How do we get Taylor Swift into fantasy baseball? Your 2024 ILX Fantasy Thread! (also, there is an opening for a new manger!)

yennier cano leads my team in wins

yahoo was already brutal to copy-paste drops (for the keeper spreadsheet) but they've made some tiny change that now just... adds random line breaks when copying from their site. good lord my kingdom for a csv export

Twenty points separating first place from eighth!

I forgot to set my lineups yesterday and missed 2 stellar starting pitching performances. :-\

haha, yeah, i moved last week (still unpacking) so i haven't been paying close attention to my roster, and i found today that both of my catchers and three of my starting pitchers are on the IL! we are playing hurt

so is there a new spreadsheet? apologies if it was already linked, i only seem to have last year's.

it's good i have solid pitching because my hitters have mostly been nightmarish, none of them have been up to par except Royce Lewis (small sample size of two at-bats.)

I have no shortstop today, and no way to get one in there. All you have to do is choke up a bit and guide something out to left field.

Another solid start by Kikuchi tonight. My starting pitching--Berrios, Hicks, Kikuchi, Bello, Grayson Rodriguez--has been amazingly good thus far. Only Luis Castillo has been a disappointment, but he finally had a great start last time out.

i got Bello as a flier in my other league and he has surprised me so far

my team is a Jackson-Holliday-esque 1-23 with -1 NSB today.

my hitting over the last week -- 39-209 with three HR

i think if i started a random assortment of "most dropped players" in the transaction trends i'd have done better.

I don’t play fantasy baseball but Wilyer Abreu looked great when he was called up in September and he’s looking exactly like that right now - might be a good cheap pickup for anyone in search of an outfielder. Potential plus defence and plus arm, when he’s going well he’s got good plate discipline and pop

aaaand he got picked up this morning! am surprised he wasn't drafted tho, given this is a keeper league.

and looks like Clems and i jinxed Bello

Damn...I guess I'll take a look at the scrapheap list as a stopgap.

ha i didn't even see gyac's post before i picked up abreu, i just really really need some offense

now that i'm not in first place any more, i feel like i'm allowed to complain: my draft choices have mostly worked out, but picking nolan jones in the third round has ... not. i was not familiar with the dude or his strong performance last season, but he was hyped up by a bunch of the sources i was using for draft planning, so i took him high, and he has been a black hole of offense so far. he's just 25 and keeper-eligible so i'm holding on in hopes that he warms up eventually.

Was able to add the 2018 NL leader in CG (2) and shutouts (1)--jackpot.

looks like zach_tbd made the right choice in keeping amed "MPV" rosario. though jack flaherty hasn't been terrible either.

if we're going to reflect on our draft choices, this is my first round choice's stat line since getting called up: .059/.111/.059/.170

Feel obliged to point out that Abreu’s nickname is Thicc Willy. Despite being a solid little guy he can run like nobody’s business. Abreu truther out. 🤟🏻

Btw Bello says he was playing with a sore back last week & they don’t anticipate him being off longer than the 15 day minimum.

Draft thoughts:

R3: Bregman .555 OPS, -3.1 offensive fWAR, 0 HRs
R4: Fried 4.97 ERA/1.38 WHIP, was supposed to be my 3rd SP1 after Strider (RIP) & Bieber
R6: Bieber: 2 ++ starts then shipped off to the Tommy John glue factory
R8: Arenado (drafted because I didn't trust Bregman's floor): .728 OPS, 1 HR

A fantasy rite of passage, I'm sure: my favourite team (allegedly, anyway) mounting a late comeback, up against one of my two fantasy closers. If you know who my favourite team is, you know how it turned out.

it's a really weird way to watch baseball, i agree. i am definitely a fantasy homer, to my detriment, because i do pick more cardinals players because i like to root for them, and i do sometimes bench very good baseball players because they're playing the cardinals and i don't want them to do well that day.

and then sometimes i do start the very good players anyway, and as they're kicking the cardinals' ass irl, i'm kind of grimly satisfied at how things turned out

I don't check my hitters each night--seems like it'd be a lot of work--but I do look in on starting pitchers, and they continue to keep me afloat: good games tonight from both Grayson Rodriguez and Jameson Taillon, who I picked up off the scrapheap to take Bello's place.

