Fantasy Musings on Dumb Mistakes We Won't Repeat for the Third Time

In the Spring of 2004, as we wound through the initial keeper rounds of the draft in our long-time fantasy league (still going!), we checked our cheat sheets and braced ourselves for our initial non-keeper picks.

There, at the top of our list, was Johan Santana. Having made the transition the year before from the bullpen to the rotation with aplomb, we had the 25 year-old hurler in our sights as our top pick after the keepers were tucked away.

(Yes, that's how you managed your keeper lists in Yahoo in 2004. We've come a long way baby.)

But in the moments before the draft, we were struck with a sudden panic over the next name on our list: Kaz Matsui. Would he make it back to us? We'd have 19 picks after Johan to get him, and we couldn't imagine him lasting that long. Who could resist this new demi-god of Japanese baseball excellence? The New Ichiro! The thought of seeing Matsui put up a decade of high-average, high-steal, high-run totals with a little bit of power mixed in at a premium position like shortstop (seriously!), and to have passed over all of that goodness? How could we have lived with ourself?

And besides: It's not like everyone knew about Johan Santana, right? We'd have a good shot at getting him in the next round...wouldn't we?

As our moment on the board came up, we confidently selected future All-Star, Hall of Famer, Gold Glove, Silver Slugger and Bronze Spikes winner Kaz Matsui.

And with the very next pick, our pal Darren selected Johan Santana. And he's kept him ever since.

We spent much of that season staring on in disbelief as Santana went on to win the Cy Young (and Darren went on to win the league), while Matsui would fumble his way through 114 games to the tune of a 0.4 WAR. (We didn't know what WAR was then, but there were plenty of conventional metrics that convinced us to toss Matsui to the scrap heap before the season was out.)

And as a result of such a folly, we saw our team fall back from a second place finish the previous year to a fourth place finish in 2004.

We should have learned our lesson. But somewhere along the line, the pain that we felt in that season would cease to seem tragic in our memory of it, and came of more as a farcical anecdote. And so, somewhere in the early-middle rounds of a 2008 draft, we found ourself jumping ahead on our list and grabbing the brand-new, can't-miss Japanese phenom, Kosuke Fukudome.

Once again, Fukudome didn't last much more than half a season on our roster before we tossed him asunder, probably in favour of one of the game's true greats...like Ryan Langerhans or Austin Kearns. Whoever it was, they helped lead us to an inauspicious ninth place finish (out of ten teams) that year.

All this is prologue to one immutable law of our fantasy baseball draft season: We will not draft Twins newcomer Tsuyoshi Nishioka. No matter how many great things we hear about him, of how he'll fit perfectly in the lineup between Denard Span and Joe Mauer, and will in all likelihood score 200 runs without really trying this year, he will not find respite on our roto rosters.

When it comes to fantasy baseball, our road to abrogation generally starts with the selection of a first year position player from Japan.

Nevermore.

Giving the fans what they want: The Shepherd's Pie Post

Today was one of those days where we had about 15 minutes to pull together a post, and nothing totally enthralling to write. (As if that's stopped us before.)

So we threw it around Twitter: What do we post about today? Do we do a thoroughly-entertaining Tweet Bag (even if we don't have tweeted questions?) Do we rev up the Starting Pitcher Power Rankings? Do bitch about our fantasy teams and their hard luck? Worry over Hill and Lind? Or do we just throw up some bikini pics and call it a day?

Then someone suggested that we do the whole lot together, and mix it up into some sort of delicious stratified treat. Like a parfait, or a tasty Pâté chinois (only with peas instead of corn, because peas are yummy and better for you. But we digress.) And really, who are we to deprive the kids of what they want?

The Tweet Bag Question!
@hemiboy tweets: How about a status of the top 5 Jays prospects? Are they ready for the big show or underachieving?

We really wish that we could spend lots of time parsing through this, and figuring out which of the top five are up and which are down this year. We were all ready to check in with Baseball America's site to see their top prospects list for the Jays this year, but then we realized something: BA apparently uses some sort of HTML editor which chisels the code into granite, because they have yet to update their list to include the players who came back in the Halladay deal.

And here's the really weird part: We went and bought the magazine with the AL East prospect lists in it...and the dead-tree, printed version is more up to date than the website. Which is just weird.

Since we don't have the magazine with us (it's literally in our basement, probably sitting under a Pat Borders bobblehead), we'll have to come back to this one later.

