The Futility Infielder

For most of us in the baseball website racket, keeping at fantasy team or two is as much obligation as hobby -- you've got to have one to wear the corporate colors, after all. But using one's fantasy team as fodder for a column is just too damn easy; it makes those occasional bullet-point extravaganzas seem downright scholarly by comparison. Would that I could properly attribute the Baseball Prospectus author who offered the blogging world sage advice a couple years back when he said words to the effect of, "No one wants to hear about your fantasy team." He was absolutely correct, and I've tried to follow that wisdom.

Still, there are times when it's necessary to write something on the topic, and so today, that's what I'm selling, mainly to marvel at my own... luck? skill? I'm not sure which. You see, on Thursday night, the bloggers/writers league I'm in drafted, but I had other plans -- attending a Baseball Prospectus Bookstore Pizza Feed in Brooklyn which featured an all-star cast of writers: Steven Goldman, Doug Pappas, Dayn Perry, Joe Sheehan, and Nate Silver. At their request, through my Big Apple Baseballists group I had organized an afterparty of sorts at a local watering hole. As with most pastimes, I'll take the real-world elbow-bending with my cohorts over the computerized interaction any day. The afterparty was a big hit; in addition to all aforementioned BPers save Pappas, bloggers Alex Belth, Alex Ciepley (who is joining Christian Ruzich's Cub Reporter), Cliff Corcoran, Tom Gorman, and Derek Jacques turned out, as did Josh Orenstein of the New York Mets ticket office and a few other folks. Good times, heady chatter, and strong drink were had by all.

Back to the fantasy stuff... with no shortage of bitching and moaning, I resigned myself to autodrafting, which in a live draft league placed me at what I expected was a disadvantage comparable to the pasty new punk in his first prison shower. I wouldn't have kvetched so loudly except that I'm in this league to smack-talk with two old college pals who stick out like sore thumbs -- there's really no politeness involved as we taunt each other publicly and privately. One of them is even calling his team "Jaffe's Big Stinky." With friends like that one best not bring a knife to the gunfight, hence my disgruntlement.

Compounding all of this was the fact that I really didn't put much research into my pre-rankings, going with the always-shaky IGWT (In Gut We Trust) method of ordering some 250 players rather than consulting a spreadsheet or a guide or paying one red cent in pursuit of such advice. I've found that too many folks tend to overthink this stuff, and that if you just go with basic guiding sabermetric principles -- power, good OBP, high K rate -- you get about 90 percent of the work done in about 5 percent of the time, leaving plenty of hours to pound the Old Speckled Hen.

Prepared for the worst -- "seventh place here I come," I told a friend -- I awoke to find myself with a team that surpassed my expectations. And then some:

C: Jorge Posada
1B: Jason Giambi
2B: D'Angelo Jiminez
3B: Mike Lowell
SS: Angel Berroa
CI: Eric Hinske
MI: Jose Valentin
OF: Barry Bonds
OF: Manny Ramirez
OF: Magglio Ordonez
Util/Bench: Andruw Jones, Carl Everett, Ryan Klesko, John Olerud, Ramon Hernandez

SP: Kevin Brown, Kevin Millwood, Johan Santana, Tim Wakefield, C.C. Sabathia
RP: Billy Wagner, Tom Gordon, LaTroy Hawkins

Okay, I'm a little short on speed (a perpetual problem of my teams), and unless Hawkins supplants Joe Borowski I'll be thin on saves, and both Olerud and Klesko have seen better days. But that's one motherscratcher of an outfield even if I trade a big gun for a pitching upgrade. Last year this crew hit 401 homers and drove in 1309 runs -- roughly 27/82 a man. Cowabunga! Though none of the pitchers won more than 14 games, none had an ERA higher than 4.09 or a WHIP higher than 1.30 either. This is a pretty fair crew, and there's no blaming it on the autodraft. The idiot who brushes my teeth is in charge of this team from here onward.