Last night, way, way past my bedtime, was the draft for my fantasy baseball league. A live draft, for those of you who haven't done this sort of thing before, is fairly fast-paced. It's through Yahoo! Sports, and so there's also a lot of flashing flash and bright colors. For a newbie like me, it required quite a bit of concentration. Remarkably, I ended up with most of my top picks (although if you're in my fantasy league, you may be thinking to yourself, "remarkably, eh?" with a smirk on your face).
See, I had a strategy, and it was working beautifully for a while. The higher rated players were going first, and so my lower-ranked picks went unchallenged for a good portion of the time. However, as the draftees were thinned out, managers started focusing on position-specific selections, and at that point, even players further down the list were getting picked up. I had not anticipated that, and it forced me to change my strategy a little. In retrospect, I probably should not have picked Chris Duncan in the 7th round. (Go ahead, laugh it up.)
The players I missed out on that I would have liked to have acquired were Ryan Ludwick, Kyle Lohse, Pat Burrell, and Ramón Hernández. I completely forgot about A-Rey (please don't bother, I'm already chastising myself) until another manager grabbed him up, and I never had any real expectation of getting Adam Wainwright, although he was around longer than I would have thought he'd be. Between keeping tabs on what the rest of the managers were doing and queueing up my picks, I didn't have much time for thinking beyond the occasional, "well, [expletive]."
Anyway, wanna know whom I picked for my "dream team"? (Am I allowed to tell? Do I care?)
- My #1 overall pick was Yadier Molina. This should surprise no one. Actually, when I was setting up my pre-draft list (in case I fell asleep), it went something like this:
- 1. Yadier Molina
2. Albert Pujols
3-25. a bunch of other Cardinals with some random back-ups thrown in. (Oh, and I played favorites with los puertorriqueños.)
Yadier Molina (StL - C)
Chase Utley (Phi - 2B)
Rick Ankiel (StL - OF)
Aaron Miles* (ChC - 2B,3B,SS)
Josh Johnson (Fla - SP)
Brad Lidge (Phi - RP)
Chris Duncan (StL - 1B,OF)
Russ Springer (Oak - RP)
Troy Glaus (StL - 3B)
Skip Schumaker (StL - OF)
Carlos Delgado (NYM - 1B)
Mike Aviles (KC - 2B,SS)
Todd Wellemeyer (StL - SP)
Brett Myers (Phi - SP)
Felipe López (Ari - 2B,3B,SS,OF)
Brian Giles (SD - OF)
Khalil Greene (StL - SS)
Jonathan Sánchez (SF - SP)
Brendan Ryan (StL - 2B,SS)
Ian Snell (Pit - SP)
Kyle McClellan (StL - RP)
Luke Scott (Bal - OF)
Eric Bruntlett (Phi - 3B,SS,OF)
Mark Buehrle (CWS - SP)
Brad Penny (Bos - SP)
Iván Rodríguez (Hou - C)
I'm probably not going to win this league.
It's okay, though, because I like my team on a deeper level than performance statistics. My league-mates are probably all shaking their heads and/or rolling their eyes, and fantasy-philes around the world are sensing a disturbance in the force.
Well, maybe I don't have a real appreciation for the essence of fantasy baseball, but I'm having bunches of fun already and I anticipate a lot more before the season is over. I plan to give the rest of the managers a run for their money.
One thing I noticed when I was looking over my team after the draft was that I seem to be well-stocked on infielders, particularly middle infielders. I guess the current middle infield situation in Jupiter has me subconsciously squirreling away every extra guy I can find. It's been a hard winter.
*I wasn't going to allow any Cubs on my team, but I made an exception for Super-Miles.
Oh yeah. The WBC.
I guess I should say something about Puerto Rico's (insert colorful adjective here) loss to the good ol' US of A, but I don't really know what that would be. It was disappointing, and I'm a little bit glad I didn't get to see it. I despise David Wright anyway, so that particular fire didn't need any more fuel.
On the bright side, Yadi and Cheíto get to re-join the rest of the team for camp, and the fact that they made it as far as they did is nothing to sneeze at. They should be proud. I know I am.