Roto Kvetching!
It's the second year of the Tao's Roto Hoe-Down, and we were determined to come back with a vengeance this year. We were going to prove to everyone what a baseball savant we were, and why you should all hang off of every word we write because of how goddamned brilliant and insightful we are.

But here we are, at the midway point of the season, sitting mid-table once again.

We could write it off by saying that we drafted Kendry Morales and Shin Soo-Choo, but those guys actually produced pretty well for us while they were healthy. More dubious was our decision to draft prospect mancrushes of yesteryear, like Alex Gordon and Cameron Maybin, neither of whom is on our roster nor the roster of their respective MLB teams.

Crud.

Also galling about this year's league: That Navin from Sports in the City is running away with the league with a team named The (The Manager) Effect (except that he actually uses the name, which is gross.)

Hill and Lind
Speaking of SaTC, we've been sitting on a "when does a bad start become a bad season" post for a while now, but Navin has beaten us to the punch. (Between TBRTOAL and the Roto Hoe-Down domination, we're starting to really resent that guy). Nevertheless, there is musing and there are stats, and his piece is probably better than the old man clichés we were about to string together on the topic, so have a read.

One more bikini pic
Because you deserve it for making your way through the whole post. It's Raquel Welch! Mazel!

Stuff we learned in our fantasy drafts

We're not quite the type to keep and care for numerous fantasy baseball teams anymore, what with the added expectations at work (those carts don't make their way to the corral on their own, you know) and home (the Missus didn't realize we were serious when we added the bit about our roto teams into our marriage vows) and with the blog (infotaining you kids can be a full time job.)

And so, working our way through two fantasy drafts this weekend seems to us to be a bit of a monumental achievement. If only the outcome matched what we perceive as the efforts, then we wouldn't feel quite so bummed out looking at our teams in the cold grey dawn of a Monday morning.

Looking back, it all seemed to fly by so fast, with our preferred players flying off the board quicker than we could queue them up. It was like we were unprepared for what was happening, and never seemed to have the grace to fully pull the moment off. We were left in a puddle of flop sweat and diminished expectations...Hey, this is really starting to sound like the entirety of our dating life!

With all this yammering as prologue, indulge us for a moment as we offer up a few lessons learned from this weekend, if only so that you might avoid some of the same missteps.

Preparation is not optional
Somewhere along the line, we had decided that our problem in the past was that we spent too much time reading the fantasy previews and making up lists and setting our pre-rankings. This year, we decided to go into our drafts completely raw, without any preparation.

It didn't go so well. When you have 60 seconds to make a pick, it's disconcertingly panic-inducing when you're suddenly wracking your brain to remember the points of distinction between Yovani Gallardo and Ubaldo Jimenez, or why you feel so wrong about picking Ryan Franklin (even though you end up picking him twice, and have the same rotten feeling about those low strikeout numbers each time).

If you don't know who's hurtin', you don't know nuthin'
When you're going into the draft blind, you quickly realize that what you don't know is going to overtake your thought processes. If a player was sitting out there a round or two later than we thought they should, we started looking to find out why. Is he hurt? Is he out? Does he have competition for the closer role? With a finite amount of time each round, we ended up frantically attempt to check on the health and wellness of any number of picks, and spent a good deal of time afterwards checking to see who might be of concern.

While we haven't found anyone egregiously hurt, we're reasonably sure that our fellow owners wouldn't have taken them off our hands if we had. (Not that we wouldn't try. Everything we learned about managing trades, we learned from Kenny Williams.)

Old mancrushes die hard
We tell ourselves every year that we're not going back to the well to draft big shining star prospects who are well past their best before dates. We tell ourselves that those dudes who had one or maybe two good seasons earlier in the decade aren't worthy of a pick. We tell ourselves not to fall into that trap again.

And then we go ahead and draft Alex Gordon. And Carlos Guillen. And Stephen Drew and Rickie Weeks. Zach Duke and Paul Maholm and Manny Parra.

Somehow, we managed to avoid drafting either of the Chris Youngs, although at one point, we had the D-Backs centerfielder in our sights, only to have him snatched away one pick before ours.

If there's one thing we learned, it's that experience hasn't taught us a thing.

The return of the Roto-Hoedown

You've demanded it, and we're happy to oblige.

(Okay, so it took us about a month to get off our ass and take the two minutes to set up the league on ESPN. These things happen. I'm only one man, in spite of all this "we" business.)

