tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-67857949039161963452024-03-14T00:50:56.584-05:00The Waiver WireThe Waiver Wire is dedicated to helping you manage your team throughout the season with strategy advice and player profiles, with a focus on leagues with daily transactions.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger439125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6785794903916196345.post-86718384762616832432018-03-05T08:21:00.001-05:002019-07-29T09:30:39.053-05:00New websiteJust putting in a plug for my new website.<br />
<br />
FCFL Tailgaters is a fan site for the <a href="http://fcfltailgaters.blogspot.com/">Fan Controlled Football League (FCFL)</a><br />
<br />
It will include information on the <a href="http://fcfltailgaters.blogspot.com/p/fan-tokens.html">FCFL FAN Token and ICO</a><br />
<br />
Also, adding a link to lots of useful information about <a href="https://sites.google.com/view/smartcitytechnology/smart-city-projects">smart city projects</a> in case anyone is interested in learning more about them.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6785794903916196345.post-58723984787340122052014-05-02T14:35:00.003-05:002014-05-02T14:35:32.314-05:00Box Score SiteGreat site for consolidated <a href="http://www.oneboxscore.com/">box score</a> data.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6785794903916196345.post-8563343747549508882014-03-23T06:14:00.002-05:002014-03-23T06:14:54.085-05:00Time for something newIf you've ever wanted to try something new, here's a site I'm creating devoted to <a href="http://fantasyvolleyball.blogspot.com/">fantasy volleyball</a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6785794903916196345.post-53608436860658219332012-02-05T06:01:00.003-05:002012-02-05T06:03:26.147-05:00Fantasy Hockey DataIf you're looking for statistics and data to help you win at <a href="http://nhlicetime.blogspot.com">fantasy hockey</a>, check out <a href="http://nhlicetime.blogspot.com">NHL Ice Time</a>. It updates each day to show players with the greatest increases and decreases in playing time in the previous days games compared to their season averages.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6785794903916196345.post-24764952981912955932011-07-21T05:09:00.003-05:002011-07-21T05:11:06.036-05:00Football Advice For 2011If you're looking for fantasy football advice for 2011, look no further than Fanduel Insider, which has plenty of stuff to help you out in preparation for <a href="http://www.fanduel.com/insider/2011/07/21/fantasy-football-2011-draft-strategy-tips-to-live-by/">fantasy football 2011</a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6785794903916196345.post-57288508551444150052010-08-30T05:07:00.002-05:002010-08-30T05:11:47.224-05:00UpdateThree months isn't long to wait to update a blog, right?<br /><br />Quick update on my teams: The slow draft team is 10th out of 15. Playing part of the season without a second baseman will do that. My bad Online Double Play team just worked it's way up to 5th out 12. That's as high as it's going to make it, as I'm trailing the 4th place team by 17 points. My good Online Double Play team is fighting for first in it's league. Today, I'm in first. But I've been swapping positions on a daily basis with one other team. As recently as two weeks ago, there were six teams shuffling positions daily, but the race seems to have narrowed to three of us now. None of us are anywhere near the top positions in the overall standings.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6785794903916196345.post-48312511934658596902010-05-17T04:23:00.003-05:002010-05-17T04:41:04.921-05:00NFBC Leagues UpdateQuick updates on my three NFBC teams...<br /><br />The slow draft team is still struggling, but at the moment it's moved up from last place to 13th out of 15. Surprisingly, the pitching has been adequate, despite my ending up with only 5 starting pitchers in major league rotations so far. However, my hitting has been awful. The main issue wasn't so much that I didn't try to draft depth. It was that I did a lousy job of identifying players who would receive full time at bats, and have ended up with several part time players in my lineup for part of the season. The most damaging situation has been having to use Kaz Matsui in place of Brian Roberts.<br /><br />My first NFBC team (DailyBaseballData.com) has had a narrow lead for first place for the past couple of weeks. It's surprisingly that it's held an uninterrupted lead for that whole time, because it's definitely one of the lower ranked 1st place teams in the overall contests, varying from a high of 99th overall to a low of around 125th overall during that time. When I drafted the team, it looked like the starting pitching was weak, but getting Ricky Romero, Phil Hughes, and C.J. Wilson has really improved the situation. The one major weakness has been saves, with only Qualls and Dotel as healthy closers. In an attempt to fix that problem, I made my first expensive free agent purchase of the season, winning Jose Contreras for 151 FAAB yesterday. Hopefully he'll get most of the saves while Lidge and Madson are out, and will hold onto the closer job for a while.