why would you pick Kemp in the top 5 when guys like:

Pujols, Utley, Longoria, Cabrera, Hanley

all had more value, and have more value

not to mention 2B, 3B and SS are much less deep positions than OF

you're overvaluing the shit out of outfielders...and Justin Upton is better anyway

Besides while I saw Kemp as a top 5 player in some mock drafts, I saw him go around 15th in other drafts...the only consensus top 5 OF was Braun, and thats debatable

Quote :

"If Washington takes Wall #1 and he's a bust, its still a good pick"

Word to Sam Bowie and Greg Oden

6/23/2010 2:11:14 PM

Kemp figured to have best power/speed combination of anyone in baseball this year other than maybe Hanley

The fact that he's struggled thus far doesn't change the fact of his relative value on draft day

Remember, steals in fantasy >>> steals in real life

[Edited on June 23, 2010 at 2:14 PM. Reason : ^Hakeem was #1 that year, and there was no consensus on Oden/Durant like there is with Wall]

6/23/2010 2:13:11 PM

Lots of guys had Justin Upton as a better 5 tool guy than Kemp, which would imply Kemp isn't even the best outfielder

You would've learned that if you went to a lot of different sources and mock drafts, instead of putting all your eggs in one basket and betting the farm on Kemp

Akeem was #1 that year, he didn't add the H back til later, the point is that Bowie was high value at the time, so him being a bust doesn't make it a bad pick?

[Edited on June 23, 2010 at 2:16 PM. Reason : .]

6/23/2010 2:14:32 PM

Kemp had nearly twice as many steals as Upton last year

Regardless, your argument of Kemp not being a top 50 player somehow justifying his fall to 16th is your draft is off base

At the time of the draft, his value was top 10, be in 5th, 7th, 9th, whatever

Crafting a "Told you so!" retort now doesn't change that at all

6/23/2010 2:17:03 PM

And of course we all know the only reason they took Bowie is because they feared Jordan and Drexler wouldn't be able to co-exist

It wasn't an issue of them thinking Bowie was the better talent; they just thought he was the best fit on their current roster

With Wall, they face the same situation with Arenas already on board, but they're smart enough to realize that talent trumps anything else

6/23/2010 2:19:09 PM

Actually, when I get called out by hey now for supposedly being in a mongoloid league, all based on where Kemp was drafted, pointing out where Kemp is actually ranked is exactly the "told you so" retort thats called for

Value is overrated when it doesn't pan out...hence the fact that I got outfielders like Carlos Gonzalez and Hunter Pence later in my draft, and used my crucial early picks for guys like Utley and Wright, who play positions that max out early

6/23/2010 2:20:22 PM

Furthermore, the John Wall comparisons are dumb...if Pujols didn't go first in the draft, ok you have a point

Pujols and Hanley were the only guys that should've been drafted #1 and #2 based on value

everything after that is subjective...but I still have to question any fantasy baseball player who takes an outfielder that high, when a position like SS or 3B or 2B is so much shallower

6/23/2010 2:21:03 PM

I don't think I'm the one who called you out, just an innocent bystander who effectively stirs things up.

6/23/2010 2:27:17 PM

well I sent you that PM that was all like "hey Slave is back, quick, troll me in the fantasy baseball thread since Kemp isn't even a top 50 player"

you came through like a champ

6/23/2010 2:29:29 PM

You claim Kemp's status as an OF greatly diminishing his value

But seem to think its perfectly fine for 4 First Basemen to go ahead of him

First Base, where you can find 20 HR/80RBI guys in the scrap heap

Obviously you'll get no argument that Pujols deserves his throne

But Prince, Howard and Tex ahead of Kemp as well? Three guys who might combine for 10 steals all season?

Kemp deserved to go ahead of each of them, and I'm not even willing to argue about that

6/23/2010 2:31:10 PM

I waited late in my draft and took Berkman and Derek Lee

1B is just as deep as OF

you won't get any arguments from me there

1B and OF are dumb shit positions to draft in the 1st round (except for Pujols)

I could've gone Upton or Crawford 2nd round but I picked Wright instead

6/23/2010 2:32:07 PM

You're welcome.

6/23/2010 2:47:41 PM

I kept toying with the idea of picking up Varitek to fill in once or twice a week when V-Mart wasn't playing so I would always have a catcher

But now that Victor is out for a while, I picked up John Buck from the Jays

13 homers on the season, including one on Saturday night

6/28/2010 2:00:18 PM

I missed my draft so my roster was a mess with guys like Aramis Ramirez and Chipper Jones drafted way, way too high but I've managed to clean up my roster with some good trades and now I'm in third place.

I picked up Josh Hamilton and David Wright in trades during May so lets just say my offense has not struggled recently! I just picked up Johan Santana straight up for Michael Young (who hasn't started at 3B for me since I picked up DW). Considering Johan has ALWAYS been a fantastic second half pitcher and his velocity still isn't down that much, I'm hopeful he'll turn it around with the quickness.