The 2010 edition of the Roto-Hoedown has been set up, and we eagerly await those of you who wish to take part. This season, we'll only be setting up the one league, because getting our ass kicked twice over was more than a little demoralizing.

Here's the lowdown on the Hoedown: We can take up to 20 teams, although we'll probably cut it off before that number. (UPDATE: Actually, we lied. It's 15 teams. So don't dilly-dally.)

It is, as the name suggests, roto scoring, and it is a 6 X 6 set up with the following categories :

Hitting - Home Runs, Runs Scored, RsBI, SLG, OBP, and Net Stolen Bases. (Yeah, you heard right.)

Pitching - Wins (groan, we know), Saves (double groan, but still), ERA, WHIP, Ks, and On Base Against Home Runs Allowed.

So there you have it. That's the league. The draft takes place online this coming Saturday, March 20 at high noon Eastern Time. If you're interested, and you can absolutely be there at that time to draft, then drop us a line (taoofstieb at gmail dot com, yo, or direct message us on the Twitter). Chances are that if we know you and like you, you jump the queue and get in right away. If we don't know you, then make your case in a compelling fashion, and we'll pull back the velvet rope and let you through.

We'll only be contacting the people that get in, so apologies in advance if you don't hear back. You're all still cool in our book, babies.

The Five People You Meet in Fantasy Baseball Hell

We'd told ourselves that we weren't going to bother our readership with tales of our fantasy teams this season.

And yet, we feel as though we have to make some sort of excuse provide some sort of rationale for the piss-poor performances of our fantasy teams thus far. This is especially urgent given that we're bringing up the rear in the two leagues that we invited readers to join. Really, we're not that inept.

(Alternately, we could spend another day feeding into the mass depression over Roy Halladay. But this seems like the lesser of two evils.)

Here is our tale of woe, in which we assess blame to the five players who ruined our fantasy baseball season this year.

1. Carlos Quentin - 8 HRs, 20 RsBI, .774 OPS: Maybe we should have known better than to put our trust in a guy with a penchant for punching inanimate objects. Still, we figured that Quentin would return from his self-inflicted injuries and produce somewhere near his MVP candidate numbers from last year, and spent second round picks on him. That's what we get for being optimistic.

2. Grady Sizemore - 13 HRs, 49 RsBI, 9 SBs, .780 OPS: It's not that Sizemore's been awful this season when he's been healthy. But there's the rub. Even when he's been in the lineup, he's not swinging the bat like a first rounder should. We're thankful that we don't have him in keeper leagues, because the prospect of off-season shoulder surgery would have us selling him off for 50 cents on the dollar at this point.

3. Matt Wieters - 3 HRs, 10 RsBI, .680 OPS: We really should know better than to draft prospects, even if all the indications seem to be that they will be absolutely otherworldly and the greatest offensive catcher in the history of baseball or any other sport. And yet, we got sucked in by the hype yet again. Top prospects are our fantasy kryptonite, and Wieters follows in the rich tradition of Alex Gordon and Jeremy Hermida as the can't miss kids who missed for our fantasy teams.

4. Ervin Santana - 2-5, 34 Ks, 6.70 ERA, 1.70 WHIP: Two words that we'll no longer be able to ignore in baseball are "forearm tightness". As the reports came in over the offseason that something was amiss with Santana, we chose to ignore them and make him a sixth round pick and the first pitcher that we selected in a few of our drafts. In retrospect, it might be the dumbest pick we made in our drafts.

5. Ricky Nolasco - 6-7, 95 Ks, 5.77 ERA, 1.40 WHIP: Nolasco was a sexy pick coming into the season, and our selection of him in the eighth and ninth rounds of drafts garnered kudos from our fellow fantasy nerds. Of course, Nolasco went on to pitch atrociously for the first two months, and we ended up cutting him after May 22, when his ERA reached 9.07 and he was shipped to the minors. And it only follows that we weren't there to pick him back up when he returned to the big leagues and put up six straight starts with two or fewer earned runs and bucketloads of strikeouts. Our only satisfaction came from seeing him get shelled for seven earned runs against Arizona just before the All-Star Break.

Let's not get ahead of ourselves

In this, the Spring of Diminished Expectations, we Blue Jays fans may have been getting a bit too revved up about the possibilities presented by the dynamic southpaw duo of Brett Cecil and Brad Mills.

Could they step into the decimated rotation and help salvage what seems to be a bit of a lost 2009 season? Would they turn a seeming weakness into a strength? Would they blow away not only the opposition, but also all of the naysayers and prophets of doom?

