Mussina has been besieged by a perfect storm of misfortune and performance.
As a Yankees fan it is simply killing me to watch Mussina get lit up. 19 ER in 9.2 IP while trying to snare the Wild Card will not endear him to Yankee fans. How has he fallen so far?
After a surprisingly good […]

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The Braves’ closer situation after the surprise jettison of Wickman.
Who knew Bob Wickman was such a bad clubhouse influence? I was genuinely surprised by this move, as I didn’t really hear any chatter. After the fact I heard that he was complaining about not pitching is save situations, so I can’t fault the Braves. […]

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About a month ago I picked up Ramon Hernandez in a head-to-head league. That sure worked out great.
In my head-to-head points league a few weeks ago I had John Buck at the catcher position. Ramon Hernandez was coming back and I took a chance and added Hernandez and dropped Buck. Oops.
It was a reasonable […]

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With all of the nefarious dealings going on, clearly I couldn’t sit on my hands. So here is the first of my two moves in response.
Clearly after the slew of trades going on I had a few options. The first is to just cry about the whole thing and do nothing. Since I am not […]

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Jeremy runs down his trip to Tampa to see the Rays in action. I think I may have found something that the Devil Rays lead the league in - scantily clad women.
Now, I would imagine that there are very few fantasy leagues out there with SCW as one of the categories - although I would […]

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Some thoughts on Barry Bonds’ and the alleged lack of proof of PED use.
When I was playing serious poker, my required reading list included the works of David Sklansky and Mason Malmuth. Sklansky first opened my eyes to the use of my math background and MIT education to gambling.
Sklansky’s writing inspired this article. But […]

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It comes as no surprise that the collusive traders discussed in my prior article had a trade pipeline. This collusive trade was just the beginning.
One item that became apparent in the aftermath of the collusive trade addressed previously was the continuation of a two year trade pipeline between two good friends. The problems this year […]

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The owner who swindled me in the Marcum/Wilkerson trade asked me to post his thoughts. So here they are, with a few editorial notes.
Being the erstwhile owner of the ‘Bad’ Wilkerson party, I thought it be would interesting to provide some color on the aforementioned trade.
At the time of the proposal, I was in […]

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A baseball smackdown in real life, as the Padres pit Ensberg against Kouzmanoff.
I thought this was an interesting trade, and was a big supporter. So were the guys at Ducksnorts, an excellent Padres blog. I don’t have time to read tons of team specific blogs, so I have to pick and choose. I think […]

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I had both players at one point, and traded one for Brad Wilkerson. Here is a look at these two surprising pitchers.
Talk about trading lemons and cherries. Earlier this year due to two free agent acquisitions I found myself with both Jeremy Guthrie and Shaun Marcum. Certainly this was a happy problem.
I felt that […]

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Continuing my series on some of the trading principles and issues from my high stakes league, the next trade by two teams literally set off an avalanche that threatens the league’s future. There will be a few posts on the various shady deals
So, after my last deal, the comings and going on my roster […]

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Both have had some recent ups and downs, to put it mildly. Here is what is going on.
John Maine In the last month Maine has an ERA over 6 and a 1.32 WHIP. What is going on? First let’s look at his overall season totals:
13-7 3.59 ERA 1.20 WHIP 26% hit rate 75% strand rate […]

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Phil was an MVP but how good would he have been for fantasy players? On the MLB.com Fantasy 411 podcast, Cory Schwartz and Joe Sheehan were discussing Rizzuto and how good he would have been. They thought that he would have been similar to David Eckstein. There is an easy way to at least […]

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There is a famous conjecture called the Doomsday Argument, which will be discussed below. It can be used to predict the future remaining existence of the Major Leagues. Here’s how.
Before reading, come up with an off the cuff estimate for how long you think Major League Baseball will last. Think of […]

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There are some interesting anomalies in the case of Scott Kazmir. How can these be interpreted?A friend and reader of the blog asked me about his keeper list, and one name he brought up was Scott Kazmir. I took a look at Kazmir’s overall record and found something quite surprising.
Regular readers know that for the […]

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Previously Matt wrote about Matt Cain, and what has gone wrong. Since then have things gotten better or worse??
In a prior post, Matt wrote about Matt Cain’s slide this year. Yesterday, his name came up on MLB.com’s Fantasy 411 podcast, and then last night he had the misfortune to pitch against Paul Maholm, who […]

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Here is the link.

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Continuing the series on the various trades from my high stakes league.
After the first two trades, the next critical juncture for me was the loss of Salomon Torres. At the time the saves race was very close in the NL portion of the league. It still is. In a prior post I touched on […]

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Jeremy takes on baseball’s current events, and the Yankees call-up of Joba Chamberlain.
So I had a whole different plan for today’s column, but recent historic baseball events have prompted me to scrap that idea and address the importance of this occurrence.
I speak of course of Joba the Hutt joining the Yankee bullpen.
Of course not, […]

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Would you rather have a $1 keeper who hits 30 HR or gets 30 SB, with batting averages being equal?? This is an interesting theoretical question, and is right up our alley.
Lenny Melnick and Paul Greco, on their podcast, raised an interesting fantasy thought experiment. Lenny asked whether, assuming batting average to be equal, […]

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Here are links to my last two posts.
Being Prepared
The perils of bad advice

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What can be expected of top prospect Adam Jones?? Well, it’s about damn time. In one of my leagues, (previously addressed here)which allows a team to keep players essentially forever, a few years ago we drafted Adam Jones. We have been patiently waiting for him to get called up.
Fantasy players all know that feeling; […]

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What will Ichiro’s final career MLB numbers look like? Could Ichiro have gotten 4,000 hits had he played his entire career in the Majors?? The FantasyBaseballGenerals tinker with The Favorite Toy to attempt to answer these questions.
To say that Ichiro is a unique, one of a kind ballplayer is merely stating the obvious. A model […]

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Analysis of the second of my trades this year in the high stakes league.
I have talked about this deal before, but had some more to say about it. After making the McCann trade, I then needed to do something about my AL power. Given that I was a contender, and had a weak AL […]

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Kevin Towers made a series of small moves over the last few days, each of which made small but noticeable gains to the Padres. Sounds like he read up on this blog….
The Padres should be commended for their dealings over the last few days. In a close NL West race, they made a series of […]

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Earlier I discussed Jon Daniels performance after he was impugned by Peter Pascarelli. How has he done?? It appears he is a winner now. But there is reason for caution.
Here, I opined that Daniels performance at the trade deadline might be the make-or-break time in his career. This was noted by almost everyone so […]

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