Thursday 12 April 2012

Rookie tops the charts!

One week in to my fantasy baseball experience and I sit firmly where I want to be and where every fantasy player wants to be.......top of the standings. Yes that's right, a first time player with majorly limited baseball knowledge sits top of the fantasy standings. Is this the start of things to come and a successful future in the world of fantasy baseball? Or is this more of a case that I had a decent draft based on good advice from Matthew Berry and that those players have performed well early on? Yes it's clearly the latter but that doesn't mean the run won't continue. I'm steadily adjusting to daily lineups and have started listening to the ESPN Fantasy Focus baseball podcast. I'm a big fan of the football version and have used that the last couple of years to aid my fantasy football teams with strategy and waiver pickups but obviously that's a lot easier knowing the majority of players. With the baseball podcast it requires a lot more concentration and hoping they repeat the player's name they are discussing multiple times as I won't recognise the player from the general discussion they have about them.

The major issue I have had since my draft was that I had both Carl Crawford and Chris Carpenter on the DL (not the down low, the disabled list). Within a standard 10 team league I have 3 bench spots and 1 DL spot. I have had Crawford in this spot since my draft, his return date is predicted to be the start of May and Carpenter's is completely unknown. Although he may come back and be a quality starter I needed the bench spot so I have dropped him and picked up Chad Billingsley so remarkably was on the free agent list despite being owned in 100% of leagues! This is always the main stat I look at when searching the waiver wire - there are millions of people playing the game with much more knowledge than me and if they all want Billingsley then I'll take him too! Coming off a down year in 2011 (wikipedia knows all) and in Berry's 6th tier for pitchers along with Bartolo Colon which gives me some comparison as I do know of Colon, the guy who seemed to lose every time he started when I checked the Yankees score. Also I had Scott Baker who was on the DL so had to drop him and picked up Alfonso Soriano to give me another attacking option.

Final word for today which be a special mention for Alex Avila, catcher for the Detroit Tigers, who has been my player of the season (player of just over a week then). 5 hits from 15 appearances on base, 4 runs scored, 2 home runs and 5 RBIs and batting a 0.333 which I know is very solid. In the 3rd tier of catchers according to Berry and it seemed to be similar to the TE position in football. There are only so many Jimmy Grahams and Rob Gronkowskis to go around so I wanted a quality one. Long may his great start continue and long may the Money Ballers keep a top of the standings!




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