My cardinals are getting drilled in an elimination game.  So to get my mind off things I'll post about how I won the Faketeams NL only 4x4 roto league.  Here's how it was done-

Luck had a lot to do with it.  But there were a few other things involved as well.  One was a major trade, for my team's needs, anyway.  And a total of 54 adds/ 54 drops.  That's after a weak draft where I made a rookie mistake of running out of money.  But at the draft I was able to assemble a fairly decent starting rotation to go with a 'wait and see' closer ensemble.  

Hitting was a different story. For those unaware, this was an NL only, 4x4 roto league, 10 teams. Here's my starting line-up of hitters week one-

C- Nick Hundley

C- Ivan Rodriguez

1b- Chad Tracy

2b- Dan Uggla

3b- Ronnie Belliard

ss- Rafael Furcal

MI- Felipe Lopez

CI- Bill Hall

Of- Rick Ankiel

Of- Chris Duffy

Of- Dexter Fowler

Of- Brandon Moss

Of- Hunter Pence

DH- Casey McGehee

If you remember the way things looked back at the start of the season it would be easy to say the above may be the worst assembled lineup in the history of roto.  Hundley, Fowler, Moss and McGehee were unproven.  Belliard and Duffy were, but not in a good way.  Obviously Pence and Uggla were the stars of this group but they would not have enough to carry a team.  Furcal and Ankiel had question marks.  Pudge was getting older daily.  And it would be later in the season before Fowler and McGehee would see much regular playing time.

My pitching was a different story as there was actually hope involved with that group.  Here's the week one staff-

SP- Chris Carpenter

SP- Aaron Harang

SP- Rich Harden

SP- Javier Vazquez

SP- Adam Wainwright

SP- Carlos Zambrano

RP- Hong-Chih Kuo

RP- Brad Lidge

RP- Huston Street

And on the bench was a recovering Trevor Hoffman.  I would have bet anything Harang was going to have a nice rebound this year.  And Brad Lidge was horrendous.  But besides those two I certainly cannot complain about much pitching wise.  And I was able to add Randy Wells which was a bonus.

Trades- about mid April I was able to trade Carlos Zambrano straight up for Adam Dunn.  That certainly helped my offense.  Actually with adds of Miguel Montero, Garrett Jones, Drew Stubbs and Carlos Gonzalez my offense started to take a turn for the better.  Not to mention that I had dropped McGehee and Jonny Gomes only to pick them back up later.  This bunch of guys were able to end up second in the league in homers.

Final season pitching stats show-

ERA- 1st

Wins- 1st

WHIP- 1st

Saves- 2nd

Saves might have ended in 1st had I not traded Mike McDougal (another waiver add) for Kazuo Matsui.  I needed steals pretty badly at that point and it seemed like a good deal.  And in fairness, I was able to move from 9th in steals at the time of the trade to 5th by the time the season ended.  While in saves I only dropped a point.

Final season hitting stats show-

BA- 8th

HR's- 2nd

RBI- 7th

Steals- 5th

Overall I finished with 61 points which was nine points in front of the second place team.  I guess it just shows if you watch the waiver wire there are plenty of quality pick-ups available, even in deep leagues like this.  Mistakes can be made though.  I dropped Everth Cabrera for Craig Monroe early on.  Dropped Monroe for Wes Helms, who was dropped for Mitchel Boggs, who was dropped for Jeremy Affeldt, who was dropped for Bobby Scales, who was dropped for Casey McGehee.  Which fortunately turned out ok.  

Now it's back to watching my Cardinals getting drilled.