6/28/2010 5:28:23 PM

I think this is the 3rd year I've had Wright on my team...my buddy was laughing at me for picking him in the 2nd round based on his 10 homeruns last season, but I knew he was blasting the ball in spring games so I wasn't worried...and bam, double digit homers and steals, .300 average, and oh yeah, he leads the NL in RBIs

6/28/2010 5:30:44 PM

Your buddy must be a mongoloid.

6/28/2010 5:43:01 PM

TreeTwista10 and his buddy share a laugh over David Wright's production this season.

6/28/2010 5:46:43 PM

he's just a Braves fan

who saw how shitty Wright's power numbers were last year

6/28/2010 6:16:34 PM

gotta love it when your 1st and 4th round draft picks go on the DL the same day (Utley, V-Mart)

6/29/2010 7:07:35 PM

Quote :

"Carlos Beltran will play two consecutive nine-inning games in the field in the upcoming days for Class A St. Lucie. If all goes well, Mets manager Jerry Manuel said that Beltran could be activated before the All-Star break."

7/2/2010 3:56:52 PM

Fuck Gordon Beckham

FA options are limited: Aramis just hit two bombs, worth a gamble? Or Chase Headley?

7/7/2010 7:51:08 AM

I picked up Beltran and threw him on my DL about a week ago. He's looked good in rehab, though it was in A+ ball. I'll swap him with Manny Ramirez on the DL as soon as he is activated.

By the way, since trading Michael Young for Johan Santana (I never started Young over David Wright), Johan has thrown 16 innings and given up 1 run and has a .75 WHIP.

Johan Santana in July-October = Top 3 pitcher. Twista knows what I'm talking about.

[Edited on July 7, 2010 at 8:43 AM. Reason : x]

7/7/2010 8:42:21 AM

he's definitely a 2nd half guy

did you get credit for his homerun last night?

7/7/2010 12:12:20 PM

^^^
Aramis will start hitting now that the Cubs are out of it. Look for a big second half from him and D Lee.

7/7/2010 12:21:26 PM

midway through the season and I'm in first place in all three of my fantasy leagues

7/12/2010 8:30:24 AM

recently started streaming pitchers. definitely woulda lost this last week had i not done it. only problem is i've dedicated 2 roster spots for it, and i picked up madison bumgarner and vincente padilla the other day. i might want to hang on to them for a while.

7/12/2010 4:10:26 PM

^ Pretty much a fail strategy unless your lineup is beast in my experience. It depends also on your scoring, but everytime I've tried to just drop and pickup the average pitchers daily in order to win categories like IP, Ws, Ks it always burns me. This is in H2H leagues. I don't do roto style so maybe the streaming strategy has merit in a roto format.

7/12/2010 5:36:59 PM

I streamed pitchers in a league here with Boobs are great, DROD and some assorted other sacks of shit, and won the league going away. But there were countless posts condemning my actions.

As far as I was concerned, those were the rules, and I didn't write em...let the best man win.

7/12/2010 5:38:46 PM

have Losses as a pitching category

7/12/2010 11:08:38 PM

Thank you Buster Posey. Those 57.5 points last week were greatly appreciated.

7/13/2010 1:40:32 AM

Quote :

"^ Pretty much a fail strategy unless your lineup is beast in my experience. It depends also on your scoring, but everytime I've tried to just drop and pickup the average pitchers daily in order to win categories like IP, Ws, Ks it always burns me. This is in H2H leagues. I don't do roto style so maybe the streaming strategy has merit in a roto format."

when you get 3 points for every IP, it's pretty much the best strategy in this league. it's no coincidence that the top 2 teams in my league also lead it in IP, so if i can play matchups as best i can and get like 3-4 more games per week than i would otherwise, it's a fail strategy to not do what i'm doing.

Quote :

"have Losses as a pitching category"

we do. it's -5 for a loss, +10 for a win. so basically your pitcher has to suck complete ass to screw you over for the day. i've had so many times where i've gotten a handful of points out of a fairly bad outting. the real way to combat streaming is to have inning caps or quality starts as stats to discourage people from trying to rack up as many IP as possible


[Edited on July 13, 2010 at 3:25 AM. Reason : .]

7/13/2010 3:12:43 AM

^ obviously your scoring format makes streaming pitchers advantageous. I will say though that your scoring format sounds like crap. 3 pts for an inning pitched means some dude could go out and pitch four innings and that is worth more than a win? WTF? Also losses should be -10 if wins are +10 IMO.

I have never liked assigning points to categories in baseball anyway. That is for fantasy football.

7/13/2010 7:46:32 AM

yeah, i didn't check to see how our scoring system worked until after the draft (stupid), and i didn't take any pitchers til like the 4th or 5th round. then for some reason it took me up until last week to realize i needed to fill up all my bench spots with pitchers and start streaming 2 pitchers at a time to try to have at least 1 guy going every day (within reason) to give me a legitimate shot at winning this league. i'm retarded.

7/13/2010 9:50:18 AM

Quote :

" Aramis will start hitting now that the Cubs are out of it"

7/20/2010 11:34:11 PM

^ picked him up the other day. he put up 20 points for me tonight.

