Fantasy Baseball Generals

Fantasy Baseball Warfare is a great matter to a nation; it is the ground of death and of life; it is the way of survival and of destruction, and must be examined.–Sun Tzu

Entries from March 2008

Some Real Longshot League Leaders

March 31st, 2008 · 1 Comment

Here are some real longshot speculations on possible league leaders and awards.
I always thought it was interesting when the Freddy Sanchez’ of the world blossom out of nowhere. I always wonder whether anyone thought, even as a real longshot, that he could win a batting title. So, as a “just in case” here are […]

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One Final Comment on Mixed League Strategies and My Marginal/Fractional Points Theory

March 31st, 2008 · 1 Comment

Draft time is now over, so I had one final wrap-up on drafts.
Here are some final thoughts and theoretical principles that pertain to drafts. I am certain that my point about gaining fractional/marginal points in certain drafts has never been written about before, but it is true and is a key reason why certain strategies […]

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Torii Hunter True or False?

March 31st, 2008 · 1 Comment

John Sickels posed a series of “True or False” questions that I thought were interesting and decided to take a shot at answering them. The first one is: “True or False, Torii Hunter will have a disappointing offensive season for the Angels, hitting something like .256/.325/.475″
Answering a question like this must start with some […]

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Brian and Kevin Chime In

March 31st, 2008 · No Comments

Given the size of the post (and the lateness of their reply….), I have included Brian Joura’s and Kevin Orris’ picks, for your viewing “pleasure.”
Kevin OrrisNL East: Braves. What scares me is that what seems like 80% of ESPN is now picking them out of the blue.NL Central: Brewers. Have a younger, better upside […]

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The Generals’ Preseason Picks

March 31st, 2008 · 1 Comment

Feel free to keep track and see who does the best. Here are our preseason selections. Yes, Brandon Heikoop went out on a limb with virtually every pick!
Patrick DiCaprioAL East-Yankees. I had picked the Red Sox in a prior exercise on another website, but then saw the preseason PECOTA standings which had the […]

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This Week’s Fantasy Roundtable

March 30th, 2008 · 1 Comment

This week’s Fantasy Roundtable, courtesy of The Roto Professor
Here is a link to this week’s Roundtable. The question: who do you prefer, Nick Markakis, Hunter Pence or Corey Hart?
My thought when I read the question was that it was close between Hart and Markakis, but that Pence wasn’t even close. That seems to be a […]

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Tags: Corey Hart · Hunter Pence · Nick Markakis

The Joey Gathright Play

March 28th, 2008 · 1 Comment

For those who haven’t seen it.
I don’t normally do this, but for those who haven’t seen it, Joey Gathright jumped clear over Hiroki Kuroda while running to first base. It is simply astounding, so here is the link.

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The FBS Expert League Website

March 28th, 2008 · 1 Comment

A couple of people asked me where they can get info on the league, look at rosters etc., since we are going to be discussing the league every week on the radio show. So here is a link. Enjoy!

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Five Players–Da Nats

March 28th, 2008 · No Comments

Five players from the Washington Nationals.
And alas, we finish up the Five Player series. It’s been a fun trip, and I thank Patrick for allowing me to write the last 8 or so entries. If nothing else, the Nationals are interesting this year as they move into a new ballpark. Everyone seems to agree […]

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Five Players–Toronto Blue Jays

March 28th, 2008 · 2 Comments

Five players from the Jays.
And happily we’re back to a much more exciting team to write about! Do I dare talk about Dustin McGowan for the 576th time? Nah, I think it’s all been engrained in your brains by now how much I like him and why. So you’ll just have to read on […]

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Five Players–Texas Rangers

March 27th, 2008 · No Comments

Five players from the Texas Rangers.
Coming down the stretch, we have only 2 teams left after the Rangers. This looks like another difficult team to write about as players have either gotten enough coverage from this or other sites (Hank Blalock), or are just boring and not worth mentioning (Frank Catalanotto). So here goes… […]

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My (Mike’s) Points League Draft

March 27th, 2008 · 2 Comments

Patrick’s points league posts motivated me to analyze my own points league draft.
To me, points leagues are the easiest leagues to prepare for. With every stat converting into the same currency (points), it’s much simpler to determine rankings than calculating values for a 5×5 roto league. One of my first posts here dealt with […]

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The Mixed League Team

March 27th, 2008 · 5 Comments

Here is my roster, with comments.
There was one more item that mattered to me when drafting my team and that was risk management. This year I decided to try using the Baseball HQ reliability scores when deciding between roughly equal commodities. So when discussing the players I will list their reliability score where it […]

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Tags: Buchholz · Cabrera · Crawford · McGowan · Teixeira · draft strategy · mixed league · snake drafts

My Mixed League Draft and "Leverage"

March 27th, 2008 · 3 Comments

I recently did my mixed league draft and here is my team, with comments.
One dicta of conventional wisdom that I rail against is the idea that you should not target specific players. That is hogwash; I almost always target specific players and often will get them. When you see the team I drafted in […]

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Five Players–Tampa Bay Devil Rays

March 26th, 2008 · No Comments

Five players from the Devil Rays.
This is one of the teams I was really looking forward to writing about. In fact, I might even end up having a tough time choosing only five players. If it wasn’t playing in perhaps the most difficult division in baseball, this team could be competing for the wild […]

