The battle for Jose Fernandez - our 2014 fantasy thread!

looks like possibly 5 guy from last year's first round might wind up being kept.

sorry therm, the last years draft feature is nifty and i found a youngster i missed:

sad_trumbo.wav

jordan zimmerman 27
adam jones 28
billy hamilton 23
david robertson 28

+

kenley jansen 22

he's 26!

would it work to instead set the auto-draft players to the last rounds? or can you even do that?

thanks for the suggestion - looks like this will work, which will make things a little simpler.
now anyone with less than 5 keepers can just select their extra pick(s) at the end of the draft.

oh bref said his debut was age 22 thought it was his age

w/ a name like kenley it's hard to believe he's older than 15 tbf

Brick in the Mauer (name possibly to be changed)

Ryan Zimmerman (29)
Clayton Kershaw (26)
Mike Minor (26)
Anthony Rizzo (24)

... and that's it, I don't have any other keeper eligible players to choose from. I had a bunch of guys turn 30 this year and I missed the draft last year!

didn't you trade away Strasburg aswell?

Yep - I have Strasbourg now. And he will do what I tell him to do. Or I will once again finish in 11th place.

I got back Rizzo in the Strasburg trade, so either way, I only would have had four keepers at the start of this season.

also, i've realized that going with cueto is probably not a good idea this year (chronically injured + changed his delivery after the last time his arm exploded). so i'm going to hope that sandoval will deliver another contract year performance (also he apparently lost 42 pounds this offseason, fwiw). my revised keepers:

oscar taveras (21)
wil myers (23)
stephen strasburg (25)
pablo sandoval (27)
matt cain (29)

panda=bsohl

pretty much

http://nbchardballtalk.files.wordpress.com/2013/09/350x11.jpg?w=350&h=259
http://nbchardballtalk.files.wordpress.com/2013/12/pablo-sandoval.jpg?w=480&h=640

had to google "bsohl"

if only it were ilhoops and i could name my team pau bsohl

last place shitty shitheads checking in

Buster Posey (SF - C,1B) 27
Elvis Andrus (Tex - SS) 25
Gerrit Cole (Pit - SP) 23
Homer Bailey (Cin - SP) 27
Desmond Jennings (TB - OF) 27

Tinker2Evans2Chainz checking in, but no final keeper decisions have yet been made.

yesssssssssssssss

Tinker2Evans2Chainz:

Madison Bumgarner 24
Gio Gonzalez 28
Jean Segura 24
Julio Teheran 23
Jonathan Lucroy 27

SUPER EMBARRASSED that I screwed up my team name, loss of brain cells or something. Tinker2EVERS2Chainz, rather.

also: you can't keep Lucroy – you picked him up as a free agent.

Well then who drafted him? I thought I took him:
Jonathan Lucroy (Mil - C,1B) Round 11, Pick 14

you took Granderson in the 1th round. "ellsbury poly" drafted him.
http://archive.fantasysports.yahoo.com/archive/mlb/2013/43463/draftresults?drafttab=team

he was dropped Apr 13 and then you picked him up on Apr 27.
http://archive.fantasysports.yahoo.com/archive/mlb/2013/43463/transactions?mid=4&filter=add

Damn, didn't even remember that. I guess I'll keep Dexter Fowler instead.

wait dont lock that in, might wanna keep Andrelton Simmons instead

nope on further reflection I'm tossing mr. defense back into the pool, Fowler it is

Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself. My team is large, it contains Bumgarners.

i realize it's too late for this now, but isn't including both XBH and SLG kind of rewarding the same skill twice?

hmmm, maybe not. i'm looking at the projections for Adam Dunn and Yadier Molina, and they're projected for almost an identical SLG (.438) even though Dunn is projected for 51 XBH to Yadi's 38.

in 2014 i am honoring my tradition of modifying another projection system to make my own personal system that makes absolutely no sense. last year's version was so successful that i ended up drafting josh rutledge two picks after Shin-Soo Choo and just before Napoli and Profar!

I don't think I've mentioned this but I have tried to tell 3-4 people irl about the name "lincecumlords" and collapsed into laughter

every time i look at the league and see that name i die

i just wanted to say that

yeah that's the best. i tried to explain Tinker2Evers2Chainz to my wife, who allegedly grew up a baseball fan with a nutty baseball-lovin' father, only to find out she'd never heard of the third-greatest baseball poem of all time. such disappoint.

i don't get it either actually. but, then again, i'm sorta dumb.

not much to get, kind of dumb actually, but here: http://www.1907cubs.com/tinkers-to-evers-to-chance.php

QUESTION is it too late to change my keepers y/n

it's still march 9!

side note, am i miscounting or is a team sitll missing?

thanks we're missing two, actually. there were 14 teams last year, and only 12 are up on the 2014 league so far. along the same lines, i'm wondering what their keepers are going to be.

embarrassing question i should have asked a long time ago: are the player ranking in Yahoo tailored to our league (ie, with holds, obp, etc) or are they standard 5x5 roto ranks?

one of those two isn't coming back (first post) but the other one i dunno abt.

