Kicking Rocks: In the Hole
In the real world, “in the hole” means I’m standing at the top step of the dugout, helmet on, bat in hand, waiting to get into the on-deck circle. In the fantasy world, it means I’ve screwed the pooch. Let’s face it. There’s nothing worse than starting the fantasy season with a bunch of your guys on the DL. Not only do you have to replace players you drafted and hoped would bring you much joy throughout the season, but you also have to fight off an entire league of eager beavers for said replacements.
With the season having just begun and the excitement of draft day still fresh in everyone’s minds, the waiver wire is a hotbed of action. Even those guys in your home league that are usually dead money by the end of May are making roster moves galore, whether they really need to or not. Some have good reason while others are embarking on the gamesmanship that involves moves made to prevent others from acquiring the players they need. When you’re the guy who is need of making those moves, you better hope your schedule is wide open.
I’ve been living on the west coast for a number of years, but still play in one home league that is chock-full of east coasters. Not only are injuries killing me in this league, but the time difference ain’t helping much either. When I’m at my other job, these guys are done for the day and are already two pages into the afternoon’s Rotowire updates. When I’m trying to catch a few Z’s, these guys are enjoying their mornings with a bowl of Cheerios in front of their laptops making pick-ups left and right. I’m still scraping crusties out of my eyes while these guys are grabbing Alfredo Aceves off the waiver wire and now I’ve been beaten to the punch by guys that never had any fantasy fight in them to begin with.
And then, of course, there are the leagues that use FAAB as the preferred waiver/free agent acquisition. You get a budget for the entire year and inevitably there’s someone out there who, pretty much, blows their entire wad on a small handful of guys. I lost Ryan Madson in one roto league, put bids in on Sean Marshall, Jonathan Broxton and Greg Holland, and when I woke up, I learned I missed them all because one owner blew more than 75% of his budget on them and already had two closers. An all-reliever strategy? Possibly. But then why draft so many starters to begin with? Trade bait? Likely. Now I can’t wait to see what kind of price-gouging takes place.
I’m certainly not saying there’s anything wrong with what they’re doing. It just makes things more difficult, is all I’m saying. Strategy is strategy and it’s always good to have active owners in a league. Hopefully, they’ll stay this active throughout the season, although of course, I’m skeptical. Still, it’s a good fight now and I welcome the challenge to improve my squads in other ways. Doesn’t mean I don’t hate the fact that I’m still starting off this season in the hole.
Howard Bender has been covering fantasy sports for over 10 years on a variety of websites. In addition to his work here, you can also find him at his site, RotobuzzGuy.com, Fantasy Alarm, RotoWire and Mock Draft Central. Follow him on Twitter at @rotobuzzguy or for more direct questions or comments, email him at rotobuzzguy@gmail.com
Whatever Bender boy. Another stupid article.
Wow. You make a wrong call because Bobby Valentine makes a poor choice for his closer and jeez….
The internet is so unforgiving…..
Saul T Load? No surprise how this dude spends his free time.
Finally someone mentions the time zone disadvantage in fantasy. For years, every east coast twit in my leagues natters on about how they have no advantage and indeed they are at a disadvantage because of “west coast games being played “so late at night”.
Only one league of mine has gone to FAAB to counter the time zone disadvantage of waiver wire moves.
How do they sell late night games as a disadvantage? You still get fantasy points if you don’t actually watch.
It’s a disadvantage for players on the east coast because while it is midnight in NYC, it’s only 9 pm in LA. If you’re in a league with owners on both seaboards, the west has the advantage because owners are just getting home from work, while owners on the east coast have just settled into bed.
In this scenario, imagine if the Braves are playing the Dodgers in LA, and it is a 7:05 PM Pacifc start time on a Wednesday night. Owner A lives in NYC, and Owner B lives in Seattle. Owner A used a high draft pick on Craig Kimbrel. He would love to stay up and watch this game, but it’s 10:05 by the time the game starts and he has to work the next morning. So he goes to bed. Owner B, on the other hand, plans on getting a drink after work and watching the game at a bar with his friends.
Anyway, the 9th rolls around (and if it is a standard game, it should be two and a half hours in, which is 9:45 in Seattle and 12:45 in NYC), and the Braves have the lead. Freddi Gonzalez calls in Kimbrel to face the top of the order. While Kimbrel is trying to blow one past Matt Kemp–POP!–there goes his elbow. He is forced to leave the game, and the heir apparent is Johnny Venters.
So while the Owner A is in deep in the throes of dreaming of Kimbrel saves, Owner B is able to go to the Waiver Wire and snatch up Venters because Kimbrel isn’t going to be pitching anytime soon.
In this case, East coast owners are at a massive disadvantage because what time it is in relation to when the news hits that a player is going down, and is particularly tied to injuries to closers, since every single closer is likely to be rostered in every league.
