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Sunday, September 26, 2010

The Bucks Win!!

Sampson's team won their first game today. Way to go boys!! 18-12 I think. The got to play on the big field this year, artificial turf and what not. I think next week I will help coach so I can go down on the field.

Fantasy "Real Deal" Pitchers for 2011

As the 2010 fantasy baseball season er "real" baseball season winds to a close there are a couple of things I wanted to get down to kind of be ready for the draft next season. Basically I don't care for Yahoo! rankings of players and I think their system is seriously messed up when it comes to pitchers. According to the old Y! there are 30 starters and 12 relievers that are in the top 100, but when you start looking at who can give you more in a head-to-head one-week-battle pitchers offer far less than there positional counter parts who on a good week can contribute in 5 categories on 6 days. For starting pitchers you get a max of 4 categories and usually only 1 start per week, although sometimes you get the magic 2 start week (rarely), but you can also get really hosed before and after the all-star break. For these reasons I don't feel any of the top 50 picks should go to pitchers and as I have stated before I won't risk a 4th rounder on a starter again, but should any of the following 10 guys show up around the 50th pick or so they are definitely worth a look as I would consider them proven "real deal" pitchers for the upcoming year. You know, baring injury or trades and stuff in the off season. These are in no particular order.

King Felix Hernandez - I didn't realize how good this guy was but he is way up there in innings (which actually could be a liability for next season), K's, and his ERA and WHIP are pretty stellar. Wins are a little harder to come by in Seattle.

Cliff Lee - Yeah former Cy Young winner innings eater and future pin stripe wearer (most likely), still one of the top guy and worth it if he falls to 50 or so. Lefties aren't a bad choice in NY.

CC Sabathia - Yeah former Cy Young winner innings eater and present pin stripe wearer (unfortunately), still one of the top guy and worth it if he falls to 50 or so. Lefties aren't a bad choice in NY.

David Price - Lefties that can throw high 90's wins 18, K 180 plus and have an ERA less than 3.00 in the AL East are pretty nice. Well worth a 5th or 6th round pick.

Jon Lester - Lefties that can throw high 90's wins 19, K 220 plus and have an ERA less than 3.00 in the AL East are pretty nice. Well worth a 5th or 6th round pick. At first I wasn't sure of how good this guy was, I mean he was a nice story about coming back from cancer, but this guy is a top 5 pitching talent. Definitely the Real Deal.

Roy Halladay - 200+ innings - 20 wins, 200+ K's, ERA of around 2.50 and a WHIP under 1.10. And he pitched a perfecto this year. Two Words - Real Deal.

Josh Johnson - Over 1k per inning and he pitched over 180 innings . . . before September. Which is a little cause for concern next season that he didn't pitch an entire month, but he was by far one of the best pitchers April - August. Hopefully his stock drops because without even playing month he is still in the top 30 according to Y!.

The Cardinal Tandem of Wainwright and Carpenter - Wainwright is the top rated Y! pitcher of the season 20/213 K's/2.42/1.05, just slightly ahead of Roy. Carpenter checks in around 15/175/3.42/1.20.

Tim Lincecum - He was a little off this year and well under performed his preseason Y! rank of 9, but he is a former Cy Young winner and I look for him to bounce back. He is probably at the bottom of my list and he checks in with 15 W's/220 K's/3.51/1.27. The last two categories are a little high, and that is what will get you in fantasy head-to-head, not worth a top 6 pick in my opinion, but someone will take him.

I figure a couple of these guys will be around after the fifth round as Yahoo! is sure to screw up the preseason rankings, and when they are I might even draft one. . . might.

Tuesday, September 21, 2010

Frogs Sprinting Down the Stretch

The fantasy baseball season is quickly coming to an end and the old Ungiggable Frogs have found themselves atop the standings as the last week of action commences. It has been a long battle back as I have never been more than 10 games out of first, but I was as low as 7th during the season. Anyway I still have one more week after trouncing Stevie 8-0-2 last week. The guy I'm playing this week has been inactive for like a month, but I think he has decided to play this, oh well. We'll see if the old frogs can't bring home another title. Since the season is almost over I just wanted to get some thoughts down to remind myself of things for next season. One is trust my gut and not Yahoo! rankings. I felt like Adam Wainwright was the best pitcher available with my 4th pick, but instead I went with Dan Haren because Chris Carpenter was still on the board and Yahoo! had him ranked ahead of Wainwright and it just didn't make sense to pick Wainwright over Carpenter cause they are on the same team. Anyway that was wrong because even though Carpenter is ranked like 15 or something Wainwright is #6, meanwhile Haren is around 150 or so. Not terrible and certainly not worth dropping, but well under where I drafted him. Anyway the lesson for next year is to ignore Yahoo! cause the basically don't know what they are talking about. I don't think I'll draft a pitcher in the top 100 next year, my other pick was Beckett for Boston and he was flat out horrible. I did end up dropping him, but I mean what is the use there are tons of pitchers available during the season that do awesome. The only two starters I have kept all season are Haren and David Price. Picking up Price at around the 200th pick kind of makes up for Haren. Billy Butler is another who has disappointed, but at least been consistent. I read an article before the season of Butler vs. Morales, kind of a fantasy shake down comparison. Anyway the consensus was Morales was more ready and as luck would have I actually ended up with both out of the draft. Morales was definitely the better talent, until he broke his leg . . . in like May. I think he stayed in the top 100 for about another month, but he was sorely missed in the old frog's lineup. If I had him for the full season it is quite possible that this season wouldn't even be in doubt. As it was I managed to pick up Russell Branyan who has performed decently given he didn't even play the first month. Kind of like the anti-Morales or Bizaro-Morales. Either way he filled in nicely, but was a step below what I had. It is just very hard to replace top 50 talent during the season. If I do manage to win I think the MVP will be Troy Tulowitzki, who pretty much sealed the last week for me with 9 runs 6 HRs and 17 rbi's with a BA of .346. That might be the most incredible week of stats I have seen by one player. Well as long he continues to do that I shouldn't have a problem, lol. Did I mention he was my number one pick. Alright 2 more weeks and we'll see how it all shakes out. . .

