Fantasy Baseball Update

With little cardboard on my mind (other than starting my 1st ever basketball player collection, i'll save that for a later date), I figured I would update my little blog world with the current state of my fantasy baseball leagues.

Only three really matter to me (I am in five), so those are the only three I will talk about.

League 1:  Balk Four - Card Bloggers Unite - After meandering in the middle of the pack for part of the season, I have settled into the 3rd/4th place territory for the past three weeks or so. With Josh Johnson and Ubaldo Jimenez (numbers 2 and 1, respectively, in the Cy young race) anchoring my pitching and a plethora of hot bats (including David Wright, Hanley Ramirez, Joey Votto, Aubrey huff, Rickie Weeks and Chris coghlan) things are looking up this week and, hopefully, for the foreseeable future. I have an abundance of 1B eligible players (Votto, Berkman, Reynolds, Huff) and I would really like to move one or two of them for some more pitching help.

League 2: Green Ecks and Haim - Sons of Pitches - This is my premier keeper league, in its first year. I have made a TON of trades in this league and they have me sitting pretty in second place (but TWELVE AND A HALF games out of first; seriously, that guy has an en fuego team). My latest trades had me sending Adam Wainwright/Rafael Furcal for Brandon Phillips/Kris Medlen. I needed offense and have solid pitching to withstand trading a top 3 SP. The other recent trade had me sending Alex Rodriguez and Austin Jackson and receiving Carl Crawford and Tim Hudson. Crawford is swinging the bat hot right now and stealing bases at a ridiculous clip, while Hudson has quietly been producing as a number one starting pitcher. Add those guys to Joey Votto, Scott Rolen, John Buck, Matt Kemp, Ichiro, Hunter Pence and my offensive stats are finally booming. Hudson and Medlen join a pitching staff anchored by Josh Johnson (again, he is a trend), Javier Vazquez, Stephen Strasburg (who will be a round TWELVE keeper for me, which is tremendous value), and, what I believe, is the best bullpen in the league (we count holds): Andrew Bailey, JJ Putz, Leo Nunez, Luke gregerson and Brad Lidge. We only get 5 keepers, and they are based off of the round they were drafted in, so my current 5 keeper scenario looks like: Strasburg (12th rd), Votto (3rd), Johnson (7th), Phillips (4th) and Crawford (2nd). Now, you might be wondering why I didn't include Kemp, but it is all based on value. All 5 of the guys I plan on keeping have all performed OVER there round they were drafted in, meaning they would go higher next year, whereas, there is no going higher than the 1st rd. I get a top 5 1B, top 3 2B, top 6 SP, possible top 10 SP and a top 3 OF.

League 3: Cougars 4 Lyfe - AIM Salary Dynasty - If you couldn't tell this is a) a salary league and b) a dynasty league. The only difference between a dynasty and a keeper league is that in a dynasty league, you keep everyone. In this particular league, you keep everyone who is still in contract by the end of the year. This is a team I took over during the season and the old owner was a dead beat, so it needed some work. My latest two trades have helped the team quite a bit. Trade one had me sending Carlos Pena, Alfonso Soriano, Jose Reyes and Hiroki Kuroda for Adam Wainwright, Johnny Damon, Nick Swisher and Erick Aybar. I then turned around and swapped Wainwright and Ian Kinsler for Matt Garza, Billy butler and Ben Zobrist. This made the team a) younger and b) full of more contracts that were cheaper and longer. The team could still use some work (SP is suspect and my relief corps is sketchy) and it will probably finish the season as one of the worst (currently 9th out of 12), but I plan on being active and sticking it through the end of the season.

I have a few more posts in me tonight, but not all will be posted tonight. I have a lot going on around the Balk Four HQ, so I will be taking time off from the blog, so these posts will pop up sporadically, giving me the time to prepare myself for deployment to Afghanistan.