>The Irony of Fantasy Baseball

>I’ve been participating in Yahoo! Fantasy leagues for quite some time now. I have primarily played in the football leagues, because they are shorter and easier to keep up with than the baseball leagues, but recently, I have found the joy in the head-to-head style of fantasy baseball. When it comes to compiling the stats, I tend to get disinterested rather quickly; however, when it is a head-to-head, my guys vs. your guys for a week at a time, I can pay attention to that.

My team didn’t finish very strong this year in the regular season play. I thought I had a great team going into the season. I had no less than 5 pitchers who were either the #1 or #2 guy in their rotation (Johan Santana, Jake Peavy, Dan Haren, Josh Beckett and Chris Young – I later dropped Young when he was smashed in the face with a Pujols line drive, and replaced him with Pedro Martinez, I also picked up Kyle Lohse along the way). I traded Josh Beckett for Albert Pujols (my #1 fantasy baseball rule – get Albert Pujols first, regardless of where the pre-season “experts” put him). And for some time this season I was in first place.

However, a bad last few weeks sunk me to 7th place as we entered the playoffs. I ended up in the consolation bracket for a shot at hanging on to the honor of 7th place. As a consequence, I ended up with a bye week this week. And what happens on the first day of this bye week?

C – Jason Varitek; 1 run, 1 RBI, 1 HR
1B – Albert Pujols; 1 run, 2 RBI, 1 HR
2B – Jeff Kent goes on the DL (okay, so not everybody had an awesome day…)
SS – Stephen Drew; goes 5-5, hits for the cycle; 3 runs, 1 RBI, 1 HR
3B – Casey Blake; 2 runs, 1 RBI, 1 HR, 1 SB
OF’s – Ankiel and Griffey both ride the pine for the day and Willingham goes 0-2; while Sheffield, who is sitting on my bench, hits a solo HR

Let’s also not forget my pitchers:
Santana – 6IP, 10K’s, 3.00 ERA and 1.33 WHIP
Cordero – .2IP, 1 save, 0.00 ERA and WHIP

Ah, the joys of baseball…