1B - Jeff Bagwell
2B - Craig Biggio
3B - Chipper Jones
SS - Alex Rodriguez
OF - Larry Walker
SP- Shane Reynolds
Unfortunately my memory fails me when trying to reconstruct the rest of that team but suffice to say, it was extremely strong throughout with the exception of the two closers I had. I think one of them was Bob Wickman but I'm not positive. Wickman tallied up 37 saves that season but in a crappy Todd Jones, Joe Borowski kind of way. I have no idea who my 2nd closer was.
Well since then, my buddies and I have played fantasy 7 seasons (we missed a couple throughout the years before permanently rebooting it in 2006). I have won 3 years. EsP has won 3 years. And my college roommate Mike who joined in 2007 for the first time, won last season. We have always played a variation of the fantasy point settings that were used on Sandbox.com back in the day when it was still free to join and had games promising $1,000,000 prizes for 1st place (oh the dot-com era). The only real meaningful adjustment that has been made is that strikeouts no longer count as negative 1 for batters. Two reasons for this, 1) A strikeout is really the same as any other out and should be treated as such and 2) The pitcher/hitter point balance was way out of wack with SOs counting against hitters making starting pitchers far more valuable than they should've been in fantasy. Here is the point system we'll be using this season:
| Stat Category | Value |
|---|---|
| GP | 0 |
| AB | 0 |
| R | 1 |
| H | 1 |
| 2B | 1 |
| 3B | 2 |
| HR | 3 |
| RBI | 1 |
| SB | 2 |
| CS | -1 |
| BB | 1 |
| HBP | 1 |
| CYC | 5 |
| IP | 3 |
| W | 10 |
| L | -5 |
| CG | 5 |
| SHO | 10 |
| SV | 10 |
| H | -1 |
| ER | -1 |
| BB | -1 |
| HBP | -1 |
| K | 1 |
| NH | 20 |
| PG | 50 |
| BSV | -5 |
Fairly standard and straight foward. We've bumped the size of the league up to 12 teams this season changing the traditional 10. This year my team will be called Cobra Kai, named after the legendary dojo from The Karate Kid. Our draft was this past Sunday and here is how my draft went.
| 1. | (1) | José Reyes | SS |
| 2. | (24) | Brandon Webb | SP |
| 3. | (25) | Prince Fielder | 1B |
| 4. | (48) | Dan Haren | SP |
| 5. | (49) | Jonathan Papelbon | RP |
| 6. | (72) | Mariano Rivera | RP |
| 7. | (73) | Garrett Atkins | 1B,3B |
| 8. | (96) | Jay Bruce | OF |
| 9. | (97) | Chris Young | OF |
| 10. | (120) | Javier Vázquez | SP |
| 11. | (121) | Kelly Johnson | 2B |
| 12. | (144) | Aaron Harang | SP |
| 13. | (145) | Carlos Delgado | 1B |
| 14. | (168) | Justin Upton | OF |
| 15. | (169) | Bengie Molina | C |
| 16. | (192) | Oliver Pérez | SP |
| 17. | (193) | Hiroki Kuroda | SP |
| 18. | (216) | Bronson Arroyo | SP |
| 19. | (217) | Andy Sonnanstine | SP |
| 20. | (240) | Chris Dickerson | OF |
| 21. | (241) | Joey Devine | RP |
| 22. | (264) | Kevin Kouzmanoff | 3B |
| 23. | (265) | Brandon Lyon | RP |
| 24. | (288) | Dave Bush | SP |
| 25. | (289) | Brandon Inge | C,3B,OF |
I have to say, 11 rounds in, I was absolutely estatic how the draft was going for me. I was very upset to get the 1st pick in the draft but that was tempered a bit by Prince Fielder somehow falling to me in the 2nd/3rd round. Many would question my using two fairly early picks drafting of Rivera and Papelbon but here is why. Since I lucked into Prince Fielder, Joey Votto became expendable. Therefore, the top of my draft board contained these players, Jay Bruce, Chris B. Young, Javier Vazquez, and Kelly Johnson. Feeling confident those 4 players would all drop far enough for me to grab them later, I decided to grab the top two closers out there, hopefully avoiding repeating the closer problems I ran into last season when I got Soria and could not for the life of me find a 2nd closer that managed to keep his job.
After round 11, however, not everything went as planned. Since I got the first pick in the draft, I took Kelly Johnson in the 11th round and not the 12th as I usually had done in previous leagues and mock drafts fearing he wouldn't make it to me. Normally, I would've drafted a remaining starting pitcher such as Cain, Myers, or Harang or Pablo Sandoval or Mike Napoli for C. Things looked okay until Jen's autodraft tooked Bret Myers the pick before mine in the 12th round. I was planning on drafting both him and Harang. Instead, I took Harang and after thinking for a while drafted Carlos Delgado to fill in the Util position hoping against hope that Sandoval would drop to the 14th round. Unfortunately, it was not to be as Mike took him with one of his next 2 picks. When my next two picks came around, I again made a mistake in judging when a player would be drafted in Gil Meche. I had ended up with Meche in almost every single mock draft I had done in the 16th or 17th rounds. Therefore, I decided to draft Justin Upton to finish out my young and talented OF and then fill the C position with Bengie Molina, bleh. Bad decision. Kev took Meche with one of his next two picks and from then on, I had to dreg up the remains of starting pitching available. To my pleasant surpise, Andy Sonnanstine lasted for my 18th/19th picks giving me some nice upside should Perez, Kuroda, or Harang flame out (I swear to God, Dusty Baker will pay if he screws up Harang again like he did last season. How did this man ever get a reputation as a top manager? How?).
The rest of the picks were just bench fillers. Some backup relievers for emergencies, some starters and two position bench players that I like a lot and who could give me manueverability with trades. I'd like to upgrade at C and if I have to trade a Delgado, Fielder, or Atkins, I'm confident that Dickerson can play Util at a comparable level and that Kouzmanoff could be servicable at 3rd, perhaps only posting around 100 less points than Atkins would have, which I'd be making up for and more in any trade involving any of those 3 players.
Even with the rough spots in the later rounds of the draft, I still feel my team is in great position to win it all again.
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