your fantasy radar if you're looking for off-the-shelf power in the OF/UTIL slots after taking Johan Santana deep (and with a solid PECOTA projection), the Giants may never score another run, trade Jim Thome immediately if you find someone silly enough to want him, and Chris B. Young is obviously on pace for 162 HRs, with a .250 OBP and nearly 500 strikeouts - and, really, only the HR number seems completely unreasonable (and not even by that much). By the way, I drafted him before the 6th round in a bunch of fantasy drafts - I would make out with the guy if I got the chance. He's Adam Dunn with stolen bases, and without hilarious quotations about being the most attractive All Star. He's the evolutionary Rob Deer, except he can actually play defense, run, whatever. It's an exciting time for Three True Outcomes devotees.

Thank God for baseball season - one day in, and I'm already stoked.

Evan, Salty and the Business of Baseball

Often, fantasy baseball and actual, real-life Major League Baseball run antithetical to each other in key (some would say foundational) ways - a simple example would be the role of defense, which is non-existent in most rational fantasy leagues, but can have a serious effect on a player's value (see: Braun, Ryan or Jeter, Derek) to a real-life team.

One of the often-ignored elements of baseball, from a media/fan perspective, is the business side of the game and its effects on the baseball operations side of things. Now, people like Maury Brown do a great job of breaking down the actual economics of the game beyond the playing field - that's not entirely the scope of our discussion here. However, the economic side plays a strong role in on-field strategy when it comes to the marginal cost of player retention, arbitrage opportunities, and projecting the economic landscape of MLB years down the road.

Us fantasy GMs carry only a small fraction of this responsibility, mostly related to keeper leagues or auction leagues, where projecting future performance versus your own likelihood of success this season can influence trades and player acquisitions. However, the real-world economics of baseball can have Chernobyl-level disastrous effects on fantasy teams if idiots like me are unaware.

One great example comes in Evan Longoria (sub req), the Rays' superprospect that BP projects to put up a .267/.339/.460 line with 25 HRs should he start at 3B for Tampa Bay's version of the Travolta sudden resurgence from the abyss. Just for comparison's sake, that .799 OPS would be slightly better than the 2007 numbers posted by stalwarts like Ryan Zimmerman and Casey Blake, and in the ballpark of Adrian Beltre and Chone Figgins. At age 22.

This would be a pretty sound upgrade for the Rays, who could then move Aki Iwamura to 2B, and count on a year's worth of improvement in their pitching staff and OF to drive them toward (if not above) .500. However, Evan Longoria will not be starting the season on my fantasy bench - he'll be starting it in Durham, playing AAA, the same place he tossed up a .900 OPS as a 21 year old last year (caveat: <200 PAs).

This is a great move for the Rays, as Longoria's service clock will not start, and the Rays can still call him in up in June and get ~400 ABs from their 3B of the future while likely hovering around the fringes of the Wild Card race. The Devil Rays will effectively gain an extra year of arbitration control, going through his age-29 year instead of 28.

Jared Saltalamacchia finds himself in a similar position - he's projected by PECOTA for a decent .269/.337/.446 line at age 23, which would fall right between the 2007 marks by Brian McCann and Jason Varitek. This would also top Gerald Laird's career line by over 100 points of OPS. However, Salty also found his way off my starting lineup, and onto a bus heading for Oklahoma City. This was under the guise of "catching every day" - but given the lack of information we have over catchers' defense, this is most likely a way of gaining an extra year of service time as well.

To be honest, these moves make perfect sense - an extra year later is much more important than the MLB-level development time now, as the next two years will not result in the next (first?) great Rays or Rangers teams. However, these two players, by virtue of being the best available option for these teams, made it well up my draft board and represented a good chance for me to make ground late in the double-digit rounds.

However, this arbitrage comes with risk (weird, huh) - the risk that the teams will actually do the right thing, and not put the best squad on the field every day. Unfortunately, teams are getting smarter (exception: Gordon, Alex) - and risks are getting bigger. This is how you wind up starting Mike Napoli behind the plate - and it's not a good feeling. Not good at all.

ROUND ONE: FIGHT

It's that time of the year, yet again - just like the salmon of Capistrano, we return to our embryonic chrysalis seeking warmth, WHIP and some of our friends' moderately hard-earned money. Like the first robin of spring, the first fantasy draft brings a mixture of hope and expectation (both in terms of "looking forward" and also "expected value"), along with drinking beer in the morning and making fun of the guy who drafts David Eckstein (11th round in this draft; best lines included "Is 'getting blown by Joe Buck' a category?' and "finally, someone shorter than Conklin" among many, many others).