<br /><br />My other NFBC team is still struggling, at 10th place out of 12 in its league. Both pitching and hitting have been problems, although the roster still looks respectable in all areas (to me). At this point I think it's safe to say that this team won't be winning me the $60,000 for first place overall, but I do think it has the potential to gain some ground and be competitive in its league. Another month near the bottom of the standings, and I'll change my opinion on that.<br /><br />I also wanted to responded to a user comment on Chad Qualls. Yes, his statistics stink so far this year. But the last time I checked (a couple of days ago) he had 13 strikeouts and 5 walks (in 13 innings pitched) with a 48% groundball rate. That means he's pitching fine, and has just suffered from a little bit of bad luck so far. As long as Arizona remains patient with him, he should retain all of his value. Normally I'd be very worried that they wouldn't have patience, but their entire bullpen has been so bad this season that they don't seem to have any tempting alternatives for the closer role.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6785794903916196345.post-21065358793913980312010-05-06T13:12:00.003-05:002010-05-06T13:18:37.261-05:00Free Daily Fantasy Baseball Games, Win Cash PrizesIf you've never tried any of the sites with daily fantasy baseball games, now is the perfect time. New players at <a href="http://partners.fanduel.com/processing/clickthrgh.asp?btag=a_63b_88 ">Fanduel</a> can play in 50 person contests tomorrow (Friday) with the top three finshers in each winning cash prizes of $50, $30, and $20. Just click the ad below (not the one to the right of the screen, which will take you to a different landing page), register, and pick your team. Then sit back, enjoy Friday's games, and win some cash!<br /><br /><!-- Affiliate Code Do NOT Modify--><a href="http://partners.fanduel.com/processing/clickthrgh.asp?btag=a_63b_86" target="_blank"><img src="http://partners.fanduel.com/processing/impressions.asp?btag=a_63b_86" alt="FanDuel - Fantasy Baseball Free Game" border=0 width="336" height="280" ></a><!-- End affiliate Code-->Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6785794903916196345.post-809441060987695622010-04-30T10:45:00.003-05:002010-04-30T10:58:36.758-05:00FAAB BiddingIt's been a while since I posted, so I'll give a quick update on my teams.<br /><br />The slow draft team ('The Waiver Wire') has been awful. It's firmly planted in last place. Surprisingly, the problem hasn't been the pitching (yet), but my offense is near last in all categories. There's not a lot to say about the team other than this...they say that if you sit down at the poker table and don't know who the sucker is within five minutes, then it's you. What they forget to tell you is that sometimes even when you think that you DO know who the sucker is, you're wrong...and it's you.<br /><br />The first NFBC Double Play team that I drafted ('DailyBaseballData.com') has had a good week, and had moved up to 3rd place in it's league this morning. This league is pretty evenly matched at this point, so much so that the team that was leading yesterday is in 5th today. What's particularly encouraging about my move up is that it's happened despite Cruz and Anderson joining Mike Gonzalez on the DL. The only bad news is that this is the team I didn't think had enough pitching going into the season. My rotation is now Lester, Anderson (DL), Slowey, C.J. Wilson, Hughes, and Romero. That's not awful, but unlikely to score well enough to put me into the running for the top overall teams. I'm also thin at closer, where Qualls and Dotel are my only healthy options...and both look like performance (and health) risks at this point.<br /><br />The second NFBC Double Play team that I drafted ('Fanduel.com') has had a decent weak too, finally moving out of the cellar and up to 10th place. While the team's performance has been disappointing so far, I think it's too early to completely write it off.<br /><br />One of the features of NFBC that's a new experience for me has been Free Agent Acquisition (FAAB) bidding. Each team gets a budget of $1,000 to bid on players every Sunday night. There are such a wide variety of strategies being used that all sorts of weird situations come up. Several players in my leagues have already gone for more than $100 higher than the next highest bid. One owner in each league has already exhausted more than $700 of their $1,000 budget. For the most part, I'm making frequent small bids, and trying not to treat any one player as a 'must have'. I anticipate using my budget gradually throughout the season to patch lineup holes, and pick up players with favorable schedules. I want to try to avoid filling up my bench with lots of speculative players who may or may not ever have a use...although with my closers struggling I'm finding the that temptation to pick up potential future closers is getting the best of me in some cases.