The battle for Jose Fernandez - our 2014 fantasy thread!

don't want to scare you guys but i moved up to ninth place the other night. #comeback

hah just emailed it and then read this, i will put it on google docs.

link

That's awesome, thanks!

Well - last day of the season. Good luck to everyone with their last-ditch, random free agent acquisitions!

How did you manage to get all your SP's teams playing meaningful games on the last day of the season, ensuring that all your best SP's would get the starts? There's no way you pulled this off without voodoo. I'm filing a complaint with the league commissioner ... oh, wait.

My bench guys are 6 for 7 with a HR so far today. R.A. Dickey as a spot starter seems to have worked out, and Cueto was great as usual, but I'm starting to think I'm not going to win the league this year. I'm hoping for a 4 HR game from Matt Kemp!

congrats Thermo!

i guess it's safe to say thanks! this is definitely the craziest single fantasy season i've ever had. and now that i went for broke, i'm going to spend the next year or two rebuilding.

Lucroy, Dee Gordon, and Neil Walker (i know right) were some fortunate grabs. Lucroy pretty much carried my offense (Ortiz too – but you expect that)

and i think this is the first time we have Canadians at #s 1 & 2 in the final standings!

Yes, congrats Thermo! You totally dominated down the stretch and left no doubt about who had the best team.

After five top three finishes in the past eight years (3x 2nd place, 2x 3rd place), I'm kind of wondering what it'll take to win one of these things ... I can't really complain though, because my keepers going into the year were so sketchy (except Kershaw) that I really thought this would be a rebuilding season for me.

2nd place and I couldn't even walk away with the Lightfoot Cup as a consolation prize? Tough league ...

well, you did land Kyle Seager for the next 3 years!

I have nothing bad to say about my keeper options for next year, that's for sure. I gotta take the next step one of these years though. Like the Blue Jays, I can't pull the trigger!

i was happy to land in 3rd place given that i was in 6th-9th for most of the year.

best surprise: Nelson Cruz. slugged .525 with 40 HR, 74 XBH, drafted in round 10
runner-ups: josh harrison and lucas duda, who i picked up down the stretch and were outstanding. oh yeah, and corey fucking kluber, who i drafted on a whim and traded away at midseason:(

encarnacion was kind of an odd pick at #2 (with miggy at #1 and fernandez at #3) i admit, but he delivered as i hoped he would: slugged .547, 63 XBH, 34 HR. he provided a little more power than miggy (and similar OBP) and jose fernandez had his terrible injury.

biggest disappointment: wilin rosario. i knew he'd be an OBP bomb, but i thought he'd still crank out 20+ HR with decent RBIs. nope! he's keeperable, but i'm on the fence.
runner-up: i drafted oscar taveras back in 2013, and played him way too much when he made it up to the majors this year. it was my fault for playing him, of course. and i'm keeping him in 2015, because i'm stubborn.

congratulations o mighty thermo!

my draft was terrible. my five keepers entering this season were harvey (injured but held onto nonetheless), matt moore (TJ surgery), beachy (TJ surgery), lincecum (terrible), and chapman (started injured, but then better than ever.) a bunch of other guys got injured and/or were useless (sabathia, avisail garcia, mauer, soriano, jackie bradley.) my best draft pick w/r/t value was doubtlessly morneau; i nabbed him in round 15 and he was great pretty much all season. the other good players i had were all either waiver wire snags (dickerson, mesoraco, richards) or acquired through trade (kluber, marte.)

my keepers next season are a lot better at least, i rarely traded before this season but once i realized there was no way to overtake the top three teams plus the fact that my keepers were all basically shit (except aroldis) i had to wheel and deal.

best surprise: Matt Kemp. I missed the beginning of the draft and was autodrafting with Yahoo's rankings. Kemp was chosen in the fifth round and I was pissed, but he rescued my offense in the second half.

best surprise from a decision I made: Denard Span, I got him on waivers after Zimmerman (I think) got injured for the 5849th time, he ended up becoming a full time player for the Nats (IRL) and was my most consistent player on offense from then on. Either him or Tanner Roark, I got him on waivers when (some SP got injured, can't remember who, I think they were all on the DL this year except for Cueto), he gave me 140+ IP, 15 QS, 2.64 ERA. I think I'll be rooting for the Nats in the playoffs.

biggest disappointment: Mike Minor. Pitched like an ace last year, never really got going this year.

Keepers: traded for Seager (thx Thermo!) and Ryu (thx Will!), drafted Cueto (thx autdraft!), Cashner and Paxton (who were injured for half the season but were great when they pitched). Rizzo had a breakout year and is just 25. Kershaw had an OK year.

My draft was putrid. Taking Votto with my first pick basically ended my season.

i took Dozier in both my leagues and dropped him after a slow first couple weeks. tuhrible GM.

and jose fernandez had his terrible injury.

i think you're confusing your teams. i grabbed Fernandez in the first round!

um - ok - i now realize you're talking about our draft and not your team! duh!

seeing E5 go at #2 really baffled me. he wasn't even on my short-list of guys i was going to aim for with #3 (tho i was assuming Fernandez would go #1 or 2).
either way – before the injury Fernandez was having a Cy Young caliber season. he'll be back well before the all-star break next year, joining Price and King Felix :D

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.