This is a money league; small time though, $20 entry/10 teams/both leagues, with the following categories:
Batting: R, H, HR, RBI, SB, BB, K, AVG
Pitching: IP, W, L, SV, BB, K, ERA, WHIP

Let's just start off by saying the draft went pretty damn well:

Stop Snitching Andy

View All

Round	Pick	Player	Position
1.	(5)	Hanley Ramírez	SS
2.	(16)	David Wright	3B
3.	(25)	Brian Roberts	2B
4.	(36)	Mark Teixeira	1B
5.	(45)	Adam Dunn	OF
6.	(56)	Cole Hamels	SP
7.	(65)	Chris Young	OF
8.	(76)	Dan Haren	SP
9.	(85)	John Smoltz	SP
10.	(96)	Nick Markakis	OF
11.	(105)	Francisco Cordero	RP
12.	(116)	Brett Myers	SP,RP
13.	(125)	Nick Swisher	1B,OF
14.	(136)	Matt Cain	SP
15.	(145)	Matt Kemp	OF
16.	(156)	Rafael Soriano	RP
17.	(165)	Derek Lowe	SP
18.	(176)	Jarrod Saltalamacchia	C,1B
19.	(185)	Stephen Drew	SS
20.	(196)	Randy Johnson	SP
21.	(205)	Lastings Milledge	OF

Yep - winners go home and fuck the prom queen, but not after getting perhaps the second-best fantasy player alive with the 16th pick, after getting a consensus top-5 guy at #5 also. Thanks to Baseball Prospectus's invaluable Player Forecast Manager utility, I wound up with the guys ranked at #s 1, 3, 12, 18, 20, 21, 27 and 28. That's the equivalent of picking 8 times in the first three rounds, and not even Chris Wallace or Steve Phillips could fuck that one up.

At every position, I wind up with a premium player, and even get to take a shot at some high-upside guys in Kemp and Milledge. I bought low on Randy Johnson and might squeeze a great half-season, and that's the kind of arbitrage I simply can't pass up. The Steve Drew pick is likely shitty, but I sort of panicked and put on the baseball equivalent of a "handcuff" to Hanley in case of injury. I should win steals every week, and although Dunn and Hanley will make it tough to win batting K's every week, the increase in every counting category should make my hitters unbeatable.

Beyond that, I have a solid, moderate-risk staff, with some superstar potential in Hamels and Myers and Haren (even though all pitch in bandboxes) and the ability to move from strength for more as the season goes on. I just got hard talking about it - I feel like Enzyte Bob, except I get to live freely for the next 20 or so years of my life.

Learning is Fundamental

To kick off the fantasy moneymaking season for 2008, I wanted to look back at last year's big keeper-league draft, to try to point out places where I could perhaps make an improvement going into this year, and just generally giving retrospective opinions on the entire deal. Also, since this was technically my worst fantasy finish since Teapot Dome, my little ass probably should hit the books, since even the goofiest bastards have 24/7 access to (usually shitty, but still existent) fantasy advice.

My original interpretation of the draft is located here, with some piss-poor analysis that I probably did while slightly hung over at work. I finished fourth in the regular season, then lost a quarterfinal game and punted the rest of the playoffs for draft position (unsuccessfully, I might add - 6th overall). It sucked.

The first five picks were my 5 "keepers" - which, clearly, became an unmitigated disaster after the unfortunate death of Jason Bay's talent (and knee cartilage), Joe Mauer thankfully donating some of his knee to try to help Mr. Bay (which was an unmitigated failure, on par with "Operation: Nail Freshman Girls" at my Bay State brownstone in 2000) and collapsing like Tacoma Narrows in the process, and BJ Ryan's elbow exploding just four short months too early.

The lesson here is pretty clear - sometimes, players will just slip, like Bay. Mauer's injury was moderately predictable, and he might have been a reach in the 4th round anyway, while for all of Ryan's superb stats and peripherals, he's still a closer, and we know the rule: never draft a closer high.

Luckily, I was able to resurrect the draft by pseudo-keeping Adam Dunn with my 6th round pick (making this the 7th consecutive season of watching Big Donkey be my most valuable terrible outfielder - he is sick in this league because it uses OBP instead of BA), so we'll count that as a keeper, which still gives me a C- overall. I must improve this year - luckily, I have four no-brainers for keepers (Wright, Howard, Fielder and Dunn), along with the potential to either keep Granderson or pick up the best player not kept by the remaining teams with my 5th-rounder (which will usually yield a 3rd-round talent, as dudes keep man-crushes instead of the best players).

The most striking problem with my draft was almost certainly my high-risk strategy for pitching, which relied on old guys with breakdown potential (Schilling, Wagner) and young guys with high-risk projections (Bush, Reyes). These guys ate me up, while the more-intelligent risks of buying low on Penny and Escobar worked masterfully and carried my team through most of the season (along with Randy Wolf's first half).

The lesson is easy: work harder to diversify, and keep a solid selection of pitching around. There's no reason to overpay for a mid-range guy (even Dan Haren counts here this year), but while there's no need to be a risk-adverse pussy, it is important to keep some reliable guys on hand and dodge an entirely youth-oriented team because of the dangers of pitching projection in general.

