Managing a fantasy baseball team is about more than drafting a guaranteed 40-home run hitter, or a 200-strikeout pitcher. It’s about putting together a team of players that you believe in. It’s about taking a chance on an athletic young right fielder with quick hands, on a new setup man with dangerous movement on his fastball, on an aging first baseman-turned-dh who may or may not have anything left but has this look in his eye that says you can still trust him with men on in the late innings.
Some people give in to home team bias and draft the entire starting outfield, others stubbornly or superstitiously avoid their teams’ aces to prevent double heartbreak. Personally, I won’t go near players that have publicly revealed themselves to be schmucks — the offenses range from the minor and perhaps imagined (hitting a little too well against my home team, and smirking while doing so) to the more legitimate (regular hissy fits), to the genuinely despicable (domestic abuse).
And I have a soft spot for the cute ones. Sometimes that works – see Barry Zito’s stats, 2000-2003. Sometimes that doesn’t – see Barry Zito’s stats, 2007. Either way, having a stake in a sexy, shaggy-haired pitcher’s strikeout total in an otherwise meaningless game is exactly what fantasy baseball is about.
1 Comment
April 17, 2008 at 11:02 pm
GARY SHEFFIELD SHOULD GO HANG HIMSELF FROM A COMPUTER WIRE