Fantasy Baseball

The Phillies lost another one, falling 1.5 games behind the Braves for first place in the NL East. I feel there's really no need to worry at this point in the season about where we are in the standings as long as we're staying near the top. It's also tough to gauge what is going on with this team currently with all of the injuries. Because of this, today we'll take a break from talking about the Phillies.

For those who may not know what fantasy baseball is, it's basically a few friends putting together teams of the best players in the league and getting points for different statistics. Whoever's team can rack up the most points for those given statistics over the course of a season then wins.

A few years ago, I heard an idea for a fantasy baseball league that I thought was really interesting. The league would consist of just 2 teams, each team with 15 players. There would be 10 position players (one at each position, an extra infielder, and an extra outfielder) and 5 pitchers (4 starters, 1 reliever). Normal leagues will consist of more teams with less players on each team. But this league gets weirder than that. Of the 30 players that make up the league, there can only be 1 from each team. That means if one person picks Chase Utley for their team, neither person can have Ryan Howard, Roy Halladay, Jayson Werth, etc. There are 30 teams in the league, so it works out to one player from each team - no more, no less. And for a final twist, these teams are to remain the same for the next 5 seasons.

I talked to my brother-in-law Jeremiah about this idea, and we were both excited to have this league together. It's probably the coolest thing we've ever done. A lot of planning went into this, including narrowing down realistic players from each team that one of us would pick and then ranking those players as a guide for us while we were having our live draft at a Buffalo Wild Wings in Richmond, Virginia. We also each had to come up with some type of strategy as to how we would draft our players. We ended up looking at the draft in slightly different ways, and we came up with very different teams in the process. Here's a look at each of our rosters:

Cameron - "Dippin' Dots" (named after the Ice Cream of the Future)
C - Joe Mauer MIN
1B - Albert Pujols STL
2B - Chase Utley PHI
3B - Evan Longoria TB
SS - Troy Tulowitzki COL
IF - Joey Votto CIN
OF - Justin Upton ARI
OF - Ryan Braun MIL
OF - Adam Jones BAL
OF - Andrew McCutchen PIT
SP - Felix Hernandez SEA
SP - Justin Verlander DET
SP - John Danks CWS
SP - Jered Weaver LAA
RP - Andrew Bailey OAK

Jeremiah - "The Flying Cars" (named after what we will be driving in 5 years)
C - Geovany Soto CHC
1B - Mark Teixeira NYY
2B - Aaron Hill TOR
3B - Ryan Zimmerman WAS
SS - Hanley Ramirez FLA
IF - Adrian Gonzalez SD
OF - Jason Heyward ATL
OF - Matt Kemp LAD
OF - Grady Sizemore CLE
OF - Nelson Cruz TEX
SP - Tim Lincecum SF
SP - Zack Greinke KC
SP - Jon Lester BOS
SP - Wandy Rodriguez HOU
RP - Francisco Rodriguez NYM

Jeremiah had the first pick of the draft. I then had the 2nd and 3rd. He then had the 4th and 5th. And so on until the last pick of the draft, which belonged to me. Here is the order the players were picked in:
Jeremiah - 1. Hanley Ramirez
Cam - 2. Joe Mauer 3. Albert Pujols
J - 4. Tim Lincecum 5. Mark Teixeira
C - 6. Chase Utley 7. Evan Longoria
J - 8. Ryan Zimmerman 9. Jason Heyward
C - 10. Justin Upton 11. Felix Hernandez
J - 12. Matt Kemp 13. Zack Greinke
C - 14. Troy Tulowitzki 15. Ryan Braun
J - 16. Grady Sizemore 17. Jon Lester
C - 18. Justin Verlander 19. Adam Jones
J - 20. Geovany Soto 21. Adrian Gonzalez
C - 22. Andrew Bailey 23. John Danks
J - 24. Francisco Rodriguez 25. Nelson Cruz
C - 26. Jered Weaver 27. Joey Votto
J - 28. Aaron Hill 29. Wandy Rodriguez
C - 30. Andrew McCutchen

It can be seen here that Jer decided to focus more on pitching and I on hitting. Neither team is clearly better or worse than the other, and our differing strategies worked out fine for both of us. We were both happy with the teams we had after the draft. If you're into fantasy baseball and have a friend who likes it as much as you, I'd highly recommend trying this out. It's a ton of fun to think about and then draft, and it gives you some type of interest in every team. Also, we decided to make all of our players "starters" on the fantasy teams, meaning they get points every day no matter what. I couldn't decide to sit Felix Hernandez because he's pitching against the Yankees. We get all of the good and the bad with every player, and this makes the league very low-maintenance. All we do is check on how we are doing after each day.

I am leading the league thus far, but not by much. And it doesn't really matter that much at this point, since we still have over 4 1/2 seasons to see how things turn out. At the end of 5 seasons, the loser has to pay for some freak nasty tickets to a Phillies game. And the winner will get to choose if he wants to go first or second in the next draft.