If you don’t count today, there are exactly five days until the start of baseball-that-counts in 2009. The Braves and Phillies play Sunday night at 8pm to start the regular season. Yes, after all these months of planning, prepping, drafting and waiving, you’ll actually get to see what “your guys” can put together. It’s great to watch your home team win the opener, knowing that the possibilities are endless; even better to watch Baseball Tonight on Sunday and see that your personally drafted fantasy squad that includes Jimmy Rollins and Jeff Francoeur went 7-for-9 with two doubles, a triple, a homer and 5 RBIs. Do you know what that translates to over 162 games?!
Ah, the beauty of a new sports season.
With that in mind, a few interesting reads for Tuesday, as you make those last few moves and finalize your roster. For a personal side story, I’m sitting on Huston Street and it’s looking like Corpas will be the closer in Denver, so I’m shopping. Particularly since I missed Kevin Gregg on our waiver wire.
From Razzball, a breakdown of the latest news from Spring Training. That man has a hilarious mustache.
From the Chicago Tribune baseball blog, Spring Training All-Stars, stats through yesterday (30 March). They also include a listing of duds, worth at least reviewing to see how many are on your roster and if you have any viable alternatives.
From Fantistics Baseball, an article that actually almost blew my mind on some sort of new statistics called “Runners Stranded Percentage” and its correlation to Strikeout Percentage. Not sure I buy it, frankly; give me a few hours to digest.
From Fantasy Ball Junkie (this is a bit dated – February, but very interesting), a look at fantasy baseball auction values in 2009 and 2008 just in case you’re still prepping for an auction draft later this week.
From Fantasy Pros 911, 20 Bold Predictions for 2009 that actually appear to be not based on fact, but instead just whatever stuck to the wall when they threw it up there. Nonetheless I tend to agree with a few of them and several, if true, would help my squad, so I’m nodding my head north-and-south and pat myself on the back for my draft strategy. This is a similar tact to Matthew Berry, except that [the] TMR will make as many statements as possible in his columns so that for at least one you will think, “Yeah, wow, I agree with that; even thought it myself the other day” and keep reading, like when you taste wine and they tell you it should taste like lemon, coconut, raspberry, chocolate, grapefruit, tannin (?), steel, oak and “earth” and one person, through some odd synapsual connection, agrees with at least one of those descriptions and says “I can taste that, wow!” and then they buy the wine. Tricky.
Enjoy.
Don’t shoot the messenger, but my mustache just challenged you to a duel.
A duel, you say? In what form does it propose?