A New Fantasy Baseball Season

Well, I've been spending a lot of my free time either working on my taxes, or preparing for my fantasy baseball draft. The taxes have been especially vexing, since, of course, I moved last year, and I also sold some stock, meaning I have to fill out way more paperwork than I've ever had to before.

It also turns out that I'm going to owe even more money than I expected to, and after some analysis this turns out to be because my former employer did not withhold enough money from my paycheck for the three months of pay I received from them. I don't know why this happened, but since it did happen (I checked to make sure I don't have any "phantom money" floating around unaccounted for somewhere), I don't really care. It's in the past, I'll just deal with things as they are and pony up the cash to the IRS. On the good side, it appears that my withholdings with Apple are correct, so I don't need to adjust them (and squeeze my take-home pay further).

I should get my taxes finished early this week. Phew!

Our fantasy baseball draft was today. I joined this league last year when Keith Woolner invited me in through our acquaintance on the Red Sox Mailing List. I convinced my friend Subrata to join as well, so he was there today.

The league is somewhat different from traditional fantasy leagues; it rates hitters according to their hitting skills, giving weight to power and walks, and less weight to stolen bases, runs and RBI than in rotisserie leagues. Pitchers are given credit for ERA and strikeouts, with small bonuses for wins and saves. The overall result is that hitters tend to be valued more than pitchers, and relief pitchers especially are not highly valued. (You can read our league's rules, if you're sufficiently interested.)

I approached the league this year with a strategy of wanting to pick up more prospects than last year, and trying not to have an offensive position filled by a slug. This worked out pretty well, but I ended up with a thin pitching staff, since the good pitchers were perhaps more highly rated by others than they should have been. Here's my team ("Kept" means the player is a holdover from last year, "Supp" means he was picked in the supplemental draft to replace an injured of demoted player):

Pos	Name	Team	Round/ Overall Pick	Comments
C	Todd Hundley	Los Angeles	13/222
C	Sandy Alomar Jr.	Cleveland	20/294	Two oft-injured catchers, hopefully will be worth one healthy one.
1B	Jim Thome	Cleveland	1/12
1B	Mark Grace	Chicago Cubs	10/161
2B	Edgardo Alfonzo	NY Mets	Kept
2B	Esteban German	Oakland	14/231	Prospect
SS	Omar Vizquel	Cleveland	2/23	Shortstops were in short supply, so I grabbed him while I could
3B	Scott Rolen	Philadelphia	Kept
3B	Matt Williams	Arizona	9/152	Currently injured with a bum foot
3B	Mike Lamb	Texas	15/249	Prospect
1B/3B	Olmedo Saenz	Oakland	Supp	I had thought he qualified at 2B and SS!
OF	Ken Griffey Jr.	Cincinnati	Kept
OF	Mike Cameron	Seattle	4/59
OF	Luis Gonzalez	Arizona	5/84
OF	Steve Finley	Arizona	8/127
OF	Peter Bergeron	Montreal	11/184	A good-looking prospect
OF	Jose Cruz Jr.	Toronto	12/199	I have a lot of outfielders
SP	Omar Daal	Arizona	Kept	My nominal ace - shudder!
SP	Brian Rose	Boston	Kept	Will he be any good? I hope so...
SP	Joe Nathan	San Francisco	6/95	Good-looking young pitcher
SP	Ryan Rupe	Tampa Bay	7/118
SP	Jim Parque	Chicago White Sox	16/258
SP	Darren Oliver	Texas	Supp
SP	Jason Bere	Milwaukee	Supp	Probably not a good pitcher...
SP	Junior Guerrero	Kansas City	21/296	Prospect
SP	Jon Garland	Chicago White Sox	19/287	Prospect
RP	Steve Karsay	Cleveland	17/275	The Indians' oft-injured closer
RP	BJ Ryan	Baltimore	18/277
RP	Alan Embree	San Francisco	Supp
RP	Paul Abbott	Seattle	Supp

I confess I don't have much of an idea how this team will fare. My offense should be okay but not tremendous, but my pitching is highly questionable, unfortunately. But unless you have one of the "big guns", pitching is a rare commodity in this league. Probably I need to remember for next year that I can always get good outfielders, and should get some good pitchers earlier. This would explain why I perceive that other teams overvalue pitchers.

Well, perhaps I can trade a decent hitter for a starter. Maybe twice!

Anyway, the best part of the draft is sitting around with a bunch of baseball fans, and making catty comments about the players and about each others' drafted teams. It's quite funny, and is the reason I keep playing fantasy baseball year after year. And, Keith's house is actually less than ten minutes' drive from my apartment, surely one of the shortest drives I do in the Valley. So I had a good time.

(I did, however, stay up 'til after 2 am last night preparing for the draft. So I am completely exhausted tonight, and will be going to be in a timely manner to get a full night's sleep. Zzzz...)

That's pretty much what's been occupying my time. I missed the Kepler's SF book discussion because the draft ran late, even though I re-read Neil Gaiman's Stardust for it last night. And I'm plugging away at the third Harry Potter book. But mainly I just need to finish my taxes, and then I can turn my attention to whatever comes next in my life...