A2K Fanstasy Baseball 2007

Oh man... I wish I was at the draft because I am unhappy with how it turned out. I have some work ahead of me this season.

I forgot to set the league for 2 active catchers. Shall I change it to 2 since it is so difficult to have one catcher start 162 games?

That throws off my entire strategy for the season, but, yeah go ahead. Actually, I think I speak for everyone in saying that you should do whatever tweaking you deem necessary.

2 catchers would be great -- which position gets changed when you do that? I've honestly forgotten. Sorry I couldn't be there, RP had to use the computer for actual -- oof -- work.

I have relievers like Carter's got liver pills. Hmmm.

So we invited the players on the Rappin Rednecks team over for a vitual cookout. I am afraid I haven't heard of most of them. And last night I had to dis-invite four of them. I got the waiver train started early.
Anyway, it seems to be a pretty diverse group from 12 or so different major league teams. I have a Jason, a Lance and Chris and Jeremy. I have a Felipe, Ramon and Javier. And Tadahito and Chien-Ming.

My first match-up is with Tico, who I think actually knows something about baseball. I did an exremely unscientific comparison of his roster to mine using 2006 stats and looking at how our top 3 performers in each category matched up (regardless of position). His batters are better than mine, notably in the Runs and RBI catergories. But my guys are good at stealing bases, getting walks and not striking out. All in all, our batters split the categories.
And the same thing happened amongst our pitchers. Different strengths and weaknesses but resulting in a pretty even split.

What realjohnboy said

As long as you at least have one of each I'm happy.

Good luck to all of you and may the best manager win.

Are you guys serious about it messing up your strategy?

I'd just change it to allow 2 active catchers instead of 1. You should be able to just pick up one more catcher without having to drop anyone (at least I think so).

I was certainly kidding. The notion of Johnboy having a strategy struck me as humorous.

Sweet, Ichiro and Jeff Kent.

My boys!

Curt Schilling should do well too.

Cycloptichorn

Yeah... you have a nice line up, cyc. Good power, good speed, pretty good pitching. You should do alright this season.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

I updated the catcher position to two active.

Or a non-catcher if we already have two, OK?

Absolutely. You can pick any position you want if you already have 2 catchers.

Cool. I picked up a new catcher, but I can't remember who he is.

BTW. I can't remember what if anything we do with the NCAA b-ball tourney. I think we are too small a group and it will be over pretty quickly and doing all of the brackets is cumbersome.

I looked at Yahoo's offering but it looked a bit complicated, so I selected using CBS (CBS.Sportsline.com) Very easy to navigate.

Watch out - too much of this and I'll become an active manager

Cycloptichorn

I think you'll be surprised how much fun you have being an active manager cyc. Justa few minutes a day, but it really is a lot of fun. Don't forget to check out the waiver wire and pick up another player now that I changed the active catchers to two.

I have no idea what's going on.
What's the next step?

Well, George, it looks like you are short a catcher still.

So my first move would be going to the waiver wire by signing in and going to the league home page. From there, click on "Players" which will bring you to a list of available free agents. You can filter them by selecting catchers only from one of the drop down menus and leaving the other one at all available players.

Once you click Filter you will have a list of available catchers to choose from. Compare stats (I usually look at batting average, home runs, RBIs, and stolen bases) and find a player you like. Once you find one, click on the green plus sign next to thier name.

This will bring you to a screen confirming that you want to add that player. You should have 2 options: 1.) add the player 2.) add the player and drop another.

Since you have one open roster spot, you can simply add the player (you will have to confirm one more time after clicking that button). If you did not have a roster spot open, you would have to drop one of your players in order to add another. This is a way to dump your bad players during the season and trade them out for someone that is doing better.

After that, we pretty much wait until opening day (April 1st). Once opening day arrives, all you have to do is make sure you have your players playing. If your player is playing that day, you will see an opponent next to his name on the "My Team" page. All you have to do is make sure you have the most players playing as possible each day.

This may sound like a lot of work, but it really isn't. In most cases you will find you really don't make that many moves per day, since most players play nearly everyday during the season. You could set your roster every Sunday and find that you really don't miss that many games. Or, you could even set your roster in advance. If you sit down sunday and set your roster for monday, you could then click on tuesday and set the roster for tuesday, then wednesday and so on and so forth. I think you can go weeks in advance if you so desired.

Like i said, it sounds like a lot of work, but it really is a very small time commitment. If you have any questions, feel free to ask and I'll try to walk you through it. It is pretty hard to mess anything up though as it will tell you if you have an empty roster spot. It will also warn you if you have an illegal line up (like trying to start to many players at a single position).

Other than that, feel free to do as little or as much trash talking as you want. Either here or in the message section on the league home page. Again, let me know if you have any questions on anything. I know it is all a bit overwhelming at first.

Thanks, jp!

You also picked up an outfielder who's hurt.

I've proposed a trade to you.