Fantasy Update for me

On June 14th, the standings in the NL LABR looked like this:

1 Baseball HQ (Doug Dennis)                   97.5
2 Baseball Info Solutions (Steve Moyer)   95.5
3 Rotoworld (Wolf/ Colton)                        81.0
4 Hardball Times (Derek Carty)                80.5
5 ESPN.com (Tristan H. Cockcroft)          75.5
6 RotoWire (Dalton Del Don)                    74.5
7 ESPN (Eric Karabell)                              67.0
8 Sandlot Shrink (Bob Radomski)              64.5
9 Razzball (Rudy Gamble)                         62.5
10 NFBC (Ambrosius/ Childs)                   58.5
11 Yahoo (Brandon Funston)                     56.0
12 USA TODAY (Steve Gardner)            49.0
13 Baseball Prospectus (Clay Davenport) 48.0

This was a deeply embarrassing place to be, not the least because I was the league’s defending champion. I had also been very high on my team coming out of the draft, projecting myself as having a first-place team. Now it can certainly be argued that many players weren’t as good as I thought they were, but I truly believe that the main reason for this standing was injuries. The injury bug hit my team early and often; at one point in late April, over more than $120 of my $260 worth of players was off of major league rosters, either on the DL or in the minors – a list that went something like Ryan Zimmerman, Zach Greinke, Angel Pagan, Ubaldo Jimenez, Andrew Cashner, Barry Zito, Roger Bernadina, Jeff Keppinger, Ross Ohlendorf, and probably some others I’ve (no doubt chosen to) forget about.

Most of those players are back, and while they’ve been slow to regain their full form the change in my fortunes over the last six weeks has been most gratifying:

1 Baseball HQ (Doug Dennis)                     102.0
2 Baseball Info Solutions (Steve Moyer)      86.0
3 Rotoworld (Wolf/ Colton)                           78.0
4 Hardball Times (Derek Carty)                   77.0
5 Baseball Prospectus (Clay Davenport)  70.5
6 ESPN.com (Tristan H. Cockcroft)             67.5
7 Sandlot Shrink (Bob Radomski)                 66.0
8 ESPN (Eric Karabell)                                 65.5
9 NFBC (Ambrosius/ Childs)                        64.5
10 Razzball (Rudy Gamble)                          61.0
11 RotoWire (Dalton Del Don)                      60.0
12 USA TODAY (Steve Gardner)                58.5
13 Yahoo (Brandon Funston)                         53.5

I could conceivably make up another 10 points or so, giving me a realistic shot at third place, which would be a very satisfying performance – a very respectable title defense. I could, just as easily or even easier, find myself working back down through the pack. Being able to turn this one around elevates what was already a strong fantasy year for me:

LABR, currently 5th/13

MABL (work league, both leagues, fixed price menu of players) – currently 1st (of 12)

Groundhog League (NL E and C only, lots of odd rules) – currently 1st (of 9)

Murder City (AL) – currently 3rd/12; not likely to catch both teams ahead of me, but a pretty good lead on the 4th place team.

Murder City Lite (NL) – currently 2nd/14, good chance of winning it, as the lead has bounced back and forth

The best case scenario from here looks like 3 wins, a 2nd, and a 3rd, which would be easily my best overall year for drafting. The last three mentioned leagues are money leagues, so there’s a good chance that October will show a nice profit. You could say that I am very, very pleased with how my projection routines ran this year.