I’m sure by now you’ve established your daily routine for setting your lineups and checking your team’s scores for the day. Make sure that as part of that routine, you always check the add/drops for the day—you’ll be amazed sometimes at how quick the trigger finger of your fellow owners can be, and it only takes one crazy owner, one bad game, and one quick panic attack to make someone cut their 9th round pick. The question is, once a player that you know you would have drafted given the chance hits the waiver wire, do you use your high priority claim up to make the castoff part of your team? Here’s a look at some offensive players who, if they haven’t already been cut, may be just one more 0/4 from hitting the pavement. All statistics are through Wednesday’s games.
and if you don’t like your picks, in a couple days cast again.
As I do everyday, I visited MLB.com early last week and was horrified to find that after just two weeks of regular season games, I could cast a vote for the 2007 All-Star Game. I promptly clicked on the not-so-elusive header, filled out the required information including the security, validation, verification code (I hate those things) and started sorting through the names of all the great players at each position.
It’s not how fast, it’s how many
His name is synonymous with strikeout. He pitched a perfect game in his senior year of high school, ultimately helping him get selected in the third round of the 1982 draft. However, he chose to go to USC, holding off his major league debut until 1988. This former teammate of Mark McGwire even made his acting debut in the movie “Little Big League.” Think you know who it is?It seems so simple: throw a ball inside an imaginary box over home plate. Face it—if we could do it with any consistency, we would be making eight figures, not five or six. But instead of the big paychecks, the reward for those of us who play Fantasy Baseball is leveraging the talent and skill of these stars for our teams’ statistics.
It’s easy to write off the first week of the season as a slow start for the players you used your high picks on. Now that we’re almost three weeks in, you’re almost definitely looking at the numbers of some of your top picks and wondering what in the world is wrong. Avoid the temptation to dump your third-rounder for someone else’s suddenly-hot sixteenth-rounder, and use this time to commiserate with your fellow owners who are ready to hit the Panic Button on these players.
As I sit here, still steamed over the injustice of seeing last weekend’s string of Tribe “Home Openers” cancelled over and over again, I’m watching another mid-April explosion of bad weather decimate this weekend’s baseball schedule, this time in East Coast cities. I can’t help but be reminded of a humorous rage against Mother Nature entitled, Diary of a Snow Shoveler. This account, by an author unknown to me, was sent to me once by e-mail. It has always brought me laughter when the skies have brought me, what seems like, nothing but untimely blasts of snow, ice and rain. To lighten my own mood, and maybe yours, I’ve taken the liberty of modifying the story a bit in order to turn it into a tirade against the violation of every fan’s right to watch their favorite team play ball. I hope you enjoy.
As I sit here today and reflect on my teams, one thought keeps going through my head: “Slow down, it’s April!” I have to remind myself that daily, if not hourly. It’s easy to get nervous three weeks into the season–is my guy hurt, can I wait on my player to warm up, can I pass up this diamond in the rough on the waiver wire, etc. Maneuvering this minefield is what separates the so-called men from the boys.