There’s a fad today on Fantasy sports. Everywhere you look it’s Fantasy Baseball, Fantasy Basketball, Fantasy Foosball, Fantasy Earthworm Hunt, etc. A few weeks ago, my friend Tim extended an invitation to join their league, and like a vegetarian lion eyeing a piece of fresh meat, I decided to give in. If you are a Fantasy virgin, let’s take your through my first experience.
First, there’s the draft, where all the managers simultaneously meet online and grind through a couple hours of player selection. Being ninth in the drafting lineup, naturally I missed out on getting Pujols or A-Rod. You have 90 seconds make your wise selection, and one time my time expired so I ended up with Yahoo’s pick of Carl Crawford. I was pulling my hair out for a while there, but he turned out to be a good pick.
Next, you need to manage your players, and this is not for the light-hearted because you need to manage everyday. Mistakingly I postponed viewing the result until the end of the first day, and to my dismay, two of my starters, Schilling and Escobar, went on the disabled list before the season started. On the bench was Jamie Moyer, who got a win for Seattle that I couldn’t cash in on. Mistakes learned.
As I began descending in the ranks, the low point being second to last place, I’ve learned that you need to examine your lineup daily. People can go on the DL or be benched, and when they don’t play, you don’t make. I’ve also learned that baseball players are very streaky, so when it rains, it pours. Some of my players have sub-.200 average even though they were top-ranked last year. I added the player Edgardo Alfonzo from the free agents list and he was quite a pickup. He added a big boost to my offensive arsenal.
I’ve learned that you need to look at the opponents and get an assessment of whether you want them to play to maximize your chances. If they’re playing against Roger Clemens, they’re probably not going to score 6 HR’s.
Then there’s paying tithe to the service provider. The league I play in is hosted on Yahoo, and without StatTracker, it’s like driving blindfolded. I give props to Yahoo for this devious strategy of offering the stats to you free for a few weeks, then taking it away. Once you have a taste of quality steak, there’s no going back. I justified this by convincing myself that I’ll be tracking this everyday for the next 6 months, and what’s $9.99 compared to the time I’ve saved?
So now I’ve moved my team from the gutter (second to last place) to the 3rd place out of 11 teams. I’ve been doing well lately, but who knows… I saw Big Stix Alpha, my bro-in-law, descend from glory (#2) to gutter (#10) within a week, which I suppose is similar to real baseball. The manager can only do their best putting the lineup together, and then it’s up to the players to get the job done.