close call

the world series hat has survived the spaghetti sauce i accidentally wiped on it. right move, wrong hat.

Derek Anderson is ruining my life

I had thought up this weird challenge before all the drafts I did - what if I drafted a team with JT O'Sullivan as the only quarterback and tried to make the fantasy playoffs. Well, in my most important league, he is now my starting QB for week 4. Derek Anderson rode the bench last week as I started Matt Cassell. I think I would have been a lot better off doing the O'Sullivan challenge, since I could have used my 4th round pick on a real player. Doesn't help that I drafted Ryan Grant in the second, but at least he has a chance of still working out. My team right now is Marion Barber and nothing. Oh, and who did I take in the third? Torry Holt. 12-team league, 6 teams make the playoffs, I'm 1 and 2. Yuck.

best practices

it seems like next time i want a bunch of trades to go through, i should head off for a few days. coming back from a work trip, i found that not one but two trades had gone through just as i'd proposed them. in a couple of leagues, i am building off what will hopefully be a breakout jay cutler year by trading other pieces in search of the right opportunities. i already knew i'd pulled off dallas clark/santana moss for jamal lewis and a player soon to be dropped (crumpler), but i was shocked to discover that my romo/hines ward for brees/stephen jackson trade went through. when you've got jay cutler and romo and then you switch to jay cutler and brees, you have nothing to complain about. ward i thought was expendable because i also have bowe and chambers. i am no chambers fan, but really there's a good chance we've seen the best of ward this year (he's been amazing) and i will gamble on trading a mid-round pick for a guy everyone took in round 1. i have 3 starting running backs on my bench in that league now - kevin smith, matt forte, and ernest graham. i might actually sit sjax this wk, but i'm pretty happy with that situation for now. incidentally, i have kevin smith as my third rb in at least 3 leagues, and it looks like i made the wrong call each time i took him instead of forte. oh well.

the hard choices

i tried to trade deshaun jackson for felix jones prior to wk 2, and the guy i would have traded with wants that trade now. he said he liked it from the start, but he wouldn't quite go through with it. my problem is, i don't have good receivers and one of my non-quality receivers is galloway, who now is hurt again. the question now is how important it is to get jones? kevin smith, sproles, brandon jackson, and chester taylor are my current backups to barber and grant. maybe i should just offer sproles for jones.

calculated risks

shaun marcum is attempting to salvage both my teams' seasons right now. at least in funston's league i have a good chance of finishing second and not falling to third. i figured when marcum made his last start that i needed a top-notch pitcher if i was going to make it back to first place, and that there wasn't some other guy who was going to appear out of nowhere and perform at an elite level. marcum would either save me or fail, but i needed saving.

my h2h league is showing me just how precarious yearlong dominance can be; i knew all along i was building for the long term, shooting for guys who would be there for me in the end. the problem was carlos lee and carlos quentin were lost for the season just before playoffs. i know have a bunch of andre ethiers and shin-soo choos in my outfield, trying to take the studs' places. i had felt so shrewd for so long having dealt bay and bruce for lee; bay had been performing at a carlos lee-like clip, but lee was the sure bet. i figured i was reducing my risk by going with a guy whose performance is documented solid and who has really even splits month to month. you could argue that keeping bruce and bay gave me two guys who could be studs (i traded bruce when his average was still above .400, at the peak of the hype). however, at the time i kinda feel like i had other plans for my roster spots, and that i needed the roster space as much as anything else. i made a real error in judgement, though, when dye was out there with 19 hrs (see why i'm mad about not winning this league) and i decided i didn't need him. i could have dropped pence, who i irrationally loved. i also had a chance at alexei ramirez long after he should have been rostered, and balked at that one. dunno. i guess i can't make every decision perfectly, but i just want to get to that championship game. they don't give out trophies for being the regular season winner.

octoberish

the summer was truly great in some ways and not so spectacular in others. i got to see a lot of cool stuff like touristy things i hadn't known about or done and free concerts and even some i paid money to see. i went to a baseball game and have tickets for another. i worked a lot, hated it at times and loved it during certain stretches too. there were some real interesting things i got to do at work, and although some doors closed, i ended up getting at least ten percent of what i had once hoped to gain from moving within the firm.

now that it's time to look forward to fall, i am totally excited again. i am particularly enthused about all the awesome trips i might take, although my longer term financial goals might be better served by sitting those out. one thing I plan to make a big part of my fall is attending institute classes. i somehow never went all summer, and i hope going back will bring some good experiences to light.

doom and gloom

my second fearful stretch of 2nd place status has dragged on long enough that it's for sure the real deal. my offense is not helping me at all; somehow i've fallen way behind in rbi's again, and it just doesn't make sense given how much ground i have lost this quickly. pitching has been fairly bad too. tonight, i lucked out completely when i forgot to start haren and he got shelled. if that guy's going to keep being like this, i am in real trouble. good news was jurrjens had a good start for once. lindstrom got his first save (for funston's team) and joe nelson had a perfect inning for my squad.

some things are so uncertain

i really just want to talk about my final football draft, where everything seemed to go my way yet only on my bench do i have anyone really exciting or full of potential. Instead, just baseball for now.

i swear no one really ever knows who the next in line is. when gregg went boom, i was the first to make a move, and figured nelson was the add since he had the numbers. Lindstrom seemed like the guy then nelson gets a save
but maybe that's just my consolation prize.

trying to surmount

i went away for the weekend, camping, and the only reason i made any effort to stay in touch with the world at large was to keep the fantasy teams going. well, my work somewhat paid off in the sense that i saw the note about gregg looking like he was about to lose his job, and i picked (apparently) the wrong horse in the race to replace him. that hasn't yet materially affected my team, but while i've maintained a high point total, my chief rival has surged to a level i'm unlikely to be able to match. i just don't have the starting pitching any more, and i'm not sure i have the relief pitching now that gregg's at least temporarily out. offense has been a bit up and down; the rbi's are down right now, although tonight i managed to record 4 steals. that taveras really is something.