Life Through the Eyes of an Ambulance Driver

I just finished drafting my fantasy baseball teams for 2010. I use Yahoo Fantasy Baseball. It’s free and I like the way their site works. Last year, I did terrible. I came in dead last in my rotisserie league (I was beat by a guy who didn’t even manage the team after the season started). I think my main problem was that my first draft pick was Jimmy Rollins, a former MVP, but had a horrible year that year. I did better in my head to head league. My team got to the finals and was beaten in the final match, so I got second in that league.

This year, I wanted to do better. I bought a couple of fantasy baseball magazines and watched the fantasy baseball 404 on mlb.tv. I also resided not to pick Cubs players for my team. I always pick them because I think they will do well, and I need to realize that they while maybe good players on the team, are not so great compared to the rest of baseball. The Cubs haven’t won a world series in over 100 years, maybe I should think about that. I also took some advice I read about not relying on rookie potential. It may be cool to land that next star that no one else took, but that won’t win you the league. However, Nelson Cruz worked for me last year, and this year I picked Jason Heyward fairly early on.

This year, I picked two teams again. One rotisserie and one head to head. I also picked another one as an experiment that I will outline later. The leagues are 12 team leagues. Yahoo uses the 5×5 format which keeps track of the following stats.

Batting:

• batting average
• runs scored
• RBI
• HR
• stolen bases

Pitching:

• wins
• saves
• strikeouts
• ERA
• WHIP

Yahoo fantasy baseball lets you have 10 position player positions and 8 pitcher positions. I also have 5 bench positions.

So for my first team, Splinter_hands, it is a rotisserie league, and my head to head team is blister. Don’t ask me where I got the names of the teams from, I’m horrible with being creative. This year Yahoo added an additional position to the position player group, another util spot. Yahoo also added another pitcher position. I was not aware of this until half way through the draft.

My draft picks are as follows:

Splinter_hands (7th draft position):

1. 1B Prince Fielder
2. P Roy Halladay
3. SS Derek Jeter
4. P Mariano Rivera
5. OF Jason Heyward
6. 3B Adrian Beltre
7. P Josh Beckett
8. P Heath Bell
9. OF Ryan Ludwick
10. IF Placido Polanco
11. P Jorge De La Rosa
12. P John Lackey
13. OF Carlos Gonzalez
14. C Benjie Molina
15. IF/OF Mark DeRosa
16. OF Brett Gardner
17. P Clay Buchholz
18. OF Juan Pierre
19. P Andy Pettitte
20. P Joba Chamberlain
21. P Phil Hughes
22. OF Austin Jackson
23. IF Troy Glaus

Blister (5th draft position)

1. OF Ryan Braun
2. OF Matt Holliday
3. IF Kevin Youkilis
4. 2B Robinson Cano
5. P Mariano Rivera
6. OF Jason Heyward
7. P Josh Beckett
8. IF Gordon Beckham
9. SS Elvis Andrus
10. C Bengie Molina
11. IF/OF Mark Derosa
12. OF Ryan Ludwick
13. P Jorge De La Rosa
14. P Tim Hudson
15. P Jon Rauch
16. IF Placido Polanco
17. C Yadier Molina
18. P Clay Buchholz
19. IF Maicer Izturis
20. P Joba Chamberlain
21. P Phil Hughes
22. P Derek Lowe
23. P Mark Buehrle

I feel better about this year’s teams than last year. I plan to rotate through my pitchers more on my head to head team. In previous years I had more luck in being able to hold just a couple of good starters and pick matchups that I liked each day to acquire pitchers each day. However, I just saw where I won’t be able to do that as much as Yahoo has put a 6 player a week acquisition rule in place. That puts a damper in my strategy. I wasn’t expecting to have great starting pitching picks as I would just choose each day who I thought would win. I’m going to have to keep an eye on the free agents and see if I can’t hold down some better pitching and just draft one pitcher a day for match ups.

I’m excited to be doing my fantasy baseball this year. I know I spend way too many hours looking over all the numbers and keeping an eye out for better players to get, but that’s just part of the engineer in me liking to analyze numbers I guess.

So the third team I drafted I am experimenting with pitching. Typically, hitters are picked in the first round, and hitters continue to dominate the picks for the first few rounds. Pitching tends to be picked later on. I thought I would take advantage of this. Since there is no innings pitched limit in head to head,  I loaded my team with pitchers and plan to rotate them through on the days of their starts. I did however take hitters on first two rounds as they were top tier hitters, and I need some hitting production to compete at all. I’m not too concerned if I win this one, but I’m curious what kind of position I can get in the end if my picks are focused on only half of my stats (pitching) that I need to win each week. Here’s the results of my draft:

bud_selig_is_evil (7th draft position):

1. 1B Mark Teixeira
2. OF Ichiro Suzuki
3. P CC Sabathia
4. P Felix Hernandez
5. P Mariano Rivera
6. P Josh Johnson
7. P Heath Bell
8. P Wandy Rodriguez
9. P Clayton Kershaw
10. P Ryan Dempster
11. P John Danks
12. P Randy Wells
13. P Jorge De La Rosa
14. P David Aardsma
15. P Carlos Zambrano
16. 3B Adrian Beltre
17. C A.J. Pierzynski
18. IF Placido Polanco
19. IF Micer Izturis
20. OF Brett Gardner
21. OF Juan Pierre
22. OF Cameron Maybin
23. IF Troy Glaus

Now if I could only get Yahoo to make an Android app for fantasy baseball like they did for the iPhone

This Spring, Wendy and I decided to go to Phoenix, AZ for a short trip, mostly because I wanted to go see my beloved Cubs at Spring Training. I had never been to Spring Training, but I had wanted to for quite a while now. We were there from 3/28-3/30. It was a great time to go as the weather was on the verge of being too hot, but still nice, and it was towards the end of Spring Training, so the regular season players would be playing more and be taking it more seriously.

Our first stop after getting our rental car was to grab a bite to eat. We drove around downtown Phoenix a bit, but had difficulty finding reasonable parking near the pizza place we wanted to try. Wendy found a soda fountain (thanks to google maps on the cell phone) called MacAlpine’s nearby that we ate at for lunch. It was a nice little place. It was set in the 50′s. The food was good and the strawberry cheesecake milkshake we had for dessert was even better. According to their menu, they are the oldest operating soda fountain.

From there we headed to the Hall of Flame Fire Museum which was located next to the Oakland Athletic’s spring training field where they were playing a game as we drove by. The museum was great. It had a very impressive collection of old fire equipment and history. It had lots of hand drawn and horse drawn wagons as well as old motor driven fire trucks. It was very interesting to learn about the history of firefighting through the years. They had a section dedicated to wildland firefighting as well. I would recommend it to anyone who has the chance to go see it. Pictures

Next we went to the nearby Desert Botanical Garden. Wendy was excited to see wild flowers. I thought it was silly to have a botanical garden in the desert, but they had a lot of cool plants after all. Pictures

After the gardens, we went to check into our hotel. Wendy managed to find a great deal for us at The Hilton Phoenix East. Normally above our price range, but we got it for a great price. It was a nice hotel with large and comfortable rooms. The pillows on the bed were really soft.

While we were out that night we had stopped at a Target so I could get a baseball and sharpies. I hoped to get some autographs at the game. For dinner the first night, we ate at Grimaldi’s Pizzeria. It was some great pizza. You have to build your own pizza, and it was a bit pricey. We got a pizza with pepperoni, Italian sausage, and onions.

Next day, we decided to try to get to the Cubs game early in hopes to get autographs. For breakfast we went to a nearby place called The Good Egg. Really good breakfast with lots of choices.

More »