The news this weekend tossed a needed bucket of icy-cold water onto some of these rather lofty expectations. Cecil was given his ticket to the minor league camp (in the dubious company of a certain Mr. Maroth), while Mills gave up four hits and five walks to the Reds in Sunday's 5-4 extra-inning win. (Curtis Thigpen! Still the catcher of the future?!)

It's not to say that they won't be with the big club sooner rather than later. It's just that we should maybe temper our expectations of what they'll be able to offer at this early point of their development.

Hell, at 23, Jimmy Key spent his first season coming out of the bullpen and posting a 4.65 ERA and 1.65 WHIP. If either of those two young lefties were able to replicate the performances that Key put in over his subsequent eight years with the Blue Jays, we'd be thrilled. But, as Axl Rose said so many years ago, all we need is just a little patience.

Other notable notey notebook notes

Item number 1! Nadir Mohamed will be the next CEO of Rogers. It's hard to guess what this will mean for the RCI side of the equation, including the Blue Jays. Mohamed comes from the wireless side of things, so he may be willing to defer to CEOs of Rogers Media (Tony Viner) and the Blue Jays (Paul Beeston or his *cough snort cough* replacement)...but ultimately, we're left a bit uneasy by this. Wireless has always been a huge money maker for Rogers (system access fee my ass), and the media side of things scraped by, even before the advertising market went into the toilet. What will Mohamed think of the "red ink" in the other divisions when he is ultimately responsible for them?

Item number 2! We've avoided reading too many J.P. quotes this spring, if only because we don't put a ton of stock into them at this point. However, we were a bit disappointed to see the GM mention that Matt Clement is likely on the "outside looking in right now". It's not that Clement has blown anyone away as of yet, but we had started to get a bit optimistic that maybe he could rehabilitate his game and contribute in the short term.

In spite of the fact that we'd previously stated our belief that Clement wouldn't throw a pitch for the Jays, we find ourselves somehow rooting for him. Maybe it's the fact that he shaved that stupid facial hair off, thus making him more human to us.

Final item! We came to a stark realization this Sunday, about halfway through our second fantasy draft of the day: We kinda suck at fantasy baseball. Nobody should think of themselves as a roto authority when they take Kaz Matsui that early in a draft.

Fantasy Nerdlinger - Our 2009 Draft Strategery

You wouldn't believe the number of people who ask us for fantasy baseball advice. Like, at least three in the past year. We're like a regular Matthew Berry, only with a lot more hair. And no association to Crocodile Dundee 3.

The funny part about this is that we really haven't been a very good roto player in a few years. Maybe it's the fact that this blog has taken up most of our free time, or maybe it's the fact that Travis Hafner has steadfastly refused to do anything of worth for us over that time. Whatever the case, we've taken an unmerciful shit kicking over the past couple of years, and we're halfway bracing ourselves for more of the same this year.

With two league drafts coming up this weekend and another a week later, we're buckling down and doing our homework now. Which is to say, we're reading USA Today Sports Weekly and making handwritten lists of guys we like. It's all very high tech.

We should probably be guarding this information a little more fastidiously, given that most of the people with whom we will be playing in roto leagues this season read this blog. But fuck it, we're all about the transparency. So here, we offer six of the finer points of our strategic planning for the coming year's fantasy baseball season.

1) Coming to the acceptance that we are a pompous fool: Too often, we go into drafts wanting to be the first guy to pick the hotshot emerging star of tomorrow, only to be stuck with them all season long. Jeremy Hermida, Alex Gordon, Homer Bailey...we've wasted a lot of time, energy and mid-to-high draft picks on guys who weren't ready to perform in the majors. This year, we trust no one under the age of 30.

2) A nice healthy breakfast: In past years, our draft days would kick off with a bit of the Eggs Mayflower (scrambled eggs on bagel with cream cheese, covered with hollandaise sauce, and a side order of sausage...heart attack!! Miam yiam!) However, we've been on a health kick since Christmas, if only so that we can strip away some of the irony from our fat jokes made at Rod Barajas' expense. So this year, we're thinking a bit of yogurt, some artisanal granola and maybe some fresh fruit to go with our skim milk latte. Either that, or we'll just make coffee and eat chunks of cheese broken right off the block.

