2012-366 Day 278 – Allergic to Hitting II

While the large time gap between RSS posts was unintentional, the massive gap between fantasy baseball updates (175 days since Allergic to Hitting) was entire, absolutely, and certainly intentional. I would say “You’re welcome,” but it really was for my sake more than yours. My attempt to reverse jinx my team by changing the name mostly worked on a season-long level, but also represents my superstition involving fantasy baseball. Committing anything positive to writing is just an invitation for it all to come crashing down, so I maintained radio silence on the topic until today. Want to guess why?

Yup, you probably guessed right if you follow baseball at all. The regular season ended yesterday and, with it, our inaugural fantasy league. When I last left you, I was in eighth place and in the midst of an offense start that was nothing short of horrific. You’ll be glad to know (or hardly care, whichever) that I managed to pull out of that tailspin and put together a respectable comeback. My pitching still carried the team, averaging a 3rd place finish across all five pitching categories (hitting averaged around 4th place across the five hitting categories), and my overall total of 65 points was good for third place overall (out of ten teams).

In evaluating the season, I did pretty well juggling a lineup that had many injury issues and hot and cold streaks (you know, like a real baseball team). Some highlights and lowlights from the season:

Highlight 1) The closer I picked up after the draft to patch one of my holes in the preseason wound up being the 7th most valuable player in baseball according to ESPN.

Lowlight 1) I traded a throw away reliever to one of the other managers who really wanted him before the season for a prospect, the reliever rated as the number 16 most valuable player, I dropped the prospect in the first few weeks.

Highlight 2) In my final pick of the draft (pick 249 out of 250), I announced that I had the “steal of the draft” with a young second baseman. He wound up as the 8th most valuable second baseman and a good building block.

Lowlight 2) I picked up a second baseman for the final day, since my young second baseman was nursing an injury and taking the day off, looking to add an RBI or two since that category was close. He proceeded to go 0 for 5. Now might be the time to mention that I was very close to second place, with only a point and a half separating us. We were fifth and sixth in batting average, and flipping our positions would have allowed me to win by half a point. I wound up losing batting average by one hit over the course of the entire season. One hit in 7610 at-bats. Even if I had just left the spot blank, I would have been in second. Ouch.

In all though, I had a lot of fun and it led to some interesting talks with my co-worker (especially in the last few days, he finished fourth). Since this is a keeper league (technically I think it’s called a dynasty league because there is no limit to the number of players you can keep), the off season now begins. We’ll see if I can move up next season.

Weight: 226 Loss: 14 lbs – Running Yearly Mileage: 307 miles
Softball Stats: Game 2 – 3/4 (.750), 3 R, 1 RBI Season – 6/7 (.857), 2 2B, 5 R, 2 RBI
Fitocracy Level: 26 ID: disciplev1