It is that time of the year for owners to come to grips with the reality of their team.  Your guys have either performed at or above the level you expected when drafting them, or have fallen short of reaching your expectations.  But even if you might have flopped on draft day, chances are you have at least a couple of guys on your roster that other owners would love to have.  If you only have a couple guys worthwhile on your roster, it’s probably time to make some moves and expand.  Turn your one stud into a couple of players that allow you to upgrade at multiple positions.  If you are an owner that currently has a hard time fitting everybody into the lineup on a daily basis, it is time to consolidate and bring in that one stud that will help ensure your team reamins in the top tier of your league.  If you refuse to make a move now, you might find yourself dwelling in the cellar for the rest of the season, and that makes for a miserable summer.

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When I last wrote about my first fantasy exploits, I was losing in the first week with only three days left. My staff was performing poorly, and I was freaking out in front of my computer screen while Madison Bumgarner, Matt Thornton, and Ted Lilly tried to sabotage my team. After an awkward first week, my staff looked up the definition of “pitcher” in the Oxford-English dictionary and realized what they were doing didn’t fall under those guidelines—and they did something about it (or I made a move). We’ve been through four weeks of heated battles, and I thought I’d give the reader a breakdown of each week, including my weekly moves (henceforth referred to as “Strategery”), best hitter (“Neck Snapper”) and best pitcher (“Cash Checker”). It goes a little something like this:

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When I say this is my first week of fantasy, I don’t mean the first of the season—I mean I’ve never participated in fantasy sports before this year. Previously, I assumed that I would make too big of a time commitment just to be stomped around by guys (and possibly girls) that have done this before and have, you know, strategies and such. When fellow Sombrero contributor Rick Berdelle invited me to his league, “The Sober Valley Lodge,” I thought this was a great opportunity to finally make the plunge into fantasy. The Lodge’s settings look like this:

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Last Tuesday evening was the annual Denslow Cup draft.  Luckily I was back home in Farmington so that Griff and I could get together and drink some beers and eat some BBQ courtesy of my mom and buddy/Sombrero enthusiast, Benji.  The Cup’s draft day is one of my favorite days of the year, and this was absolutely no exception.  I was totally amped all day and could barely hold my hand still to click the mouse to select my first pick.  As usual, we played in a 7 X 7 league with R, RBI, BA, Slug %, OBP, SB, and HR as our offensive categories and W, SV, WHIP, ERA, K’s, K/BB, and IP as our pitching categories.  We have tried to incorporate stats we view as essential to Big League success such as K/BB and OBP in an effort to discourage profiting from players who don’t contribute proportionately to their actual teams.  Anyway, I wanted to present my team, the Milk Steak Knives (named after both the Cup’s founder, Robert Vincent Unsell, and Charlie Kelly’s favorite dish), to our readers and offer some justification for my picks.

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• In case you have been suffering from an ongoing, post-New Years delirium, Alfredo Simon is the main suspect in a murder case in the Dominican Republic.  It appears that he will be tried for manslaughter after firing a shot that both killed his cousin and wounded his brother (I know, wow).  There are two different stories that have surfaced: Simon fired a celebratory New Year’s Eve shot in the air that somehow inflicted the before mentioned damage; he fired a warning shot to disrupt an argument between two women.  Apparently the “magic” bullet that Simon fired struck his brother in the arm before lodging in the chest of his now deceased cousin.  By no means am I an expert in ballistics, but something sounds fishy about how this all went down.  If only we had some Zapruder-esque footage to fuel our suspicions.

• We have also come to learn that both Miguel Tejada and Julio Lugo – fellow Dominicans – have offered to pay for Simon’s legal fees, which will surely be enormous if he intends to fight the case in court.  If Simon is indeed charged with manslaughter, he will face up to 30-years in prison and will more than likely serve as the set up man for Ugeth Urbina on the Latin American Correctional Team.

• On The Black, a blog dedicated to the New York Mets, posted a video of David Wright that features the third baseman discussing what it is like to play for the team that he grew up rooting for.  He also touches on why he loves baseball and offers a quote that I really like, “Every game is like Saturday morning Little League, going out there and playing with your friends.”

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