Live from the RotoRob Regular’s Baseball League
We’re certainly having ourselves a grand ole time these days in the RotoRob’s Regular League and are looking at what should be a great battle heading down the stretch. Currently, there are five teams slugging it out for the title in this, the league’s inaugural season. Unfortunately, yours truly is not one of those contenders (those who don’t know teach…right?). Remembering back to last spring, I spent a lot of time touting what I believed was a solid play heading into the 2008 season, the all-outfield strategy.
I followed through on this strategy in most of my leagues, and it proved to be a very successful one. What did I do in this league? I decided to look at a different approach and grabbed a couple of stud pitchers early, and lo and behold it worked. I’m currently battling it out with Grey from Razzball for ninth overall. Thanks to Grey for the Jermaine Dye and Kevin Kouzmanoff for Carlos Zambrano deal, as hopefully it allows me to move up into at least the land of the mediocre.
This league further reinforced my thoughts on that spring strategy. I decided to step outside the box and went with Johan Santana and Zambrano early, and — surprise, surprise — I got exactly what I should have, misery. I guess it also didn’t help that I drafted Eric Byrnes, B.J. Upton and Ryan Zimmerman. In a league with this many savvy participants there is no room for either injury or serious underachieving, and I had more than my share of both.
Now, on to the good news. As of Thursday we have ourselves a serious log jam at the top, with Cory from Seamless Baseball at the top of the board with 107 points. Next in line is Steve, proud owner of the Hidalgo All-Stars and his thrasher approach at 106.5. Hey Steve, you’re looking at a first here, as you’re currently not the league leader in total transactions. There are still six weeks left, so I’m sure that will be changing.
Currently in third place at 106 is Geoff from Mock Draft Central, followed by our own Jordan from RotoRob at 105.5. Bringing up the rear on our list of the top five contenders would be regular reader Dave at 102.5. How Dave is doing so well without Bengie Molina on his squad is a total mystery to me. This league has quite the crew and it’s been a very tight race to say the least.
After that we have about a ten point drop to the tandem of Brett and Jason from Fantasy Phenoms currently sitting at 92.5, and then a further drop into a pack of about four other teams currently slugging it out for the mid-pack honours. I’m just curious here, but has anyone seen Todd these days? I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone finish 16th in a 15-team league before, but we could be looking at a first here!
What I do find very interesting is that there is no single team that appears to have an edge at this stage of the season. Each of our leaders has their inherent weaknesses and, with the categories extremely tight, this provides for a very volatile situation. Eight teams are within five wins of each other. The top four are all bunched up in the WHIP category, and they were even all tied earlier in the week. One good or bad start from a starting pitcher is going to make a huge difference. Almost every category provides an opportunity for the leaders to move either up or down on a daily basis.
This is probably going down to that last weekend in September and a “Last Team Standing” scenario.
My congratulations and thanks to all the participants this year and good fortunes to all, as we head into the stretch run!