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6785794903916196345.post-77627430260870209442010-04-21T11:05:00.001-05:002010-04-21T11:05:26.365-05:00Is It Time To Worry Yet?A common question for fantasy baseball players to ask at this time of year is "Is it time to worry yet?". The correct answer is "it depends". Some situations where poor performance might be reason to worry:<br /><br />1. There are concerns that an injury is contributing to the player's poor performance.<br /><br />2. The player is in danger of losing playing time due to the poor performance.<br /><br />3. The player is old enough that the poor performance may indicate that they've reached the steep part of the aging curve.<br /><br />4. A pitcher has poor peripheral stats (K/9 and BB/9) AND is showing reduced velocity on their fastball.<br /><br />If none of those conditions are present, then it's much too early to worry. On one popular baseball forum, a number of people said that they were worried about Hunter Pence. Why? This is a player who has a fairly established performance level. He just turned 27 years old. As far as a I know, there are no injury concerns and there's no risk of him losing playing time. If you're playing in a league where he may be available at a discount, he's exactly the type of player you should be targeting.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6785794903916196345.post-88609428256400965692010-04-11T05:31:00.003-05:002010-04-11T05:37:41.790-05:00'Draft Champions' StrategyOne thing that became clear on Opening Day is that the key to strategy in the format that my slow draft team uses (which is called 'Draft Champions') is getting enough depth. Not only is there no trading (like all NFBC contests), but there’s no free agent pool either. You play the whole season with the original 45 players you drafted. I was aware of the hitting depth I’d need, but definitely underestimated what I’d want for starting pitchers. I think that drafting 8 or 9 pitchers would be more than enough, and I’d even be able to rotate some of them out of my lineup on weeks when they had an unfavorable start. Things haven’t worked out that way. Smoltz retired rather than finding a team to sign with. McDonald and Miller were sent down to the minors, as their teams apparently weren’t as high on their potential as I was. And Rzepzynski was injured…leaving me with only five starting pitchers. Not good…and lesson learned for next year.<br /><br />Speaking of which, there’s talk of NFBC organizing next year’s slow draft/draft champions leagues into a larger overall contest with a prize pool for overall standings. That’s a GREAT idea, and terrific news for people without a lot of time to participate in a normal draft and plan FAAB acquisitions all season. All you’d do is participate in the slow draft, and then set your lineup (among only 45 players) each week. Count me in!Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6785794903916196345.post-22852574164820661442010-04-06T04:26:00.004-05:002010-04-06T04:38:30.506-05:00Catching UpIt's been tough keeping up posting with all of the excitement over Opening Day. Over the next few days, I'll see if I can get caught up. I'll start today by sharing my thoughts on my second NFBC Online Double Play draft. Going into it, I wanted to make a few changes from my strategy in the first one:<br /><br />1. Get at least one more very strong starting pitcher. <br />2. Try to 'reach' on less of my favorite players, and I see if could make more 'value' picks.<br />3. Where possible, diversify by not picking players I had on the first team. I don't want an injury to kill the chances of both teams, so especially in the first five or six rounds I didn't want to repeat picks.<br />4. Use my bench to take advantage of the one game 'week 0' scoring period.<br />5. Get Matt Wieters and Francisco Liriano.<br /><br />I definitely think I succeeded on the first count. My top three of Johnson, Hamels, and Anderson is a little strong than my other team (which has Lester, Anderson, and Slowey).<br /><br />Hard to say whether I did a good job of getting value picks overall. Speed was definitely undervalued in this draft, so I think Reyes at 32 and Morgan at 185 were good value. Also, I think McLouth at 137 was good, and he certainly wasn't someone on my radar.<br /><br />No repeats until C. Gonzalez at 89, so that part of my plan was successful.<br /><br />Gardner and Okajima made sure that my 'week 0' strategy was worthwhile.<br /><br />I reached a bit for Wieters at 56. Liriano was gone before 152, where I had planned to take him. I really think I'm going to regret not getting him on either team.<br /><br />One other pick I'm questioning is Jason Werth at 41. Based on ADP, this represents good value. The reason I don't like it, is that I think really think Nelson Cruz is a superior player who fits the same profile. I didn't pick Cruz, because I thought there was a chance he'd make it back to me at 56...in which case I would have tried to wait until 65 for Wieters. It didn't work out that way, since Cruz went before my next pick.<br /><br />My other mistake was not realizing that Rauch was still available when I took Madson. That could really cost me, if Lidge comes back relatively soon.