Checking in on my Razzball team.

So I was planning to do my first Razzball update after the first week of games. But after my team’s performance yesterday, I just had to write something today. Before I get to that, check out my team and the league details in my first article here.

So I had 3 pitchers starting yesterday, which got me quite excited to root for some slugfests. I never imagined what actually would happen though. Brian Bannister used his sabermetric knowledge to pitch a 7 inning gem against the powerful Tigers offense, Tim Redding managed to allow ZERO runs in 7 innings against possibly the best NL offense, the Phils, and Todd Wellemeyer somehow only gave up 1 run in 5 innings against the Rockies. If you’re scoring at home, that’s 19 innings of 0.47 ERA and 0.68 WHIP ball!!! That certainly beats the performances of the pitchers on my “good player” teams that includes Garza, Vazquez, and Maddux. Maybe pitching really is a crapshoot?

Luckily, my hitters picked up some of the slack by going a robust 2/24, for an excellent (for Razzball) .083 average. Since this is a weekly league, I ended up having 3 hitters go on the DL who are still in my active lineup. I look forward to the returns of Mike Rabelo at catcher, Tony Abreu as a fill-in until Nomar comes back, and Jim Edmonds to start racking up the K’s and contribute a low average.

So how am I faring so far in the standings? Well unfortunately it isn’t as easy as checking what Yahoo says since some categories are backwards and some are forwards. The actual standings show me in 3rd, but that’s not accurate for our format. Since it’s only 3 days into the season, I’ll provide some standings highlights. I am “leading the league” in average at a nice .117 in 60 ABS, but that’s offset by my “elite” pitching staff who have posted a 1.13 ERA and 0.88 WHIP in 24 innings.

I noticed that Defunct Baseball Lab seems to be testing out the “dump 4 of the 6 pitching categories” strategy, as he has filled his staff with inactive pitchers, compiling only 1 1/3 innings so far, with a 0.00 ERA and 2.25 WHIP. If he continues the strategy and finishes the season with that same 1 1/3 innings, he will have dumped innings, losses, HR allowed, and ERA, but should win K’s and WHIP. I don’t see how he could possibly win with this strategy and therefore disagree with it. My personal strategy is to pitch as many innings as possible to try winning that category, losses, and HRs allowed, and hoping my ERA and WHIP are competitive. My total strikeouts could suffer, but with mostly low K pitchers, hopefully I don’t finish 2nd to last. It’s impossible to balance all 6 pitching categories since some favor pitching lots of innings and others favor pitching the fewest, so I think what I’m tying to do is the best method.

I made 2 pickups on Tuesday, adding Jorge Cantu, who qualifies at 1st (a big advantage in this league), and Dustin Moseley from the Angels. I’ll use Cantu in place of Abreu/Nomar if they haven’t returned yet and Moseley gives me another option to start during 2-start weeks. I missed out on Steve Trachsel, however, who was inexplicably just added to the Yahoo system.

So that wraps it up for my first Razzball update. Any players who might be sitting on our free agency that you think are ready for major suckage? Let me know!!

Questions, comments, criticisms, praise, expert league invitations? Email me at FBGeneralsMike@gmail.com.