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Some Thoughts on Recent News

March 26th, 2008 · No Comments

Some short comments on recent baseball news.
I always wanted to not do this type of column since you can find a version of it on every other baseball website and we wanted to be different. But there are so many interesting things going on that I am breaking my rule.
It is astounding to me […]

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Tags: Johnny Cueto · Vargas · auctions · carlos Gomez · fantasy drafts · snake drafts

Home Run Mania

March 26th, 2008 · No Comments

I hate to be a shill, but this is your last chance to sign up for Home Run Mania, a home run derby type game that looks like it should be a blast! Click on the logo to check it out. Plus you get a discount if you use the code “Generals” so […]

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Phillies v. Reds

March 26th, 2008 · No Comments

I figured I would let you guys in on a few quick things I jotted down at the game today. As you may know, I attended the Phillies v. Reds spring training game today between Edinson Volquez and Kyle Kendrick. -Kendrick let the every Reds batter step up to the plate in the first […]

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Five Players–St. Louis Cardinals

March 26th, 2008 · No Comments

Five players from the Cardinals.
Ughh, following up the Giants with an equally boring team, the Cards. At least they have been able to provide some excellent Razzball choices! And if you were wondering, yes, that’s Brian Barton in the picture, because I love his dreads.
Rick Ankiel A great story, for sure (although the HGH […]

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Coming Soon to a Park Near You

March 25th, 2008 · 1 Comment

One of my favorite articles from Baseball Notebook; its a MUST read.
One thing I have talked about before here is the learned minority theory. one guy that fits the description is David Luciani over at Baseball Notebook. David is an excellent analyst and has a very different type of analysis of up and coming […]

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The "General" Speculator-Rollins or Utley?

March 25th, 2008 · 7 Comments

This week we look at who should be a better pick in 2008, Chase Utley or Jimmy Rollins
Rob McQuown–In real baseball? I don’t think it’s even close. Utley is so far ahead of other second-basemen offensively, that it’s not even funny. The “gold glove” for Rollins doesn’t make him elite on defense… he’s good, […]

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Five Players–San Francisco Giants

March 25th, 2008 · No Comments

Five players from the Giants.
I’m going to try to bang out the rest of this series as quickly as possible, and unfortunately that includes the sad, sad Giants. I’d love to just skip them, but they do have some exciting players like Rich Aurilia, Omar Vizquel, and Jose Castillo. Just kidding…
Tim Lincecum Man crush […]

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Five Players–Seattle Mariners

March 24th, 2008 · No Comments

Five players from the Mariners.
This is not a very interesting organization, especially after trading away Adam Jones. However, I’ve done my best to find some players to discuss and they are…
Ichiro Suzuki Is this the year he disappoints? It very well could be. His xBA was below .300 for the 2nd year in a […]

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Special Guest on the Sunday Radio Show This Week

March 24th, 2008 · No Comments

We are going to have a special guest this week, Fred Lynn, former ROY and MVP. Should be a great show so be sure to tune in or download!

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Razzball: My Team is Craptastic!

March 24th, 2008 · 3 Comments

A review of the fun at the inaugural Razzball fantasy league draft.
On Saturday, I participated in the draft for the first ever Razzball fantasy league. For a refresher course of the rules of this crazy league, check out my article here. The draft took only 1 hour, the shortest I’ve ever been in! I’d […]

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Discussion from Live Show at Mantle’s on Closers

March 24th, 2008 · 3 Comments

We had some great discussion about closers at Mantle’s with Lenny Melnick, Paul Greco and Adam Ronis from Newsday.com. Yes, that is me in the Yankee Jersey.
Before I go get killed at work this week I wanted to get up a post summarizing my appearance on the Live From Mickey Mantle’s show on Friday. It […]

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Tags: Carlos Marmol · Tony Pena · closers · draft strategy · fantasy draft · snake drafts

Spring Training Bound

March 24th, 2008 · No Comments

Hey guys, I’m off to spring training, and I’ll be sure to keep you updated. Tommorrow I’m on my way to Graprefruit League baseball to see the Phillies v. Reds on Tuesday and the Blue Jays v. Astros on Thursday. I’ll try to keep you updated each day on anything I experience. […]

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Five Players–San Diego Padres

March 24th, 2008 · No Comments

Five players from the Padres.
Patrick has asked me to finish up the Five Players series, as he is going to be unavailable for the next couple of days. So up now are the Padres, a team with a nice group of interesting players to check out.
Kevin Kouzmanoff As strong a breakout choice as any, […]

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The Trade That Came In from the Cold

March 24th, 2008 · 3 Comments

Thinking about trades from the point of view of a spy novel.
It’s the start of the season, with the draft finished and every fantasy team’s roster tweaked for the opening day, though maybe not quite tweaked enough–something doesn’t quite seem right with your team. There’s a hole somewhere, and none of the free agents available […]

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World Series and Division Winners from Around the Blogosphere

March 24th, 2008 · No Comments

Our compatriots at Greener on the Other Side compiled various opinions from across the blogosphere.
My friends at Greener on the Other Side compiled a list of the preseason picks from various websites up in the link above. There are some picks that are interesting, including my selection of the Tampa Bay Rays to win […]

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