It's definitely weird to start my ace pitcher against my favourite team and to root for a 0-0 game won by the good guys in extra innings. We do what we have to do.

I so enjoyed my one day in first place!

yeah i have to remind myself that whatever's going to happen will happen regardless of my rooting interests!

I wonder about Varsho and whether I should've kept him. I traded Trout for him last year (I was rebuilding!), because I believed in his potential, he's a Blue Jay, and I thought it was possible he gained Catcher status (he didn't). Hope he keeps it up, I see he's on the 1st place team

We all turn into our favourite real-life teams that we hate: I'm going to be right in the middle all year, bouncing between 9th and 7th place.

I'm now using all four of my IL spots: Bello, Rodriguez, Murphy, Crawford. Is that unusual or par for the course?

I think it's probably actually more unusual to not have at least three of those IL slots occupied at any given time.

xp PRO-TIP: if you have an extra IL spot or two, consider picking up a good player that might come back down the road. you can always drop them again if one of your guys has to go in that IL slot. if you pick up a FA though, there has to be a spot open. your free agent can't go directly to your IL.

same for na

you can actually add straight to your IL now!
currently i have all 4 IL slots, plus a bench spot occupied by injured players.

oh is that the case? even easier to bury your treasure

you can actually add straight to your IL now!

― FRAUDULENT STEAKS (The Cursed Return of the Dastardly Thermo Thinwall), Wednesday, May 1, 2024 10:37 AM (two hours ago)

Are you positive? I just tried to do an IL pick-up 1:1 for an IL drop and the league settings wouldn't allow it.

i also tried, and didn't have any luck replacing one IL for another ["would put you over max roster size"]

don't remember if i tried adding a player directly to an empty IL spot or if i had to drop someone (i mean, i could check my log)

Huh. I remember doing it earlier - but maybe it was my other league?! I’ll have to go through the settings I guess.

If it is something i can switch on, would we want that for our league, or would it feel too “easy mode” for us?!

Also how mad would everyone get if I suggested LF, CF, RF positions instead of 3x OF next season?!

hm, would definitely switch OF positions to "advanced". not sure

Also how mad would everyone get if I suggested LF, CF, RF positions instead of 3x OF next season?!

I would be mad because NYY is using Soto in RF instead of LF, giving me 2x legacy RF keepers (w/ Kyle Tucker).

That said, if we could find a way to grandfather in (this would take *MOD/COMMISH POWERS*) those of us who established keepers based on the rules at the time, I would be game?

yes, i had to check bc i have 2 likely OF keepers, and they are LF/CF, and wouldn't be ok if they were the same position.

it appears i had to clear a spot on my active roster for Manoah (IL) to be added there before going on my IL, which maybe makes sense anyway?

Seemingly at this point I have three outfield keepers but it looks like I would be okay within the new rules, though maybe it would be a moot point if Corbin Carroll keeps hitting like Larry Bowa... 😵‍💫

My team crapped the bed this week and I've fallen from first to seventh (32 points back) in only three days!

and i seemed to have climbed a few spots despite half my pitching staff being dead.

hmmm. what about having CF, OF, OF then? shoving a CF to a corner spot or moving a guy from one corner OF spot to the other happens often enough in baseball that there's less of a need to make a distinction for LF/RF as long as you have at least one guy capable of playing CF.

Remember like a month-ish ago I was bragging about my unstoppable 7-man rotation?

JFC, I'm going through it.

May change my team name to ElAttrache's Pulled Pork Sliders.

yeah, my team is verrrrrrrry injured. the replacements for the injuries get injured

Some mornings I wake up convinced I'll be in last place because I know I had at least two unfilled spots the day before; those days I move up. Other days I get at least two good games from my starting pitchers, and I think I'll move up to fourth or fifth; those days I drop down.

it's hard to predict how your team's performance will impact your ranking day-to-day because the scoring is relative to the other players, so your ranking is also based on how the other teams did that day

also having unfilled spots may be bad for the counting stats but can be helpful for your average-based stats if your active players do well

my injuries are out of control too. IL is full, have dropped two guys already due to being injured, and have two IL guys on my bench