7/21/2010 1:25:59 AM

Pedro Alvarez is a beast

In my league, a home run counts as two home runs if it's off a pitcher with an ERA under 3.00. Also, a homer only counts as half a home run if it's off a pitcher with an ERA over 5.00.

7/21/2010 11:24:33 PM

Pence is tearing it up tonight, 4/4 2R 1HR 3RBI 1SB

7/23/2010 10:45:34 PM

Victor Martinez might be back tonight...he was in the bullpen yesterday catching relief pitchers

7/26/2010 3:33:41 PM

Here's a trade I'm considering:

Give up:
Pujols
Posada
Felix Hernandez

Get:
Josh Hamilton
Vlad
Dempster


SP is a strength of mine with Halladay, Carpenter, Hughes, Latos and Greinke so I can withstand a hit there if it helps me on offense.

League is head-to-head in seven batting categories (BA, OPS, H, R, RBI, HR and SB) and seven pitching categories (W, L, S, K, CG, ERA and WHIP).

It's an 8-team league and I'm currently 7th in HR and RBI, 6th in R and 5th in BA and OPS. I'm holding relatively steady in second place overall though.

Thoughts?

7/28/2010 2:48:57 PM

I think you should do it. It could be a move that could drastically help your team. And it would make the other guy happy. Go for it!

7/28/2010 2:51:08 PM

Also, ignore him ^. He's the guy I'm potentially trading with.

Honest opinions please!

7/28/2010 3:37:12 PM

That is a reasonably fair trade, but I'd rather be the guy getting Pujols/Posada/Felix. Honestly if you need offense, I guess I'd do it. Hopefully you've got another decent catcher and have a place to start Vlad in your lineup.


I am in 2nd in my league and the dude I am playing is in last by a great margin. Early in the season he decided he'd assemble the entire Twins team. Therefore I am losing thanks to that huge Twins ass kicking of the Royals on Monday





[Edited on July 28, 2010 at 9:38 PM. Reason : df]

7/28/2010 9:38:18 PM

My other catcher is Brian McCann. I'd been starting Posada in a utility spot, so I'd just plug him there.

Here's my lineup. If I make the trade, Prado slides to 1B. McGehee goes to 2B. Hamilton and Vlad take the UTIL spots. Young and Upton on my bench.

C Brian McCann, Atlanta
1B Albert Pujols, St. Louis
2B Martin Prado (1B, 2B, 3B), Atlanta
SS Alex Gonzalez (SS), Atlanta
3B Jose Bautista (3B, OF), Toronto
OF Carlos Gonzalez, Colorado
OF Torii Hunter, LAA
OF Brett Gardner, NYY
UTIL Jorge Posada (C), NYY
UTIL Chris Young (OF) Arizona
BN Casey McGehee (2B, 3B) Milwaukee
BN B.J. Upton (OF) TB

SP Zack Greinke, KC
SP Felix Hernandez, Seattle
RP Francisco Rodriguez, NYM
RP Heath Bell, SD
P Bobby Jenks (RP), CWS
P Ryan Franklin (RP), St. Louis
P Chris Carpenter (SP), St. Louis
BN Roy Halladay (SP), Philly
BN Mat Latos (SP), SD
BN Phil Hughes (SP, RP) NYY

7/28/2010 11:39:30 PM

I wouldn't do it, the way I see it Felix and Posada should be able to get you dempster and vlad, I'd rather have Albert over Josh any day

7/29/2010 12:01:12 AM

the Twins rule

7/29/2010 1:10:19 AM

^^ Josh is the better fantasy player this season though. Pujols has the benefit of facing horrible NL Central pitching the rest of the way so that might give him the edge in terms of August and Sept match-ups.

7/29/2010 8:15:35 AM

Since Thecycle23 turned down my trade, I have moved on with Vlad. My catcher was
Russell Martin, who has been horrible this season and I've traded Vlad for Joe Mauer. Thoughts?

8/1/2010 11:33:07 AM

my lineup is all screwy today

i have no short stops or 2nd basemen playing games (zobrist hurt, alexei with the day off)

i only have two outfielders going (Ibanez and Markakis with the day off)

on the other hand, I have Youkilis, Wright, Beltre and Berkman, who all have games, and I only have enough positions to play 3 of them

8/2/2010 6:08:46 PM

Why the eff is Votto not starting?

8/2/2010 6:13:34 PM

Quote :

"1B Joey Votto was out of Monday's lineup with a sprained right wrist, but X-rays were negative. Votto said he tweaked it. Manager Dusty Baker made it sound a little more concerned than Votto did, although Baker did not rule out Votto being back in a day or two. "It's been bothering him for three days," Baker said. "If you don't take care of it, it can only get worse, especially every time you check-swing. It's a sprain. Right now, were on a day-to-day basis. That wrist is something you take for granted until you sprain it. Your wrist and your fingers ... you don't even think about it. As far as a hitter goes, that's a very important part of their hitting." (Yahoo! Sports)"

8/2/2010 6:17:00 PM