The fantasy baseball season is four week old, and it is time to start complaining and making excuses why our teams are not doing that well. While I find this non-productive, it certainly helps make me feel better knowing I'm still smart and my fantasy travails are a reuslt of bad luck and not skill!
Here is my always-attractive whining about the crappiness of my team, and remember to make your entry in The Worst Fantasy Baseball Season So Far by Wednesday for the chance to win an annual Baseball Prospectus subscription. At least you can get something out of your bad April.
Yahoo! Public League, 8th of 12: Injuries to Jimmy Rollins and Alphonso Soriano, my 1st and 2nd round pick, along with poor starts of Rickie Weeks and Ryan Zimmerman are too much to overcome in just four weeks of action. My pitching is cannot get a win depsite decent starters. Jered Weaver's two Wins leads my team.
Fake Teams H2H, 5-4-1 for the week, 21-16-3 and 4th overall: Carlos Pena is hitting just .200, but that isn't the worst of it. Tigers' 2B Placido Polance is following-up 2007's .343 with half of that - a .174 AVG and a mere 8 runs. Jeez, Curtis Granderson has been back for half a week and has scored eight runs already! And what about Delmon Young? Zero HRs! On the mound, Rich Hill and Matt Garza have done nothing but disappoint. God, punting starting pitching was a huge mistake!
Fake Teams NL-Only 4x4, 6th of 10: WTF! I went from the top to the bottom in a week's time! The culprits on offense are Ryan Howard (.174 AVG), Jose Bautista (.205 AVG), Khalil Greene (.222 AVG and no HRs) Chris B Young (.224 AVG) and Geoff Jenkins (.237 AVG and 1 HR). On the mound, everyone's pitching sleeper Manny Parra has a 1.77 WHIP. Combined with a 1.54 WHIp of Oliver Perez and David Weathers' 2.32 WHIp in 7.1 IP, and one can see why I am in the basement in the category for this NL-Only league.
Blogger Expert League, 7th of 12: Troy Tulowitzki, Ricke Weeks, Nick Johnson and my two catchers, Carlos Ruiz and Chris Snyder, get everyday ABs and hit less than .200. That seriously contributes to my six total points in HR, RBI, AVG and R.
Mixed League, 4th of 12: This is a shallow league that starts just 9 hitters and seven pitchers. That makes the efforts of Dave Ortiz and Chris B Young that much more influential. I've already jettisoned Ryan Zimmerman in favor of Evan Longoria. On pitching, Brandon Webb isn't enough to offset the disappointing starts of Rich hill and AJ Burnett along with the one-win efforts of Aaron Harang. What bothers me most is the sense of trying to get lucky and "time the market" for these players. The league has the feeling of fantasy football and trying to guess which #3 WR is going to have a good week.
AL-Only 4x4 Keeper, 11th of 12: David Ortiz and Jose Guillen have hit .177 in 192 combine ABs - just about 20% of my team's 1002 total ABs. Travis Buck hit .154 before hitting the DL. Outside of Jhonny Peralta, the other 7 players who are not OFers or DHs have combined for 4 HRs in a month. And one of those was Rays' 3B Wily Aybar who lost his job to Evan Longoria! One the mound, this team's crappiness is led by Justin verlander and Eric O'Flaherty with a dash of Denis Sarfate thrown in for ratio-killing good.
NL-Only 4x4 Keeper, 3rd of 12 : Finally! A team doing well except the first place team has a frickin' bombsquad lead by Hanley Ramirez, Brandon Phillips and Justin upton. On the mound, he has Brnadon Webb, Cole Hamels, Matt Capps and Billy Wagner. To boot, he got Fred Lewis at the end of the draft, and I got Brian Barton.
Justin Germano's past two starts have completely erased any memory of the 13 ER-less innings he had at the start of the year. 16 ERs in 8.1 innings will do that. Aaron Heilamn contributes more than his 6.43 ERA by allowed runners he inherits from my two Mets SP, Johan Santana and Oliver Perez to score on his gopher balls! Right behind them are the sub-.200 AVGs of Carlos Ruiz, Michael Bourn and Ryan Howard.