From the Salmon

I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know, but I’ve been the world’s boringest blogger lately.

I do feel a little bad about this since I know that a few of my friends have recently recommended this site to a few of their friends, not realizing just how badly I’ve lost my mojo.

So it goes, I guess.

Since I’m always looking for ways to improve, I think I’ve found a way to be even more boringester.... 

Writing about baseball.

It’s opening day, so I could bore you with my thoughts about how the Red Sox will fare this year. But that’s not nearly mindnumbing enough.

To really drive away my last few remaining readers, I need to aim higher. Yep, that’s right. We’re not just talking baseball here, but fantasy baseball.

Most of you have tuned out already, and that’s a perfectly reasonable reaction. For the one or two of you who are still interested, I’ve hidden the details of my first foray into the dark netherworld of fantasy baseball below the fold.

You can’t say I didn’t warn you…

What was that about a WHIP?

Wow. You must be either bored or a baseball fan. Or both.

First things first… I’ve never done fantasy baseball before, so I could be going about this all wrong. And I might very well lose enthusiasm for this within the first few weeks. We’ll see.

League One

The first league is an ESPN league that a friend from church roped me in to joining. It’s eight teams in a head-to-head format (which I don’t have a good feel for yet), and it has a few funky custom categories like fielding percentage, WHIP and holds. It was a live draft, which was a bit of an adventure.

Anyhow, here’s the team I’m starting the season with:

C - Ramon Hernandez
1B - Carlos Delgado
2B - Chase Utley
SS - Jimmy Rollins
3B - Garrett Atkins
OF - Manny Ramirez
OF - Adam Dunn
OF - Jeff Francoeur
UTIL - David Ortiz
Bench - Alex Rios (OF)
Bench - Willy Taveras (OF)
Bench - Lyle Overbay (1B)
Bench - Ty Wigginton (1B,2B,3B)

SP - Chris Carpenter
SP - Brandon Webb
SP - Dan Haren
SP - Brett Myers
SP - Dave Bush
RP - Jonathan Papelbon
RP - Chris Ray
RP - Akinori Otsuka
RP - Pat Neshek

DL - Eric Gagne

I really don’t know what to expect with this format, but I’m thrilled with my starting rotation (4 of the 5 are starting on opening day!) and psyched to have Manny, Papi, and Paps on the team.

League Two

As long as I was going to be following baseball for one league, I figured that adding a second wasn’t going to be too much additional work. So I joined an eight-team points league on Yahoo with some folks from the Arts and Faith board.

The tricky thing with this league is that there are a lot of point categories, and they’re weighted. The roster is also larger than the first, and there are tighter games/innings limits. The fun part so far has been that since it was an auto-draft, I’ve had to do some wheeling and dealing to balance my team out a bit. Anyhow, here’s the team:

C - Victor Martinez (via trade: Jeff Francoeur/Anibel Sanchez)
1B - Paul Konerko
2B - Chase Utley
SS - Miguel Tejada
3B - Garrett Atkins
IF - Joe Crede (3B)
OF - Matt Holliday
OF - Grady Sizemore
OF - Michael Cuddyer
OF - Nick Swisher
UTIL - Bill Hall (SS,3B, OF eventually)
Bench - Jason Varitek (C)
Bench - Lyle Overbay (1B)
Bench - Mike Lowell (3B)
Bench - Open J.D. Drew (OF)

SP - Roy Halladay (via trade: Michael Young)
SP - Ben Sheets
SP - Curt Schilling
SP - Cole Hamels
SP - Dave Bush
RP - Joe Nathan
RP - Jonathan Papelbon
Bench - Huston Street (RP)
Bench - Akinori Otsuka (RP)

It’s a nice outfield, I guess. I’m still sorting out my bench. Once the trades go through, I’ll probably pick up an extra outfielder, but I’m not sure yet.

I will say this: as awesome as my starting five were on the first team, I’ve managed to put together a complete staff of pitchers who do nothing but throw strikes. We’re talking 2006 numbers like 8.12 K/9, 1.7 BB/9 and a 4.8 K/BB ratio. That’s just a few strikes short of Santana territory. For the entire staff!

So that should be fun.

If you’ve read this far, you’re definitely a bored baseball fan. So… Do you see anything I’m missing on that second team that I should try to shore up with my bench?

And yes, this post was mostly an excuse to use that headline.

Play ball!

UPDATE (04-02): I’ve now filled the open spot on my bench with J.D. Drew.