See the nonsense from Chillmancometh re how this stuff is “sold”.
to Chillman — like it or not, 3/4 of the games are in the two eastern time zones so your scenario is mostly east/midwest anyway. More significant, unless the aforementioned Kimbrel injury is one of the spurting blood Monty Python type of injuries where his arm separates from his shoulder and flies to home plate still grasping the ball, no one watching the game is gonna know he’s injured. 99% of serious injuries await a post-game medical evaluation (all hush hush by every team in the league) and then a press conference/release and only make it onto the newswires by the time people on the east coast wake up. Even then, if it is a DL decision, the east coast computer guys are not going to change that player to DL until THEY wake up and go to work the next morning and read the MLB newswires. So to take advantage of this supposed “advantage”, someone on the west coast will have to make their own medical evalution – AND drop a closer to waivers before picking up the supposedly well known replacement who is supposedly on waiver wire (and Venters is not on waiver wire in any league I’m in).
In the real world, waiver wire pickups are a huge east coast advantage because of the news cycle and computer maintenance/update times.
Add to that – rain out games on the east coast (esp day/morning games) – and the east coast has most of the rainouts – are a huge advantage for east coasters. Who only need to look out the window to see the likely weather for a few hundred miles around. West coasters — note again, dry climates with few rainouts – need to get up early and go look up someone else’s weather on the internet in order to make starting/bench changes for games — by which time eastcoasters have already replaced their marginal rained-out players with the best waiverwire pickings.
Not to mention the day games on Sundays which require lineup changes by about 9:00 am or earlier out on the west coast – which is not exactly when people are raring to go on Sundays assuming they have a life on saturdays.
Ha! get rocked by the west coast
Regarding FAAB complaints, what exactly is your complaint? That these owners have a different strategy (which is still completely within the rules) than you which prevents you from executing your strategy? That’s more than just kicking rocks, that’s whining.
So the other owner decided that he’d rather build a surplus of relievers and starting pitchers to corner the trade market on these pieces rather than save his FAAB budget for may-july breakout players/call-ups. You, on the other hand, have made the decision to be cautious with your FAAB even though you had already lost a closer and knew it was possible that you would get out bid for all the other closers. Sounds like you got outplayed.
What’s next, complaining that another guy put in more time researching his projections than you and that it’s unfair that he is more knowledgeable?
Actually, I though I was being overly-generous with my bids spending nearly 40% of my budget trying to acquire an adequate replacement. Haven’t played with a number of the other owners, so it’s tough to think/assume someone would just use up the majority of their FAAB dollars so early when told how competitive the league was.
Again, not saying they’re not using a viable strategy, though it’s not a strategy I would use for such a long season…just voicing a frustration of mine, as well as one of many fantasy owners.
The primary complaint is that they’re using a short term strategy, indicating a manager that might abandon his team by mid-season, thus screwing him out of players in the short term and screwing the league in general in the long term.
If they remain active the entire season, then it’s just a short term frustration that will benefit the more conservative strategy later in the season (in most scenarios).
Is every post of yours this season going to be you whining that fantasy baseball isn’t a single player game and you can’t build a perfect team against the computer?
Who said anything about playing the computer here? As far as I know, the guys making waiver pick-ups and spending their FAAB dollars are human.
What he means by that is that your complaints seem to be that you have been outmaneuvered by other owners in these leagues. If want to play a game where you can’t be outmaneuvered, then play a game that is against a computer, since they have very predictable patterns. Unlike actual people.
Well I don’t know if I would call being asleep at 4 am or someone stupidly blowing all of their free agent budget before the season starts being outmaneuvered.
kellemonster is correct. You remind me of the people that play video games in an online environment for the first time after spending hours/days/months playing single player campaigns against the computer. They were happy in their little bubble with strict parameters written by the programmers. Once they enter the online environment they complain that people “cheat”, or that they get killed by “no life losers”, or they use “unfair tactics”.
Like them, you clearly feel uncomfortable in situations that aren’t neatly bounded by rules and predictable behavior. This causes you to whine. Please spare us.
Looks like Kellemonster and Schu failed to read the closing paragraph. Totally understand strategies and so forth. Was just venting and trying to do it in a reasonably fun way. Sorry if this article made you think of guys you play online games with.
Hey tards, the article is called “Kicking Rocks” for a reason. What did you expect it to be about? Flowers and sunshine?
Geez, why all the Bender Bashing? We’re all allowed to grouse once in awhile, right? I actually thought this was a productive article cause it got me pondering the various advantages or disadvantages between the east and west coasts. And wondering where I fit into this big picture here in the Central time zone. Right in the middle, I guess!
interesting article, agree on most points.
one thing that pisses me off in ESPN right now is the ‘season projection’ write-up that the espn staff does. it keeps appearing when you click on a player which influences the less knowledgeable players to reject fair trades or offer you stupid ones.
/rant