I know I've said this about 1,000 times but I have to give props to fantasy baseball for getting it right again when it comes to letting the cream rise to the top. Fantasy baseball usually rewards hard work by a GM and we saw that once again with Matt Suer bringing home a fantasy title this year. Kevin deserves credit as well as we all know that he's always got an eyeball on his roster and he took a team with obvious flaws and turned it into $100 and a second place spot when nobody thought of him as a real threat when the playoffs began. It was a pretty great final matchup for the championship and even though there's only a couple of guys that still care about this stuff, we need to break down the last matchup and tip our caps to the final two owners standing.
In my opinion, this whole matchup changed the minute Jonathan Papelbon grabbed his dick n' balls after a mound meltdown in Philadelphia. Kevin's strategy of sitting starting pitchers in order to reduce the losses. ERA, and WHIP was working out for him up until Papelbon blew a save in a big way.
In my opinion, this whole matchup changed the minute Jonathan Papelbon grabbed his dick n' balls after a mound meltdown in Philadelphia. Kevin's strategy of sitting starting pitchers in order to reduce the losses. ERA, and WHIP was working out for him up until Papelbon blew a save in a big way.
Kevin's strategy is good in theory but when you minimize the innings pitched by your entire staff, any relief pitcher blowup can inflate the ERA and WHIP numbers in a jiffy. That's what happened on the fateful day when Kevin had an ERA and WHIP lead and was sitting tight and then Pappy gave up four earned runs on 1/3 of an inning, got pulled, and then gave a great big nut grab to Phillies fans and Kevin's chances of winning. Kevin adjusted quickly by dropping Papelbon and also gobbling up the starting pitchers to try to catchup on the K's, QS's, ERA, and WHIP stats and it almost worked. Matty more or less held tight but when the weekend hit Matt realized that he would need to also grab some pitchers in order to maintain his lead, which added to the drama of Sunday. Sunday is usually the best day to grab a pitcher thanks to depleted lineup construction but the pitchers involved on Sunday were pretty god dang terrible for both squads. The race for quality starts was a good one but out of the eight starters throwing on Sunday, only one (DeGrom) produced a quality start. It wasn't enough for Petty to gain the QS lead and that turned the focus to the batters as the runs scored, home runs, and runs batted in were all on the table to be taken by either owner. Neither team really made a big push this weekend as the bats were also quiet on Sunday and it came down to Sunday night baseball between the Cardinals and Reds under the lights. Kevin might've been down 7-4-1 at the time but all he needed was a Matt Holliday or Yadier Molina homer and/or some RBI's to swing the stats in his favor and steal away the belt. Holliday had some RBI chances and Molina crossed the plate once but as soon and Devin Mesoraco lifted a three run homer into the left field stands, it put an end to any comeback hopes for Kevin. Matty could finally exhale and give thanks to his sleeper catcher for coming up with a huge hit to finish the season. Overall, it was a damn good championship matchup that went down to the final game and the 7-4-1 final score doesn't do any justice to how tight this was as the runs, homers, RBI's, QS's, Saves, ERA, and WHIP stats were all up for grabs up until the last minute. Once again, we have to praise Matt and Kevin for being committed owners throughout the season and I can almost guarantee that they were hanging on every pitch throughout the entire championship matchup.
Alrighty, gents, this concludes another season of Shocker fantasy baseball. I hope everyone had a decent time around here and I hope we see all of you back here again come March. We are going to bump up the entry fee to $60 or $75 for the mere fact that we have an established league, spend too much time on this, and plenty of owners have asked for a little boost in prize money. I don't want to price anyone out of this league and hope that we don't but we need to put a little more on the line. I've had a lot of fun typing about this fantasy league and also chatting about it all when I hang out with you guys and I'm glad we can have another reason to gamble money and talk smack about sporting events together. We'll see you again in 2015 and maybe we'll see some guys actually hit the ball next season.
Alrighty, gents, this concludes another season of Shocker fantasy baseball. I hope everyone had a decent time around here and I hope we see all of you back here again come March. We are going to bump up the entry fee to $60 or $75 for the mere fact that we have an established league, spend too much time on this, and plenty of owners have asked for a little boost in prize money. I don't want to price anyone out of this league and hope that we don't but we need to put a little more on the line. I've had a lot of fun typing about this fantasy league and also chatting about it all when I hang out with you guys and I'm glad we can have another reason to gamble money and talk smack about sporting events together. We'll see you again in 2015 and maybe we'll see some guys actually hit the ball next season.