(Editors Note: This could be a TL;DR post so bear with me.)
Having lost my league title last season to my good buddy Alex Savage, and finishing second, I knew it would be important to jump back into the draft as our league is expanding from 12 to 14 teams. There are 6 new managers this year, combining our league and managers from our football money league into one. It's certainly looking more like an "experts league," although you'd be hard-pressed to find any of us calling our skills expert-ish.
Anyways, I came away from the draft feeling great about my team and the potential it had, expecially among the top-tier talent I nabbed. But after the first five weeks and a 24-32-2 start, things had to change or I would be going nowhere.
I moved my team toward a more LIMA-friendly strategy given the strength in numbers of middle-relief on our league's waiver wire. Gone were guys like Brian Wilson, Jurrjens, Thornton, Aybar, Reynolds, Morneau, and Liriano (never again) and in came guys like Trout, Goldschmidt, Frieri, Robertson, Casilla, Escobar, and Kubel. Add to that a trade of WW pickup Jason Vargas who netted me Edwin Jackson, and I'll take that upgrade for sure.
In the five weeks since that lackluster start I've compiled a 33-11-2 record, to vault me from a tie for dead-last into fifth place and right in the thick of the race for the American League first-round bye. Not too shabby of a turnaround, but it's leaving me hungry for more success.
Our league uses a 6x6 scoring format. R/HR/RBI/SB/OBP/SLG and W/SV/K/ERA/WHIP/K-9. I've slowly geared my team toward that of an actual MLB roster with a starting five and a great bullpen, as you will see below:
- Zack Greinke
- Gio Gonzalez
- C.J. Wilson
- Edwin Jackson
- Johnny Cueto
Then in the pen:
- Tyler Clippard
- Ernesto Frieri
- Santiago Casilla
- Vinnie Pestano
- David Robertson (DL)
If you know these players, they're all geared toward dominating K's and K/9 with put-away pitches (sans Cueto, Jackson, and Casilla), but they all post fantastic ratios. I've been methodically taking pitching stats with a Quality > Quantity style, and it's working wonderfully. I used a more Quantity > Quality method in the two years prior, both resulting in championship appearances (one of them a victory). I'm a little shocked nobody else has adopted this strategy (perhaps that's a harbinger that it won't work for me), but it makes me relieved that I can constantly replace RP's without much penalty.
Hitting stats are something I still haven't totally recovered from the early season droughts. Carl Crawford, who I drafted in the 7th round, didn't recover as fast as I hoped (expected a May return, still waiting). A-Rod (4th), McCann (5th), McCutcheon (2nd), and A-Gonz (1st) all labored through April and while McCutcheon and Rodriguez have recovered I'm still waiting for Gonzalez and McCann to find their swings.
The Waiver Wire has been kind to The Evil Empire though. Lost in the shuffle of Bryce Harper's call-up was that of the "other" mega-prospect Mike Trout, who's trial with TEE last season was not good. Trout's addition, along with Kubel, Escobar, and Luke Scott has stabilized the team from it's terrible start and it's now just beginning to click.
I've been hot after a 1B and SS in trade talks, but nobody has bitten yet. If Goldschmidt rakes like many predicted him to in the preseason, that might take care of the 1B slot I've been looking for and allow me to shop A-Gonz for an elite SS to set my team over the edge. If not, I keep him around and have an OF that looks like: McCutcheon, Trout, A-Gonz, Crawford, with Kubel and Scott as expendable trade bait.
At any rate, The Evil Empire is a team on the rise in the MoneyBall league and true to Billy Beane's strategy of using sabermetrics to win, I'm gonna do precisely that. Oh and hopefully update this blog more often.
