by sinicalypse » Mon Aug 01, 2005 9:33 pm
every year just about everyone who plays f-baseball manages to find some players who come out of nowhere and produce some serious numbers, maybe for a week, or sometimes for the whole season. my golden example is in my first season, 2001, i got this rookie 3B from the cardinals named albert pujols who was like .350/3/10 after a couple'a weeks of the season. the rest is history.
so i wanted to ask all'y'all who has been miraculously clutch or hellaciously awful for you this season
i'll start with the subjects from my main team:
- nomar garciaparra. i'm doing a combined 12 leagues this season, 2 with friends and friends-of-friends, and 10 random public leagues (one winners league). after about 10 drafts, i took a gander at nomar's good spring #s and decided that if i could get him on the relative cheaps i'd get a guy who would at least be a solid .300/20/80, and at best could be like .335/30/130. either way, solid production at SS could make up for my OF not potentially being the best, as every season there will be people like andruw jones, basically a guy with a solid .270/30/100 pedigree who could go apefeces and have a career year, like he's doing this year. welp, nomar sucked it up, doing like .180/0/4 for me, then he tore his groin. i scuttled around with kaz matsui and cesar izturis for 2-3 weeks before i found...
- felipe lopez, perhaps the biggest arse-saver i've encountered in my 4-plus seasons of f-baseball. i nabbed him early on when he had something like 3-4 HR in about a week or two of playing time, and since then he's put up .293/13/41/9 with 55 runs. while he technically hasn't produced at the pace that he did early on for me, he's seemingly a pretty for-real guy for the season, as he seems to come out of little slumps (smething like 5/35 type stuff) with a HR, or a SB as of late. then you've got his versatility, as he's eligible at 2B/SS/3B, which is great for juggling around guys on travel days or when injuries/slumps strike. so yeah, it's not the #1 shortstop in baseball type numbers, but it's very solid stuff in a position where not every team has a dynamite for-sure productive player at SS.
- ryan freel has been a pretty good steals guy for me. while he certainly isn't an RBI threat to the point where it hampers his overall value (even when he's got like 10 SB in a month, he's usually ranked in the 300s-400s for overall player-rank) he's a dirt-cheap guy who can get you solid SB production if you can handle the HR/RBI hit. my main offensive weakness coming out of the draft was SBs, as i only had brian roberts as a 30 SB type threat, but then i had freel. one of my f-baseball cohorts, the board's very own kolbsaves, ridiculed me about freel from day one, noting that d'angelo jimenez had the job and freel was trash. while not using him fulltime and missing at least one 3 SB game, he's managed to put up .289/2/7/20 with 34 runs, and if i had played him every day i'd have about .295/2/10/29 with 55-60 runs. again, not worldbeating stuff, no scott podsednik, but still, 20 SBs is clutch for ~60% duty on my team.
- daryle ward actually had a decent little run with my team. while hafner was stagnant at around .270/4/20 in may, i benched him in favor of d-ward who managed a .299/2/17 with 10 runs in something like a 2 week run for pronkdaddy. i remember back when he came up with houston he was supposed to have 25-35 HR power, but it seems like he never fully materializes that potential... this season he's been solid with around 60-65 rbis, but still, getting 17 rbis in two weeks isn't the worst thing in the world.
- nick swisher was recruited as a stopgap fill-in for the ailing hafner, and in about a week or maybe 9-10 days or so, he's put up a .316/3/12 with 7 runs. once hafner comes back, he's got OF eligibility so he'll at least be a bench stalwart unless something better comes around.
- jermaine dye was a guy that prolly wasn't drafted in your league, or if he was it was in the late rounds, and then he didnt survive for any more than a month as he started off slow as hell. i nabbed him around late may or early june, and since then he's put up a solid .276/8/22/3 with 20 runs. overall he's got about 21 homeruns, 45-55 RBIs, and 8 SB, which is pretty solid if you dont have three for-sure OFs going on.
- i gave johnny peralta a trial run as i looked him up and was like "wow, he's .300/14/45 for the season". he's had one start for me, yesterday, and i've got him at .250 with 4 RBI. i'm probably going to keep him around, that way if he gets hot for a week or two i can perhaps use him in some capacity to deal a SS around the trade deadline. or if brian roberts keeps slumping or troy glaus gets hurt, i can shift felipe lopez to 2B or 3B and use peralta at SS. if hafner can come back and mash once again, that indians lineup is solid enough to give peralta plenty of opportunies to rack up #s at a position where not everyone has a studly number-producer.
- aj pierzynski has been good too. i totally botched catcher in my draft, opting for KC masterpiece's jack buck. ow. i then went the bengie molina route, but couldnt keep him as at the time he went on the DL i had 2-3 other people on the DL... so after getting .444/1/2 out of lecroy in about 2-3 games, i switched to AJ. his average has fluctuated from like .235 to .265 over the last month or two, but as it stands right now he's .264/14/42 with 33 runs. i really hope he can manage to hit .300 for august or sept or both, cuz he's always been a competent catcher who can hit .275ish with about 10 homeruns and 65+ RBIs, so when you factor in the comiskey park factor, these homeruns aren't the biggest shock i nthe world. while i wouldn't mind a varitek or even b-molina or how about v-mart who's seemingly revitalized, pierzynski has been a pretty solid option at catcher this year.
- oh yeah, and i guess brian roberts counts. i drafted him hoping for .280 and 30+ steals, but as of right now i've got him for .338/15/50/17 with 59 runs. i missed a HR by him for the first time last night, and a 2-3 SBs i think, but at the same time i've managed to get .338 out of him, as opposed to the .325 mark he's sitting at right now. i maybe should have traded him when he was .350/14/45/17, but i spose he's a solid option to have as i just can't seem to get 100% excited about the ryan freel experience as an everyday thing at 2B.
- oh yeah, and one pitcher makes it: brian fuentes. i started off the season as a drafter of the tsao-phenomenom. while he managed to get me two saves at something like 6.00/2.00 before getting DL'd, i nabbed fuentes some time later and have gotten 2 wins, 15 saves, 45k and a 3.00/1.30. he and todd jones (1 win, 12 saves, 18k 1.23/0.68 accrued from the point where i acquired him for bruce chen, as the dude i traded with thought that mota would get the job back within a week or two tops) have totally saved my arse in saves, keeping me in third place with 69 saves.
- oh ok two pitchers make it. after he reeled off about 6 or 7 wins in his first 7 or 8 starts, and after i totally didnt pull the trigger on nabbing him off of the wire, i traded jason schmidt straight up for jon garland. garland got beat up when i first got him, but since then he's settled down to put up 9 wins, 46k 3.41/1.19. hey, i can dig it.
wow this was epic. as for the suckfests who i will spare you the blabbing about: jason schmidt, danny graves, latroy hawkins, daniel cabrera (he's had success, sure, but for me he's ended up with a 11.77/2.08) and technically, kevin mench has pissed me off. i've had him for between 2-3 months, and while he's had success, i manage to start him on the wrong days, as he's gotten me a .242/2/12/1 with 7 runs.
yeah so who do you have?
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