Posts belonging to Category fantasy baseball

Fantasy sports provide average fans a way to feel connected with their favorite pastimes in an above average way.  Previously relegated to rooting on our home teams and beloved players in voiceless anonymity, we now have the pleasure of “owning” our own teams and “managing” them the way we see fit.  While fans in some cities (Houston, Pittsburgh, Kansas City, etc.) may seem doomed by poor front office management to remain perpetually pessimistic about their World Series chances, this frustration may be at least partially alleviated by one’s own participation in the fantasy baseball world.  No longer do fans sit back passively and observe the games as they are played, they are now active participants making decisions that determine whether their team wins or loses.  Obviously, such a scenario is bound to be obsessed over and today’s fixation on the supposedly pretend fantasy game now blurs the boundaries of reality.

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I just wanted to pass along the first article that I wrote for Bleacher Report called, “10 Relief Pitchers Who Will Immediately Help Your Fantasy Team.” I will continue to post any articles that I write for them and I hope that everybody enjoys them.

“10 Relief Pitchers Who Will Immediately Help Your Fantasy Team”

June 3, 2010

June 1^st is a big date in the Fantasy Baseball World.  As TMR alluded to in his article on ESPN.com earlier, it marks the opening of trade season.  It is also about the time that you begin to have substantial enough data sets to start forming a solid opinion as to what kind of fantasy impact a player might have for your team.  It is around this time that I really like to go find one or two guys for my team to replace that early season bust.  On that note here are three guys who are available and worth more than just a look in most leagues and definitely in deeper or NL/AL only leagues.

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June 2, 2010

I recently told Arlo that I would attempt to make more frequent Sombrero posts, but this weekend was a busy one for me.  I was in Denver attending the Calcote/Lucero bachelor party.  Jason Calcote is a lifelong friend of mine and was kind enough to invite me to be one of the groomsmen in his upcoming wedding.  Garret Lucero is another friend of mine, and the two decided to have a combined party up in Denver so that we could catch part of the Dodgers/Rox series.  It was a fun weekend.  I’m going to leave it at that.

A lot of baseball stuff happened over the weekend, though, so I’m going to attempt to condense it all into a reasonably brief post.  Probably the sweetest thing for New Mexican baseball that took place over the holiday weekend was UNM’s at-large bid into a regional.  The selection, which took place early Monday morning, was the program’s first selection in almost half a century.  They open up against Stanford as a three-seed in the Fullerton regional.  I truly believe they have an honest to God shot at making it into the round of 16.  With wins against Texas, TCU, and a couple other schools that have spent time in the top-25, this group appears to have all the requisite preparation for games of this magnitude.

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June 1, 2010

“With the one hundred fourth pick of the 2010 Denslow Cup Draft, the Capital City Corporate Towls select Ubaldo Jimenez, Starting Pitcher, Colorado Rockies.” These words (which would have been uttered by Denslow Cup commissioner Robbie Unsell had we done an in-person draft but were instead simply printed on a screen) have launched my Capital City Corporate Towls into the world of fantasy baseball relevance for the first time since the team’s championship run back in 2007.  And why not?  Jimenez this year has been the best pitcher in baseball and after two months, has to be the favorite to win the NL Cy Young in a league that includes Roy Halladay and Tim Lincecum, whom Ubaldo just outdueled in his latest gem. The Rockies are 10-1 when Ubaldo takes the hill and 17-23 when he doesn’t, and they’ll count on him to continue his dominant season atop their rotation if they’re to have any hope of making the playoffs.  His ten wins, 0.90 WHIP and microscopic 0.78 ERA all lead the Majors by a comfortable margin. Before moving on, it is important to compare these numbers to the historical pitching performance of the Rockies, a franchise whose struggles from the mound are well-documented, particularly in the pre-humidor era of hitter-friendly Coors Field.  A few statistics jump out immediately:

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