3) Find something entertaining to occupy Mrs. Tao: Not that she'll butt in on our hours and hours of draft day madness, but it's always good to find something to keep the wife happy while we're deciding between Jeff Keppinger and Clint Barmes. So we've ordered up a Lexington Steele Signature Series replica...actually, never mind. We'll just keep her happy.

4) Don't get too wrapped up in other people's rankings: We have a tendency to depend on the wisdom of others, and every year we get burned by putting too much stock in the ranting of some random yahoo who managed to get a job as a fantasy analyst. Actually, Matthew Berry's mancrush on Jeff Francoeur got the better of us in more than one league last year. (Thanks, TMR!) This year, we're taking the Colbertian approach and shooting from our gut. We're not going to care if Fanball or Ron Shandler or BallBustingFantasyWhores.com all dump on Oliver Perez...if he's there in the 20th round and we wanna take him, we're gonna take him! So suck it!

5) Less talk, more action: Sometimes, our draft day chatting gets the best of us. We get so distracted by questioning the manhood of our fellow competitors that we totally lose track of the fact that our team is starting to suck, and we're not even in the 10th round. Then there's the whole question of hurt feelings. Even if we don't mean any harm to some of our fellow competitors with our witty repartee and snide remarks, there is only so much that you can communicate about the tone of your quip through emoticons. This year, we're gonna tone it down. We're just going to put Marvin Gaye's "If I Should Die Tonight" on repeat, and feel the love.

6) Put down the Hater-ade: We used to have a strict "No Yankees, No Red Sox" rule on our fantasy teams. Then we downgraded it to "No Yankees". This year, we're going to hold our nose and take whoever we need to take to get the job done. We're through with spending all season scraping away at the waiver wire to find someone to help us reach the dizzying heights of sixth place when we could have just taken Mariano Rivera to start with.

So...That's pretty much it. The entirety of our fantasy strategy. Clearly, a path to glory.

And for the good fellows in the Tao's Roto Leagues
Our drafts are on Sunday, and you'd better be there at the appointed times, because we're not going to listen to you whine about how you needed to wash your mother's pantyhose and therefore missed the draft. If you've got to scrub momma's unmentionables before she'll feed you Sunday dinner, then get to work on your pre-rankings now. You only get one shot at this.

Sometimes, Vernon gets those menstrual cramps real hard

From the Unfortunate Quotes file, we get this gem from Vernon Wells in today's Star:

"My body is like a woman's body, it really is."

Well okay then.

The quote was given in the context of Wells' annual discussion of how he's gotten into shape in a totally different and more efficient way that will without question keep him healthy and at the top of his game for the coming season. In past seasons, there were discussions of blood tests and macrobiotic diets and such, to varying degrees of success.

Wells says he is planning to bring his trainer on the road with him to help keep him in shape throughout the season. And as we all know, when baseball players travel with their own personal trainers at all times, hilarity is sure to ensue.

We're just hoping that Wells is willing to share this weight maintenance expertise with a certain pink and round teammate.

Other traditional Spring Training incantations
Cito tells Griff that speed is vital, and that the team is going to run more. Also, he didn't really mean it when he said that 2009 was a write off.

We guess this means we'll have to move him down in our fantasy rankings
We're not sure if this is funny or sad, but Mike Hampton has health issues already.

Speaking of fantasy baseball...
We've still got a couple of spots open in the Alternate Universe Roto Shenanigans. If you want to play fantasy baseball against a bunch of ne'er-do-wells, hit us with an email to sign up.

(And to those of you who asked to participate but have not signed into to the league yet, your spot is not guaranteed until you actually sign in. You've been warned.)

Requiem for a Russ

And so it comes to pass.

It's probably been three or four years coming, but Russ Adams and the Blue Jays finally parted ways yesterday to make way for marginal bullpen arm T.J. Beam.

(With the departure of A.J., and J.P. Arencibia still a year away, the Jays needed to shore up their strategic supply of initials.)

Adams was J.P. Ricciardi's first pick as Jays GM, and their fates seem destined to be forever intertwined. The selection is still held up as emblematic of all that is wrong with the embattled GM's tenure with the team, and we're reasonably sure that Adams' name will continue to be dropped into to post game JaysTalk rants up to and immediately following J.P.'s almost inevitable dismissal.

We've heard for years about how the Jays passed on Scott Kazmir and Matt Cain and Cole Hammels in order to pick Adams. Realistically, none of those players (all high school pitchers) were going to sign with the Jays, especially if the team adhered to the recommended slot bonusses.