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6785794903916196345.post-33437220231042257002010-04-01T12:52:00.001-05:002010-04-01T12:54:07.338-05:00Another NFBC Double Play Online DraftAt the last minute I decided to do another NFBC Double Play Online. I'll list my full draft results here, and post some discussion in the next few days:<br /><br />1 8 Miguel Cabrera 1B<br />2 17 Troy Tulowitzki SS<br />3 32 Jose Reyes SS<br />4 41 Jayson Werth OF<br />5 56 Matt Wieters C<br />6 65 Josh Johnson P<br />7 80 Cole Hamels P<br />8 89 Carlos Gonzalez OF<br />9 104 Jose Lopez 3B<br />10 113 Carlos Quentin OF<br />11 128 Brett Anderson P<br />12 137 Nate McLouth OF<br />13 152 A.J. Pierzynski C<br />14 161 Chad Qualls P<br />15 176 Mike Gonzalez P<br />16 185 Nyjer Morgan OF<br />17 200 Matt Lindstrom P<br />18 209 Ryan Madson P<br />19 224 Travis Snider OF<br />20 233 Justin Masterson P<br />21 248 Casey Blake 3B<br />22 257 Aaron Harang P<br />23 272 Aubrey Huff 1B<br />24 281 J.D. Drew OF<br />25 296 Brett Gardner OF<br />26 305 Daniel Bard P<br />27 320 Paul Maholm P<br />28 329 Hideki Okajima P<br />29 344 Felipe Paulino P<br />30 353 Damaso Marte PUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6785794903916196345.post-69504801488973160272010-03-29T11:50:00.002-05:002010-03-29T11:53:11.537-05:00Fanduel Daily Baseball Contest Launch<a href="http://www.fanduel.com/dailycontests">Fanduel</a> will be launching their daily baseball contests on Friday. In addition, they'll be launching multiplayer contests for all sports at the same time. New players can receive a $10 deposit bonus from them by entering LAUNCH10 in the promo code field of the registration form. Note that to enter a promo code, you'll need to register for the site using the small 'join' link in the upper right corner of the screen. If you register with the form on the main landing page (which doesn't provide anywhere to enter the promo code), then just send me an email and I'll get you credited for the $10 bonus.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6785794903916196345.post-20632308429054171072010-03-25T04:23:00.002-05:002014-06-06T06:14:05.067-05:00My Full NFBC RosterHere's my full roster for the NFBC Online Double Play team that I talked about yesterday. In general, my assumption was that I could pick up underrated pitchers and would also be able to improve my pitching stats through active roster management during the season, so I focused on hitters during the early rounds. As I mentioned before, I got a lot of hitters that I really like...in many cases by reaching a little. I don't think a lot of players on my team would be viewed as 'value' picks, at least when compared to their usual ADP. I'm not sure whether that's a good thing or a bad thing. I'll discuss the draft more over the next couple of weeks.<br />
<br />
Round 1: Prince Fielder<br />
Round 2: David Wright<br />
Round 3: Dustin Pedroia<br />
Round 4: Nelson Cruz<br />
Round 5: Jon Lester<br />
Round 6: Shin-Soo Choo<br />
Round 7: Alexei Ramirez<br />
Round 8: Carlos Gonzalez<br />
Round 9: Carlos Quentin<br />
Round 10: Brett Anderson<br />
Round 11: Mike Napoli<br />
Round 12: Chad Qualls<br />
Round 13: Garrett Jones<br />
Round 14: Mike Gonzalez<br />
Round 15: Octavio Dotel<br />
Round 16: Kevin Slowey<br />
Round 17: Franklin Gutierrez<br />
Round 18: Paul Konerko<br />
Round 19: Kevin Gregg<br />
Round 20: Ryan Theriot<br />
Round 21: Marc Rzepczynski<br />
Round 22: Phil Hughes<br />
Round 23: Juan Rivera<br />
Round 24: C.J. Wilson<br />
Round 25: Brandon Wood<br />
Round 26: Ivan Rodriguez<br />
Round 27: Orlando Hudson<br />
Round 28: Ricky Romero<br />
Round 29: Daniel Bard<br />
Round 30: Mike Adams<br />
<br />
There's a great new site available if you're interested in learning about <a href="http://horseracingpartnerships.blogspot.com/">horse racing partnerships</a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6785794903916196345.post-30912836646735215542010-03-24T11:45:00.003-05:002010-03-24T12:05:03.168-05:00NFBC Online Double Play DraftMy main league for this year is an NFBC Online Double Play. For those who don't know, here are the key facts:<br /><br />-$350 entry fee<br />-23 active players, 7 bench players<br />-5X5 scoring<br />-12 team leagues, with top two receiving prizes<br />-Additional prizes for top ten teams overall out of up to 1,080 teams<br /><br />I'll probably be talking about this league a lot during the season. For now, I'll just cover a few of the highlights (and lowlights) from my draft last night.<br /><br />The Good: I like my team and got a surprisingly large number of the players I was targeting. In two cases, a player I anticipated picking wasn't available, but a better player that I thought would be gone was available instead. I thought I'd get Miguel Cabrera with pick 1.10. He was gone, but I got Prince Fielder instead. I thought I'd get Josh Johnson with pick 5.10. He was gone, but I got Jon Lester instead. My offense is unusually balanced, with very few one dimensional players. I consider that an advantage, because an injury to one player generally won't have a disproportionate impact on any one category for me. My top two starters are a little better than I expected to end up with (Lester and Brett Anderson). I expected to get three low end closers, but ended up with four (Qualls, Gonzalez, Dotel, and Gregg).