I believe Jordan still has to sign up - as is tradition. And I think some else still needs to let me know their picks.
And go ahead if anyone wants to change theirs.
Aaand no - yahoo doesn't tayler the rankings.

*tailored

hi sorry for the late picks:

Carlos SANTANA
Ian DESMOND
Max SCHERZER
Chris SALE
Chris TILLMAN

(THEE TEE OHS)

okay I know it is March 10 but taking my shot here for Tinker2Evers2Chainz, if it is too late that's okay:

the Brewer in me cringes to say this but I'm gonna drop Jean Segura back into the pool and keep Austin Jackson instead

thanks either way

no problem. now we just need Jordan to turn up.

ok guys. keepers are set (last 5 rounds). let me know if i goofed anywhere:
http://baseball.fantasysports.yahoo.com/b1/13902/draftresults?drafttab=team

definitely having 2nd thoughts about (one of) my keepers already ;_; oh welllllll

now to make ridiculously complicated excel spreadsheet printouts to forget to bring to the draft where i will inevitably wing it

ya - if whoever has Melden wants to rethink that – i don't mind making that change.

*Medlen

heh, im stuck w/ him. no one else age eligible to keep :[
it'll be nice to plug him on the DL i guess

your rotation is even better than andy k's outfield

I need to stick to one league -- always end up autopiloting both teams.

so i'm curious to know what everyone thought of having OBP and XBH this year?

Interesting! I actually really like both of them.

I can't remember if I ever asked this before, but: why the 7x8 pitcher bias?

since the league started we were kind of just adding or taking away stats we liked/didn't like and i was usually trying to keep balance as an afterthought to just having the stats we wanted.

with pitching – the way I look at it – we have two kind of "sole focus stats": holds and saves. we have set-up guys and closer for mainly their holds and saves. while they contribute to ERA, Ks and get the odd W etc – we add them with mainly holds and saves in mind. and with hitting, i view SB in a similar light. some players can contribute to all categories – but a lot of the time we keep an eye towards someone who can just swipe bases to keep us competitive in NSB and those guys are not going to contribute much to RBI, HR, SLG etc.

so it boils down to pitching & hitting having 6 "core" stats each – and then 2 outlier stats for pitching(HLDs & SVs) and one for hitting (NSB). to my mind, this keeps things fairly balanced.
i'm totally open to suggestions tho, if anyone thinks we could do better.

oh! and the other thing i want to resolve before 2015 season starts is the "NA" slot. it's a thing now and someone was asking about it and i'm sort of on the fence. it makes sense in that you can slide a guy who takes personal time or gets demoted in there and not have them wasting a roster spot. however, with our league i'm worried it might lead to "rookie hoarding" to a degree. basically i don't want prospects to be out of reach for teams because half our league pounced on draft day and was able to snag all the top-teir prospects due to come-up in soonish. either way i'm undecided and wouldn't mind feedback.

How many NA spots are allowed? If it's only one or two, I don't see a problem. People can hoard all the rookies they want on draft day, but we still only get five keepers.

no way i would do more than one.

Yeah... the other thing is it wouldn't actually add a round to the draft, so you'd still be filling the bench spot (the one opened up by moving a prospect to the NA slot) with an unkeepable player. As is, you can still stash rookies and hope for the best (I did it with Buxton who I dropped due to injury, and Baez who I traded due to lol-title-chase). If anything it kinda evens the "keeping-players-who-didn't-play" field between active and inactive players, if that makes sense (people who kinda quit after a couple of months are FAR more likely to keep their blue-chip prospects, since they didn't bother dropping them).

That said I think it's a neat idea but I'm not gonna be RA RA NA-SLOT CHAMPION, just seems kinda fun. I'll be happy either way, this is one of my favourite fantasy leagues! (huge thank you for running it again this year!)

oh and re: the 7x8 thing... what would you say to replacing Hold and Save with (Hold+Save)? Or alternatively, drop either W or QS? The latter makes a bit more sense to me, since putting big value into all relievers is kinda fun and what makes the league so unique. Wins are kinda goofy anyway, QS is starter-specific, and W is just starter-friendly (due to innings pitched).

i kinda like it when relievers score you the occasional vulture W. :s
Hold+Save is an interesting idea tho.

yeah one of my favorite things abt fantasy is when you have two starters going and they win and then two of your relievers grab the W and suddenly you're flush! usually this happens on the same day as a 2 for 37 from your hitters (2 singles.)

I also forgot to thank you for running the league again Thermo. Thanks!

I always liked QS. Hold + Save is an interesting idea.

yea i also think holds+saves is a cool idea..i think maybe 2 yrs ago saves were prohibitively hard to find mid-to-late in the season and idk if they deserve to have that much value alone

ok - so looks like, barring yahoo adding some new stats, we'll be merging SV+HLD and adding a NA slot.