(We're assuming that there were slot recommendations in 2002, but someone feel free to call BS on us if we're wrong on that.)

In his only full season with the Jays, Adams played a somewhat underwhelming 139 games in 2005, posting eight homers, 63 RsBI, 11 steals and a .707 OPS. In retrospect, it's funny to look at those numbers and comapre them to Marco Scutaro's 2008 (7 HRs, 60 RsBI, 8 SBs and a .697 OPS). Isn't it funny how some of the same pundits in the Toronto sports media who hold up Adams as a sign that everything is amiss in Blue Jayland were hailing Scutaro as the team's MVP last season?

A quick glance at the position players picked behind Adams in that draft shows that there weren't a ton of great bats to be had. Nick Swisher, James Loney, Jeff Francoeur came later in the first round, Joey Votto came a the start of the second, and Brian McCann went deep in the third, but most of those players would have had (say it with us) signability issues.

We'll confess to being a bit sad to hear of Adams' departure. It kinda makes us feel as though time's slipped away on us.

Roto-Hoedown Update
Thanks to everyone who wrote in to beg, plead and grovel their way into the 2009 Roto-Hoedown. We're down to a single spot left, and we unfortunately can't expand on the 15-team format.

If you are still interested in playing in the big boys' roto league, then it's not too late to email us (taoofstieb at gmail dot com) and knock our stirrups off. We're going to hold off on filling that last spot until later in the weekend, when someone who really deserves the spot steps up and claims it.

(We probably have enough people to set up a second league as well, so there's always that.)

For those of you who emailed yesterday and haven't heard back from us, we'd recommend writing back and laying it on a little thicker with the grovelling. A hint: we like when people use full sentences with correct spelling. It appeals to our sensibilities. As do pictures of your sisters or signifcant others in bikinis.

It's the Tao of Stieb's Roto-Hoedown!

Hey kids! Do you enjoy the rotisserie as much as we do? Are you getting amped up for the coming season of fantasy baseball? Have you already purchased four roto expert guides that all contradict one another and feature mundane and self-evident strategies for your forthcoming draft?

We love us a little fantasy baseball, and we're completely geeked for this year, mostly because we took such a wretched shit-kicking in all of our leagues last year. (Something about undervaluing pitching...who knew?) We feel as though this year, if we just spend a few more weeks fretting and researching and poring over every pre-season guide, then maybe we'll be ready to go.

So geeked are we, in fact, that we've just set up the first annual Tao of Stieb Roto-Hoedown, a fantasy league for those who are regular readers, commenters, contributors around these parts. Basically, the cool kids.

We've set the league up at ESPN, which is a first for us, so we can't guarantee the performance. (It's not as though we would have anyway).

The Basics
The Roto-Hoedown is a 15 team league, 6x6 rotisserie league. Offensive categories are Runs, HRs, RsBI, SBs, OBP and SLG, while the pitching categories are Wins, Saves, ERA, WHIP, Ks, and complete games.

The rosters are 25-man, with a seven man bench, nine offensive slots and nine pitching slots, with two DL spots.

The plan is to live draft this baby sometime in March. We've left this to be determined, since we'll have to work around schedules and what not.

How to participate
Since we've already already taken one spot in the league, there are 14 up for grabs. Fire off an email to us (taoofstieb at gmail dot com), and if we already know you and like you, then you're in. You'll have to set up an ESPN account to join the league, but the process is pretty quick and painless.

If we don't know you from a hole in the ground, then make the case as to why you should participate, and swear on your momma's health that you're not going to bail as soon as your team goes into the crapper because you picked Pat Burrell in the first round.

This is pretty much first come, first served, so get in quick to avoid disappointment!

What you win
Err...nothing, really. Cameraderie? The sense of a job well done? We don't know...we've actually got a handful of spare baseball books that we might be able to throw in...T-shirts maybe? Really, we just want to play for the fun of it. (If you are looking to gamble, then go check with the dudes from Drive This at the Score.)

How much are we going to discuss this league on the blog?
Not much, really. There's not much that's more painful than reading about how someone's streaming strategies with middle relievers has led them to the exalted glories of fourth place.

Which isn't to say that there won't be plenty of shit-talking and general ironic douchbaggery over on the actual league home.

(Please note: Actual douchebags and their actual douchebaggery are not welcome. Thanks.)

So what are you waiting for?
Get off the couch, get to the computer and dial the number on the screen! Hot women are waiting to take your call!