Friday, March 20, 2009

from my phone




in the first pic, i was in the media pit during the game... in the second pit, i was in the dugout prior to the game's start. pretty much the same view huh? :) (1st spring training game vs BC at City of Palms park)


time to go to work. stay tuned..

Thursday, March 19, 2009

..now what?

This one was for keeps.. I finally experienced my first real fantasy baseball draft tonight. I've done some mock drafts but now it's like i've adopted a whole crew of ballplaying men, and half of them i know very little or nothing about. Going to have to get to know them i guess. The most baffling part of the experience came by the time the flashy players were all spoken for. About 2/3rds of the way through, i stopped having almost any real opinion short of what the stats were telling me- and that's just it! Even the stats are deceiving. Unless you know what kind of a season the guy you're considering drafting had last year (was it a complete season, for starters..) (and by "for starters" i dont mean starting pitchers) (funny that i have to make that distinction) the stats arent a 100% support net. Thankfully i had found the basics of and further developed one version of a tiered breakdown of players by position, prior to draft-hour. This proved to be invaluable. There were notable discrepancies between the rankings in the actual draft window and the way the players were tiered.. and only now do i have enough time, since it's all said and done, to start to look at my team and think about the picks i made that werent "the next highest ranked picks" in the yahoo draft window and see why, in that moment of "shoot, i have 20 more seconds to make a pick, do i go with the guy who is tiered with the 'next best thing' players or the guy who is the highest undrafted rank?" where i ended up going with the lower yahoo-ranked guys in favor of the tier, i came out on top. that was a terribly long run-on, yikes. well, my team is not the strongest, but it doesnt look too bad as far as anyone can tell right now. hitting may be a bit stronger than pitching but i think each holds its own- again, as things stand.

WIFFLE BALL HEROS 2009

C Victor Martinez
1b Lance Berkman
2b Brandon Phillips
3b David Wright
SS Alexei Ramirez (also qualifies at 2b and OF)
OF Alex Rios
OF Nate McLouth
OF Bobby Abreu
Utility Carlos Pena (1b)
Utility Vernon Wells (OF
Bench Joey Votto (1b)
Bench Edwin Encarnacion (3b)
Bench Chris B. Young (OF, Arizona)

SP Johan Santana
SP Dan Haren
SP John Lackey
SP Chad Billingsley
SP Brett Myers
RP Jonathan Broxton
RP Brian Fuentes
RP Huston Street
RP Troy Percival
RP Chad Qualls


So I'm happy with my boys. Probably could have been a bit sharper on the pitching front, but oh well, you live and learn. I'm a pretty self-conscious person when i'm doing something that i'm new at, and so i wish you had heard me muttering and murmuring my way through the draft... after the 9th round or so, i spent the time in between picks moaning about which bad move i was inevitably about to make, and every time i hit the "draft" button i would immediately erupt into a 10-second spew of quietly-uttered self-abuse for my assumed stupidity and overall lack of understanding of exactly what i had just done. Only one of my picks was pointed out in the public chat as being a "bad pick" (in the opinion of the guy who felt that way), but i was confident of that pick anyhow and therefore was unphased- but towards the end as i made my decisions i braced myself for incredulity or ridicule, which thankfully never came. I've got to put it out there- I'm an AL girl. the NL is not my thing. but for much of last season, and throughout the winter, i was very vocal that my goal for the 2009 season is to learn the NL better. i've never had a team or player to follow in the NL and i'm not keen on their colors or logos ;) so i've always just stayed on the AL side of things. The Roto league i'm in is AL-only, and so i've been working hard to get things in place for that draft and really havent looked into NL players much at all- but my cramming over the past few days for tonight's draft has proven to be a good basic crash course in who's who in the NL. i have a long way to go of course.

For clarification's sake, the two leagues I'm in are RBI (head to head- tonight's draft) and PFL (rotisserie keepers league... draft (auction actually) is April 4th in CT).





Oh yeah, one of these days i should write about that time i went to Fort Myers for Spring Training...




but for now, i'm tired. i was nervous about tonight but am glad that i got through it. ...and it has only really just begun :)

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