<br /><br />The Bad: There were three players I really wanted who weren't available when I hoped they'd be. I thought that even with yesterday's news, Jose Reyes might slip to pick 3.10. He didn't. I was very surprised and disappointed that Matt Wieters wasn't available at pick 6.3 (or even 5.10). And Francisco Liriano went a few picks before I was set to take him at 15.10. Missing out on Liriano caused the middle of my rotation to be a little weaker than I hoped. Slowey is my #3, and then I have to sort through Rzep, Hughes, Ricky Romero and CJ Wilson for the remaining permanent spots in my rotation. I like all of those guys, but I really think Liriano is poised to return to be a top pitcher. <br /><br />The Ugly: My plan if Reyes wasn't available was supposed to be that I would consider taking Felix Hernandez (if available) but would probably take Derek Jeter at 3.10. When the pick came up, Reyes and Hernandez were both gone. What threw me off was that Dustin Pedroia was somewhat unexpectedly still available. I had him projected for almost identical statistics to Jeter, but I almost always prefer the younger player in that situation. The one minor detail I forgot was that I had read about an injury to Pedroia a few hours earlier. I'm not sure if it was the excitement of the draft or what, but it completely slipped my mind until this morning. So I went ahead and picked Pedroia. Luckily for me, his x-rays came back negative today, so it looks like I may have dodged a bullet.<br /><br />The other ugliness arose from Fanball's new draft software. Overall I think the interface is pretty good, and some tweaking could make it exceptional. Unfortunately, there were some bugs that caused nearly an hour of delays early in the draft. An additional half hour or so of delays were caused by one player having three or four separate problems where he was in autodraft mode and ended up with players he didn't want...resulting in the draft being stopped and rolled back two or three picks. So our 9pm draft ended up finishing after 1:30am. In Fanball's defense, their customer support for NFBC is really amazing. We were provided with a phone number at the beginning of the draft. During the course of the draft several of us briefly lost internet connections, and I was easily able to get Geoff from Fanball on the phone, where he told me the picks I had missed and manually entered the player I wanted for my next picks.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6785794903916196345.post-4324392164360600922010-03-22T09:15:00.002-05:002010-03-22T09:22:31.293-05:00Interview With Daily Contest Player Who Made $8K in 2009I've been doing some part time work for the folks at <a href="http://partners.fanduel.com/processing/clickthrgh.asp?btag=a_151b_2">Fanduel</a> and recently had the opportunity to interview ‘Headchopper’, who is one of the top players on the site. Headchopper (whose real name is David) is a 30 year old real estate agent from Texas. Some readers of The Waiver Wire might be interested in what he had to say. What follows are some of the highlights of our conversation. <br /><br />Fanduel: You play in a pretty large amount of contests every day. I believe you’ve mentioned before that you were an overall winner in 2009. How much total profit did you make? <br /><br /><i>Headchopper: In 2009, I won various daily contests for $34,000+, and lost contests in the amount of $26,000. So there was a net profit of around $8,000.</i><br /><br />Fanduel: Was your profit split among multiple sports, or did one sport account for the bulk of your winnings? <br /><br /><i>Headchopper: Football was my top sport this past season, followed closely by baseball. Basketball was a distant 3rd. Having the basketball season start while football is in full swing really detracts from the first couple months of basketball for me. And now as the basketball season winds down, preparation for baseball is taking place, so it takes a backseat again. </i><br /><br />Fanduel: Do you play more traditional formats of fantasy games for any of those sports? <br /><br /><i>Headchopper: I used to play a lot of yearly leagues. But as I got into the daily sites, I have tapered off from those leagues. </i><br /><br />Fanduel: How long have you been playing in daily fantasy contests, and how did you first find out about them? <br /><br /><i>Headchopper: I first found daily fantasy sports thru a link on a sports website in late 2008 or early 2009. I dabbled for a while, and then around June 2009 started playing in bulk. </i><br /><br />Fanduel: Are you into sports betting, poker or any other forms of gambling? <br /><br /><i>Headchopper: I used to gamble on sports a lot. I also played a lot of internet poker. I found that ,although you can get on a hot streak and make some money, ultimately you’re not going to beat the sportsbooks. Fantasy sports lets you apply the same type of information to the daily sports games, but with a little more control over the outcome. </i><br /><br />Fanduel: What do you think are some underrated aspects of strategy for daily fantasy contests that beginning players might overlook? <br /><br /><i>Headchopper: I always try to commit 15-20 minutes