The "closing off the closers" strategy worked exceptionally poorly, as most teams were unwilling to trade even bottom-end starters for closers, and the point in which such trades make the most sense (at the first half of the season) for you are the times when people are most adverse to trades (because of waiver-wire enticement). It's kind of like dominating the Golden Tee machine at the bar - it's a great idea for what it's worth, but you can't parlay it into getting laid, so you have to make sure your priorities are actually aligning with your strategy. As it ended, I wound up with a great closer system (with 4 guys), including exactly one of the closers (Wagner) that I started with, and missed a LOT of potential value guys at the bottom of the draft (FUCK YOU BRANDON PHILLIPS-SLASH-FRANCHISE). I will likely avoid this strategy, even if I get as much cooperation as I did in that draft.

One other quick point: while it's easy to play for guys moving positions to try to capitalize on hard-to-fill positional eligibility, these guys often have an adjustment period. Hall killed me here, even being SS-eligible. BJ Upton appears to be the exception here, but it's worth noting going forward.

Essentially, I completely mismanaged risk in this draft, and left myself open to exactly what happened: injuries decimating my team in places where I could not handle them. I thought I had a nice balance of risk and upside, but that could not have been further from the truth in hindsight. Boo fucking hoo.

Book Review: Fantasyland

So, you would think this book is about the strip club over by the airport, but it is actually about fantasy baseball. Granted, not the most exciting topic to a good number of people. The book is actually pretty entertaining.

Sam Walker is a sports writer for the Wall Street Journal who decides to join the most competitive Rotisserie league in the nation without having played before. The book chronicles his season (the 2004 baseball season). It also goes in depth into the history of fantasy baseball and the numerous colorful characters who populate the landscape.

Since Sam is a sports journalist he can go scout the players he wants to pick up and also talk to them when they are slumping or when he is thinking about trading them. This really cracked me up, especially his encounters with David Ortiz (who he stupidly trades for Soriano) and him cracking a beer with Bill Mueller after a game. For those of us who hate the usual on camera canned answers that players give, it's nice to see they have some sort of personality.

The most interesting part of the book is the obvious tension between the rotisserie guided statistics and the old baseball scouting process. As Collin mentioned on here before there is a battle in baseball over the value of the intricate baseball stats that people such as Bill James tout as being able to forecast a player's worth without seeing them play and the old scouting process that has a more hands on approach. The book does a pretty good job of showing how slowly but surely the stat nerds are gaining a foothold in the baseball world (Bill James works for the Red Sox nowadays).

So overall I liked the book, even if the back stories of all the fantasy nerds run together, the book helps clarify the multi billion dollar business and maybe even give you a small leg up on others in your fantasy league. I'll probably still finish last though.

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

My Probably Crappy Fantasy Baseball Team

So, my fantasy baseball draft was last night, and I amazingly did little to no research. I picked up a magazine to leaf through on Saturday, but that was more out of sheer boredom than research. I figure that this year's team can't be much worse than my team from last year. Last year, I drafted Derrek Lee first and he went on to break his wrist and destroy my dreams along with the dreams of a bunch of dudes with popped collars who drink beer and sunbathe at Wrigley.

My whole goal this year was two fold. First, I will not take anyone who came out of nowhere to have an awesome season last year (I'm looking in your direction Bronson "Rockstar" Arroyo). Second, I wanted to take younger players who might not have a proven track record but were also less likely to get hurt (Allah willing). Pretty simple right?

Of course nothing is as simple as it sounds. To start with, I showed up late due to a viewing of 300 (review coming later) and already got autodrafted my first four picks. The computer didn't hurt me, actually since I had the 12th and last pick, I probably did a bit better and closer to what I wanted getting autodrafted. Below is my team:


Lidle's Co-Pilots (Admit it, you love the name)
C
Paul Lo Duca
(NYM - C)
1B
Justin Morneau
(Min - 1B)
2B
Plácido Polanco
(Det - 2B)
3B
Miguel Cabrera
(Fla - 3B)
SS
Orlando Cabrera
(LAA - SS)
OF
Matt Holliday
(Col - OF)
OF
Hideki Matsui
(NYY - OF)
OF
Coco Crisp
(Bos - OF)
Util
David Wright
(NYM - 3B)
BN
Michael Cuddyer
(Min - 1B,OF)
BN
Aubrey Huff
(Bal - 3B,OF)
BN
Jeremy Hermida
(Fla - OF)
BN
Khalil Greene
(SD - SS)
Jered Weaver
(LAA - SP)
SP
Chris Capuano
(Mil - SP)
RP
B.J. Ryan
(Tor - RP)
RP
Scot Shields
(LAA - RP)
P
Derek Lowe
(LAD - SP)
P
Ted Lilly
(ChC - SP)
P
José Contreras
(CWS - SP)
BN
Aaron Heilman
(NYM - RP)


Granted, not all of them are spring chickens, but I like what I have. A couple of them had season destroying injuries last year (Coco and Hidikei) and I think they will come back in a big way. I'm not totally sold on my pitching staff, especially after learning that Weaver is going to miss a few starts at the beginning of the season. So I went out and picked up Nate Robertson.

So, I will probably finish last again. Damn you Corey Lidle.