The Greatest Moment in OU football History . . .

. . . well you know not counting MAC Championships, which I don't. The Bobcats put the old smack down on one of the other large state universities this past weekend. Well at least the mascot "Rufus" put a beating on the other school's mascot "Brutus". Here is the video just in case you missed it.




The only bad thing is Ohio actually apologized for this. Why? No apology needed for something this awesome. Way to go Rufus, even if you picked up a lifetime ban for this. . . still totally worth it.

Totally unrelated, but Sampson will be playing for the Bucks this year in flag football. I guess I'll keep an eye for any Bobcats that come along, but there shouldn't be any problems as his team doesn't have a mascot.

Monday, September 06, 2010

Disney Vacation


Oh yes we did get to go to Disney World. As part of the lucarative winnings of the fishing derby was an all expenses paid trip to Disney World. You just won the Beallsville First Christian Church Fishing Derby what are you going to do next - I'm going to Disney World. Ok that isn't how it happened, although expenses paid would have been an awesome way to go, we actually paid our own way and the trip was completely unassociated with the fishing derby. Anyway it was the kids' first trip to Disney, second for me, and 3rd for Sophie. You see me and Sophie went to Disney on our honeymoon, but that was pre-blog. Sophie's Mom went with us too, to help with the kids and carry all of our stuff and take our pictures and what not, just kidding although she did get to do all of that too plus ride roller coasters with me. We went at the end of July, week of the 18th to be exact, and surprising Florida is quite warm that time of year. Ok it is down right hot, but the kids did excellent at the parks. We didn't even have to get a stroller. I think the excitement kind of kept them going, plus Sophie had started them on a training regiment early in the summer getting them used to walking by taking them to the track, which turned out to be a very good idea. We did 5 parks in 5 days, which by the end of the vacation I needed another vacation, and it was very fast paced. We stayed off site at Fantasy World Club Villas, and they were very nice. I would recommend them to anyone, as they were a 2 story villa with 2 bedrooms, kitchen, living room, 2 baths and a washer/dryer. Plus where we were at was right next to the pool so that was neat. The only bad thing is there is no close stores for food, but we did take a suitcase full of food so we would have snacks for the parks and pop-tarts in the morning :D. Oh and the water sucked (insert mr. yuck symbol here). So the schedule we planned on doing was 2 days at Disney 1 day at Universal and 2 more days at Disney. By staying at an off-site hotel we could go to different parks, which in a nice advantage, the bad thing is Disney was the only park worth going to. If we had it to do over again I would say we stay at Disney and just do the last day at either Magic Kingdom or Epcot. I'll tidy this up in a bit, I have to relinquish control of the computer to the girl for now.

Fishing Derby of Aught 10

This year was special because it was the first time that Peach got a trophy. She was kind of upset when Sampson got another trophy and she thought she wasn't going to get one, but when she found out she won she had the biggest smile on her face. Sampson fished with Uncle Bo and got the "Most Fish" trophy while Peach and I pulled in the one for "Smallest Fish". What? She could have won a trophy for anything and it wouldn't of mattered as long as she got one. And she actually did bring it in. Old dad was busy trying to bring the biggest fish, but my line got tangled on a old rope (which I estimate the rope's length at about 30' which would have one for longest catch, you know if there was a category for that) and it ended up costing me about 5 minutes out of our 15. If that wouldn't have happened we might have ended up with the most too. But I'm not greedy, I'm just glad Peach finally got a trophy to put on her wall. Check out how excited my little girl was. Also Nippert (from the famous sheriff election of aught 8 or so) got the win for biggest fish. See he is money at making the big catch, too bad you didn't elect him sheriff so he could be "catching" criminals instead.


Oops what happened to August

Holy cow I forgot to blog in August. . . well "forgot". Sometimes I go through periods where I don't blog for a while, I mean come on how was I going to set the record between blog posts of over 2 years. Well on this "labor" day I've decided to "work" on the old blog and catch some stuff up from over the summer. Wow, I seem to be using the old "quotes" a little bit too much.