The Morning Offering -- March 23, 2005

Written by TiVo on March 23, 2005

Welcome to the second half of the TiVo daily double. Today’s morning offering comes on the heels of me wrapping up Part Two of How to Win Your Fantasy Baseball League Without Watching a Single Game, and probably means I’m a giant loser who enjoys wasting his free time with fantasy sports.

That’s why we’re all here? Good.

Not long ago, I completed a draft in a 30-team baseball league.

You heard me right. 30 frickin' teams.

I send a large shout out to Red Sox fan Steve Killeen and Co-commish Jeff Teneover for even thinking the Virtual MLB was possible. Thirty owners named their teams after real MLB teams and navigated an 18-round, 540-pick draft in less than three hours on Tuesday night.

I imagine the goal was to create a league where the talent level resembles real-life rosters. I’ll share mine with you in a minute and let you be the judge. I’m definitely counting on some scrubs.

I was trying to keep my baseball participation to a minimum this year, but I was sold when I heard the concept. I had to be in this 30-team league. I needed to know if it was possible to out-train-wreck the old 20-team, all-category train wreck leagues that The Fool used to run.

The league is head-to-head, weekly and points-based, but has some pretty good checks and balances to make every player valuable. Closers seemed the most inflated, because saves are worth 10 points each, compared to 1 for hits, walks, runs, RBI and pitchers’ strikeouts. It appears there will be nothing on the free agent wire, not after David Barkus (fittingly running the Yankees) celebrated landing Craig Counsell at pick No. 530 by saying “I can’t believe I got a starter!”

Yes folks, it was that kind of night. Chat posts in the 14th round were complaining about the lack of available talent. I went into the draft cold, with no particular strategy, and found it hard to believe I was happy to spend a 6th-rounder on Bobby Crosby. I passed on Shannon Stewart for David DeJesus in the 10th, but it was Reach Central by that point. The first pick in the 11th round of a 30-team draft is a free agent in a 12-team, 25-round scenario.

Before the draft, I joked that Wes Obermueller would get picked, and someone would say “Hey, that was my guy!” Obermueller did get selected, 538th, but thankfully no one complained. Most of our computers were frozen by then, or we’d simply lost interest in chatting with each other. I think I’d heard of every player drafted except for Curtis Granderson (No. 528, OF, Tigers), but I can’t believe that the Kiko Caleros and Eric Croziers of the world were queued up and chosen. Those are the kind of guys you see ranked in a fantasy magazine and wonder why they go so deep.

I know reading about some other guy’s draft isn’t always the most interesting thing, but I thought you might like to see what the talent on a squad in a 30-team league looked like. I had to pull some strings to be the Washington Nationals, after Matt the Canadian Dude snapped up my beloved Blue Jays and wouldn’t give.

Here’s my team:
C Brian Schneider (11th round/324th overall selection)
1B Carlos Delgado (2nd/37)
2B Junior Spivey (8th/217)
SS Bobby Crosby (6th/157)
3B Eric Hinske (9th/264)
OF Ichiro Suzuki (1st/24)
OF David DeJesus (10th/277)
OF Jay Gibbons (12th/337)
DH Joe Randa (14th/397)
P A.J. Burnett (3rd/84)
P Guillermo Mota (4th/97)
P Mark Buehrle (5th/144)
P Andy Pettitte (7th/204)
P Dewon Brazelton (15th/444)

Bench:
Rocco Baldelli (13th/384)
Gabe Gross (16th/457)
Luis Ayala (17th/504)
Erik Bedard (18th/517)

I don’t know what to think, because you can’t judge it like a roster in a 12-team league. I was happy to have players with jobs and rotation slots for the most part.

I went a little pitching heavy early -- the Pettitte pick was an accident when I froze up, got back on late in the 45-second-per-pick window and still ran out of time. I also wasn’t happy with Hinske at third, which caused me to take Randa over Ryan Freel and David Bell in the 14th. I took a flyer on Baldelli the round before, figuring a boost from him mid-season would be better than anything I could get off the wire.

Prince Fielder and Delmon Young were both drafted, but Gabe Gross, who is mashing this spring, was my only real reach. We’ll have two DL spots and two minor-league spots to work with, since this will be the thinnest free agent crop in history.

And still champion
The NCAA basketball tournament is still king of all sporting events, as Father Time noted in Monday's offering. Day One was a little slow, with just the UAB and UW-Milwaukee upsets, but Vermont and Bucknell got it rolling on day two and it just didn’t stop.

If there was a better game than Wake Forest-West Virginia on Saturday, I didn’t see it. Those guys had fouled out three players each and were still going at it in double overtime.

Although the NCAA’s lacked a memorable buzzer-beater, the NIT provided one. Did you guys see the Vanderbilt football-pass over three Wichita State players with 0.7 seconds left for the game-winning layup? It was all over TV on Monday night, and is still available online on ESPN Motion. And that wasn’t even the best shot of the weekend, as anyone who saw the kid make the game-tying shot from his back in the Minnesota High School playoffs can attest.

Bonds market
The Xach man told you in yesterday’s morning offering about his affinity for injured players. Well, his feast-or-famine team just rolled the dice again, as he and I completed a straight-up Lance Berkman for Barry Bonds swap.

I was looking forward to my man anchoring a sweet fantasy team this year, but when I heard the words “might be out for the season,” that was enough for me.

Such is the curse of the early draft. Bonds was consistently going between 8 and 20 in most drafts I’d seen, but after the news broke, he was drafted 83rd in the VMLB. Such studs as Doug Davis, Jorge Posada and Rich Harden were deemed safer picks.

Berate, belittle or big-up TiVo at Tivo@rotogods.com. Or find him lurking the message boards 24-7. Hip-hop and funk fans can also peep TiVo’s musical musings once a week on allthangsfunky.blogspot.com

-- Written by TiVo on March 23, 2005