before lineups lock to update the status of players involved in that day’s contests. There’s nothing worse than being caught with a late scratch that could have been avoided. There are going to be times when you catch bad breaks with injuries and so forth, but knowledge is king. The more you know and keep abreast of the news, the better your chances to minimize those situations. </i><br /><br />Fanduel: What’s your favorite thing about playing in the daily contests on Fanduel? <br /><br /><i>Headchopper: I love to find players who outperform themselves on that given night. And I love to see some guys cry about how lucky it was. But down inside, you know that you did the research and you had a hunch it was going to happen, so it's really not luck at all. </i><br /><br />Fanduel: Is there anyone else playing on Fanduel that’s good enough that you’d prefer not to see them as your opponent very often? <br /><br /><i>Headchopper: I will, and have, played anyone who wants to play. But when dealing with the mathematics of winning percentage and what it takes to turn a profit, I would rather not be lined up against Tuffled1 or UCLA2 every night in basketball. </i><br /><br />Fanduel: Is your opinion of Tuffled1 and UCLA2 based simply on their playing a lot, or can you tell from their picks that they're strong opponents? <br /><br /><i>Headchopper: When I first started playing at Fanduel, there weren’t nearly as many players as there are now. Every day I was up against those two guys. And they usually played the same players. I could tell right away they both had a great deal of knowledge about basketball and that it would be really tough to turn a profit if I were to play them every night. </i><br /><br />Fanduel: Do you have any specific goals for your play in fantasy contests in 2010? <br /><br /><i>Headchopper: In 2010 I'd just like to establish some momentum to start baseball and carry it on into football season. </i><br /><br />Fanduel: What’s something that you think could be even better about Fanduel in the future? <br /><br /><i>Headchopper: More games...More sports. Tap into the college fantasy market while it is still new. Because very soon it is going to grow to be as big as NBA and MLB fantasy. I fell in love with college football. So many players to choose from really benefits those who put in the research and I did quite well at that sport and hope you’ll offer it in the future. </i><br /><br />Click <a href="http://partners.fanduel.com/processing/clickthrgh.asp?btag=a_151b_2">here</a> to register for the daily fantasy sports contests at <a href="http://partners.fanduel.com/processing/clickthrgh.asp?btag=a_151b_2">Fanduel</a>.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6785794903916196345.post-13089266254914809232010-03-20T05:45:00.002-05:002010-03-20T05:51:36.652-05:00Random UpdatesMy main draft for this year (NFBC Online Double Play) is next Tuesday night, so I've been pretty busy preparing for that.<br /><br />In the meantime, here are updates on a few other sites...<br /><br />Citizen Sports (which was just acquired by Yahoo) launched their Salary Cap game on Facebook. There were some relatively minor rule changes, so if you're playing the game definitely read the new rules. Also, I wasn't able to find any mention of prizes.<br /><br />ESPN launched their Baseball Challenge. Like all the full season salary cap games, prizes have been reduced to the point that they're worth almost nothing.<br /><br />These are tough, tough times if you're a fan of full season salary cap fantasy baseball with daily transactions. There simply isn't any way to use your skills to make money at these games in 2010. Your best bet is to play in <a href="http://www.fanduel.com/dailycontests">daily contests</a>, where the top players from the full season contests should be able to maintain a high enough winning percentage to be quite profitable over the long run.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6785794903916196345.post-1138128569963231902010-03-19T13:18:00.002-05:002010-03-19T13:29:45.526-05:00Why You Should Care About Average Draft PositionI've heard at several fantasy baseball players proudly state that they ignore Average Draft Position (ADP) when planning for their drafts. The reasoning seems to be that you should 'think for yourself'...which would imply that visiting blogs, websites, and other sources of information isn't a good idea either. Of course, anyone suggesting this is missing the point of ADP data. I'm not reviewing it to figure out which players are the most valuable. I'm reviewing it to see how early I need to pick the players I really like if I don't want to risk having them selected by someone else first. I may think that Carlos Gonzalez is worth a 6th round pick, but ADP data helps me determine that I can wait until the 9th round to get him. Thanks to knowing his ADP, there's a good chance that I can get another 6th round quality player along with Carlos Gonzalez, instead of picking him in the 6th round and getting a 9th round quality player in the 9th round. That's a big edge, and anybody who completely ignores it is almost certainly not drafting as efficiently as they could.