How YOU Doin'?

It is a marathon, not a sprint. It is a marathon, not a sprint. It is a marathon, not a sprint. I need to repeat this mantra to myself roughly 1,048,580 times per day. Just over one week of the baseball season has passed. There are twenty-five more of them. Beware of the small sample size. Whether you are in first or last place, we are still comfortably in the part of the season where one great day or one horrible day can send you to first or last place easily. With that said, lets take stock of how my first 10 days have gone, where I stand, if I've made any moves, etc.

Keeper Team:

As of right this second I am in sixth place and twelve points out of first. After each of my five starting pitchers have pitched twice, I can comfortably blame their slow starts for my slow start. CC Sabathia followed up a pretty bad start (fantasy wise) against Boston with a almost no hitter vs Tampa on Saturday. Dan Haren has one great and one horrible start under his belt. Yovani Gallardo and James Shields have both sucked twice. And Scott Baker has split his first two starts. Once these guys find their groove I'll have no worries. My four closer strategy is already paying dividends as I lead the league in saves so far. My offense has been pretty average so far but all I need from them is to be just a little above average and I'll be set. The verdict? It's all good in the hood. Not worried at all, this team is a winner barring injuries. What's that? Have I stayed healthy these first ten days? Um, no. I have Brad Hawpe day to day with a strained quadriceps, and he was off to a scorching start. I have his teammate Carlos Gonzalez day to day with strained hamstring, he too was off to a monster start although he is 0-2 on the base paths. Then there is Jayson Werth who Monday's game with a undisclosed hip injury. Supposedly its fine and it is totally minor, yet he is already known to be sitting out Wednesday's game. Awesome. All in all these ailments are not major so I am not too worried....yet. I have not yet made or received any trade offers in this league, however I have made two free agent pickups. The first pickup for everyone in the league was a freebie in terms of roster space, meaning you do not have to drop anyone as rosters expanded by one spot. With this freebie I picked up Gio Gonzalez, starting pitcher on the Oakland A's for $1. Each team gets $35 in FAAB (free agent acquisition budget). You can bid anywhere from $1 to $35 on a player, so there is a maximum of 35 pickups for the year. They must be used wisely. My second transaction was dropping Gil Meche and picking up outfielder Scott Podsednik of the KC Royals. Meche is a combination of injured and bad, so he was dead weight. Meanwhile, Pods is off to a scorching start with five steals in the first week. I immediately put him in my lineup for one of my injured guys and he rewarded me with a steal off the bat. Good Pods, good boy. BTW - my team name here is The Trinity Killers - I'll be referring to it as such going forward instead of "my keeper team".

Redraft League:

I'll be referring to this squad by its name as well in the future, Cool HWIP. This team is off to a pretty good start. The offense, its strong suit for sure, is plugging away as expected with a nice mix of power and speed from my big dogs. Some guys are off to slow starts like Aramis Ramirez and Adam LaRoche. Others are scorching like Andrew McCutchen (five steals) and Nelson Cruz (five homers). If we were able to nab a second closer in the auction we'd be even further ahead but Joakim Soria was only able to secure one save in the first week (blew one vs Detroit on a clutch homer by Miguel Cabrera - can't blame him there). All in all, its going according to plan and I'm happy with where I'm at here. I made one trade offer this week trying to turn one stud closer (Soria) into two good closers (Chad Qualls and Jon Rausch) to a team that had a surplus of closers. They said no, can't really blame them. I was offered Ryan Franklin straight up for Brett Anderson, I had to laugh and tell the guy he was not even close. I don't think he was trying to insult me though, he was just using it as a starting point as his next offer included Jonathan Broxton. It was hard turning down anything containing a top three closer but I am sticking to my guns that I will find a closer on the waiver wire eventually. Which leads me to my next point - in this league there is no FAAB, instead there is a traditional waiver wire priority system. As of last night I was sitting in the #2 spot. At about 9:30pm last night Kevin Gregg, Toronto's "setup" guy collected his third save in as many opportunities while their "closer" was watching from the bench after blowing his third save the night before. I decided to put the waiver claim in on him and as I'm typing this post, manager Cito Gaston has named Gregg the team's closer until further notice. Yay, me. If he can keep up the pace I'll be all set in saves and can chill on cruise control until some other needs arise.

That's about it for now - I'll keep you posted on how the rest of the week plays out.

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