<br /><br />There are several well known sources of ADP data (Mockdraftcentral.com and the newer Couchmanagers.com). I'd also recommend <a href="http://www.fantasygameday.net/2010-adp/">Fantasy Game Day</a> which gathers ADP data from a variety of sources, and provides a spreadsheet that groups players into 'tiers' based on their ADP and average round selected in different sized leagues.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6785794903916196345.post-41791566467561688792010-03-18T08:25:00.003-05:002010-03-18T08:43:39.648-05:00Daily Fantasy Baseball: $20 Free With Promo CodeFor anyone interested in trying out daily fantasy baseball contests this season, <a href="http://partners.fanduel.com/processing/clickthrgh.asp?btag=a_63b_6">Fanduel</a> is offering $20 free on all deposits by new players. So for a $10 deposit (the minimum), you'll get $30 in your account. Just sign up using the 'join' link and enter PADDY20 in the promotional code field between now and next Monday. Don't use the quick registration form on the main 'landing' page for the site, because it doesn't have anywhere to enter the promo code. Once the promo ends, you're only likely to get $10-$12 for your $10 deposit, so this is definitely the best time to make deposits if you're planning to play in the daily baseball contests. For anyone who hasn't tried these out, they're one day salary cap contests. Deposit money via credit card or Paypal, pick a team within the salary cap, win (or lose) based on the performance of your players that day, and withdraw money whenever you want by check or Paypal. The contests are a lot of fun - both because of the immediate gratification of seeing whether you win or lose the same day you make your picks, and because they give you an opportunity to evaluate aspects of the game that normal fantasy contests don't emphasize - strength of opponent, park, home/away, platoon advantages, etc.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6785794903916196345.post-89835473972796525972010-03-16T09:35:00.003-05:002010-03-16T09:42:25.985-05:00Mat Latos 2010Mat Latos is a popular recommendation as a sleeper pick for 2010. People are looking at his long term potential, his strong minor league numbers, and the advantage he'll gain from pitching half of his games in San Diego. While all of those should help him out, I'm not convinced he's ready to excel in the majors yet. His strikeout ratees in A and AA were right around one batter per inning. Good (especially when coupled with good control), but not exceptional for a top prospect. I suspect that he's going to struggle this year, unless he takes a big step forward.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6785794903916196345.post-86786283138121534572010-03-12T05:46:00.002-05:002010-03-12T06:10:35.289-05:00Setting Your Fantasy Baseball GoalsIf you ask most people what they're trying to accomplish in any fantasy baseball league or contest, the answer will that their goal is to do as well as possible. Sometimes that's a reasonable answer, but in some formats you're forced to choose among multiple goals. One obvious example of this is in the high stakes contests like NFBC or WCOFB. Is your primary focus to win the overall prizes or to ensure that you win your league? You can try to balance both goals, but by doing you make your chances of accomplishing either one worse.<br /><br />How to treat the current situation with Jose Reyes is a perfect example of this choice. Let's say you're drafting in the NFBC this weekend. Jose Reyes is supposed to rest for the next "approximately 2-8 weeks". If his thyroid condition has improved at that point, he can start getting ready to play. In other words, he could conceivably be back by Opening Day...or we could learn in mid-May that he needs to miss more time. Let's assume that his current situation causes him to be drafted in the 4th round, instead of the 2nd round where he was going in most drafts unil the latest news broke.<br /><br />So is Jose Reyes worth a 4th round pick right now? That completely depends on your goals. If you want to ensure that you win your league, I think he's too high a risk. This guy could miss half the season. On the other hand, if you want to beat out hundreds of other opponents for the top overall prize, you need to swing for the fences...and getting a first round quality player in the fourth round would be a great way to do that. If you don't think through your goals ahead of time, you may end up with a blended strategy that fails on both counts. You'll pick some risky players, some safe players, and end up with less than your share of league victories despite never putting yourself in position for a high overall finish.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6785794903916196345.post-72738383687198631322010-03-10T17:30:00.000-05:002010-03-10T17:30:00.543-05:00NFBC Slow Draft - Full RosterWe finally finished my NFBC slow draft. I'm pretty happy with my team overall. With no trades or free agent pickups, it was important to have depth at every position. The only real hole in my team's depth is that I would have liked to have three third basemen, and only have two. I also wouldn't have minded getting another starting pitcher, but missed out on all the others that I liked. I obviously focused more on hitting than pitching...that was a calculated risk, because I think I'm good enough at evaluating pitchers that I should do ok with them anyway. We'll see if I'm right. I also expect to make more active use of my bench players than most owners, so I focused on getting guys who will get playing time, even if they didn't have quite as much upside as some of the available prospects in the later rounds. Here's my full roster:<br /><br />1B Prince Fielder MIL R1 P9 <br />1B Daniel Murphy NYM R24 P7 <br />1B Gaby Sanchez FLA R32 P7 <br />1B Ryan Garko SEA R33 P9 <br />2B Brian Roberts BAL R3 P9 <br />2B Kaz Matsui HOU R22 P7 <br />2B Alexi Casilla MIN R44 P7 <br />3B Aramis Ramirez CHC R4 P7 <br />3B Jake Fox OAK R23 P9 <br />SS Jose Reyes NYM R2 P7 <br />SS Yuniesky Betancourt KC R35 P9 <br />SS Tommy Manzella HOU R39 P9 <br />C Matt Wieters BAL R5 P9 <br />C Kurt Suzuki OAK R10 P7 <br />C Gerald Laird DET R27 P9 <br />OF Carlos Quentin CHW R7 P9 <br />OF Garrett Jones PIT R9 P9 <br />OF Nolan Reimold BAL R13 P9 <br />OF Juan Rivera ANA R16 P7 <br />OF Travis Snider TOR R17 P9 <br />OF Scott Podsednik KC R18 P7 <br />OF Luke Scott BAL R20 P7 <br />OF Nate Schierholtz SF R28 P7 <br />OF Micah Hoffpauir CHC R45 P9 <br />DH Ken Griffey SEA R36 P7 <br />DH Mike Jacobs NYM R40 P7 <br />SP Javier Vazquez NYY R6 P7 <br />SP Chad Billingsley LA R8 P7 <br />SP Roy Oswalt HOU R12 P7 <br />SP Marc Rzepczynski TOR R19 P9 <br />SP Colby Lewis TEX R21 P9 <br />SP Ricky Romero TOR R26 P7 <br />SP Jon Niese NYM R29 P9 <br />SP John Smoltz FA R30 P7 <br />SP Andrew Miller FLA R34 P7 <br />SP James McDonald LA R38 P7 <br />RP Rafael Soriano TB R11 P9 <br />RP Kerry Wood CLE R14 P7 <br />RP Kevin Gregg TOR R15 P9 <br />RP Chris Perez CLE R25 P9 <br />RP Dan Wheeler TB R31 P9 <br />RP Mike Adams SD R37 P9 <br />RP Peter Moylan ATL R41 P9 <br />RP Joe Thatcher SD R42 P7 <br />RP Hong-Chih Kuo LA R43 P9Unknownnoreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6785794903916196345.post-9879718875591525322010-03-09T04:56:00.002-05:002019-01-20T05:51:39.909-05:00Justin Masterson 2010Justin Masterson is an intriguing sleeper in 2010. Pitching part of the season in relief and part of the season as a starter, he struck out 8.28 and walked 4.18 per nine innings last year. Combined with a very good 53.6% groundball rate, those stats make Masterson a highly effective pitcher. Normally a little bit of regression could be expected now that Masterson will presumably be pitching the full season as a starter, but given his age (about to turn 25) there's every possibility that Masterson could actully improve this season. If he can improve his control at all, he's going to very solid...far better than his current position in most drafts would indicate.<br />
<br />
If you live near New York and you like hiking, you owe it to yourself to go to <a href="http://lemonsqueezemohonk.blogspot.com/">Lemon Squeeze Mohonk</a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6785794903916196345.post-55390989439812743462010-03-07T06:27:00.003-05:002010-03-07T06:39:01.176-05:00Fantasy Baseball Industry UpdatesThought I'd do a quick update on the current status of various sites in the fantasy baseball industry...<br /><br />NFBC - just (in the past few days) gave players a first look at their new draft software and FAAB software. Overall, opinion seems to be lukewarm (or slightly better) on the draft software and somewhat more positive on the FAAB software. The good news is that they've been very active in forum discussions about the features, and I'm expecting a lot of the minor improvements people are looking for to be included very promptly. Compared to most software launches in the industry, I'd say they should be pretty happy with how they've done on this one. I'm definitely very impressed by their customer service - they're always on their own message boards, respond to most emails immediately, and I'm guessing that even though today is Sunday we'll see a comment from one of them in response to this post.<br /><br />WCOFB - I didn't spend a lot of time looking, but I wasn't able to get a sense of how sign-ups are going from their message forum. If anyone has an idea how many people they've got so far, I'd be curious to hear from you.<br /><br />Sporting News/Rotohog - These are basically the same entity at this point. Rotohog's site indicates salary cap and stock exchange games are coming soon. Players on the TSN message boards are furious at the lack of news and lack of responsiveness of the TSN staff.<br /><br />Rapiddraft - Apparently will not be having baseball this year.<br /><br />Fantasyworld - Also, apparently will not be having baseball. The lack of news on their site is a little odd, but at least one player reported receiving his football prizes recenty, so there's clearly nothing to worry about.<br /><br />ESPN Baseball Challenge - No news yet on ESPN about this one. They never seem to give much advance notice when it launches, so I assume it will be back. That said, think they did eliminate the equivalent baseball game, so it bears watching.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0