Tout Wars Mixed: Missing the mark, not the mission
A Hardy well done
A hearty and heartfelt congratulations to MLB.com's and FantasyBaseball.com's Fred Zinkie, the winner of the 15-team mixed league in Tout Wars 2011. The Tout rookie's efforts to conquer KFFL's Tim Heaney and me on the season's final day were valiant.
Shan't forget kudos for the AL winner, Larry Schecter (Sandlot Shrink), and the NL victor (and good KFFL friend) Steve Gardner (USA Today). The champ of AL LABR was RotoWire's Chris Liss, and Doug Dennis (another friend of the program from Baseball HQ) captured the NL LABR title. Clap yo hands.
The triumphant aren't the only fantasy baseball players who deserve acknowledgment. Praise is in order for Fred's fellow Tout freshman, Tim, for his showing and the fine work that he's done, too.
Bummed, but bouncing back Tap your mouse here for more »
Tout Wars Mixed: An incredibly helpless feeling
Beckett deals blow to gullet
Maybe this is punishment for having the bravado to attend a Pearl Jam concert in Vancouver on Sunday night, the eve of the biggest three days of my fantasy baseball life. Just as Eddie Vedder and Co. took the stage at the Pacific Coliseum, the Tout Wars FAAB deadline passed, and my competition for the whole shebang in the mixed league landed the pieces that they believed would carry them past me by the end of Wednesday.
Just because you're paranoid, don't mean they won't pass you.
I've been dangling from the first spot in the standings for a good portion of the last several weeks. I feel like a carrot, a brass ring, Ice-T in "Surviving the Game."
WHIPed, stolen ... saved? Tap your mouse here for more »
Tout Wars: The abnormal, exceptional average
Drought putting Tout in doubt
I hate Marco Scutaro.
In the Tout Wars mixed league, I was ahead of Fred Zinkie in batting average by 0.004 points heading into the baseball regular season's final full week of games. Marco Freakin' Scutaro made my stomach turn at the very beginning of it when he collected six hits in eight at-bats in Monday's twin bill between the Boston Red Sox and Baltimore Orioles.
The runt keystoner went 0-for-3 on Tuesday, but he'd already levied the damage to my psyche and set the tone. Fred's players are feeding on one another's enthusiasm. I can feel it. Zinkie's 19 RBIs yesterday don't bother me. His 22 hits in 59 at-bats do. My club batted .333 (thanks to stellar Tuesday evenings from Eric Hosmer and Mike Carp) on the first two days, and Fred still overtook me in batting average by one ... one-thousandth ... of a point.
Lucky lockout looming? Tap your mouse here for more »
Tout Wars tangle too tense to take
Britton was gettin' it done
There's no better place to be than on top. In roto baseball, anyway. Unless you're on top (in Tout Wars!) and you have a sinking feeling.
It won't take much for everything that my competition - Fred Zinkie and KFFL's own Tim Heaney - needs to happen ... to happen. I picked up five points this past week, not a bad time to do it, but I entered Monday sitting on the most precarious four-point lead you can imagine. I'm just hoping that each of these dudes is second-guessing himself (and experiencing an unsettled stomach) as much as I am.
Fantasy manage a trois Tap your mouse here for more »
Brandon Stokley could quickly become fantasy football asset
Stoked to grab Stokley?
Initially, the news that the New York Giants signed Brandon Stokley may not have struck you as all that important. The 13-year veteran wideout has caught 50 or more passes and has scored more than five times in a season only once, in 2004 with the Indianapolis Colts. He certainly didn't make you scramble to your fantasy football league's waiver wire once you heard about his deal.
Stokley, 35, is joining his fifth team. He's no longer a speedy, occasionally difference-making wide receiver. But he's still deft and heady. He may still have something to offer fantasy football players, too, particularly those in point-per-reception leagues - probably a good bit more than they realize.
Manning his post Tap your mouse here for more »
Appreciating the flexible fantasy football player who backs that tight end up
Davis part of new wave
A couple of years ago, fantasy football gamers in a typical 12-team, 16-man league didn't have much of a reason to carry a second tight end. You might've drafted one, but one of your TEs would be among your first cuts so that you could supplement your unstable nucleus of running backs or bring aboard a bye-week play at another position.
If you ever played a tight end in your flex spot, it was probably because you put yourself in a real pickle. Fantasy managers who frequently employed that tactic existed, but they were members of an endangered species or played in leagues with atypical scoring rules. Some leagues didn't (and still don't, for some odd reason) allow it. A tight end? There? That's sooo gross.
It's beyond cliche to refer to the depth of the position anymore, however. In fact, tight end is so deep that it offers more than one possibility every week - if you're willing to go there.
Who does No. 2 work for? Tap your mouse here for more »
I still feel the same way, 10 weeks later, fantasy football gamers
Itsy bitsy teenie Beanie love
On June 29, I jotted down some answers - which weren't going to be published - to a long series of fantasy football poll questions.
On Sept. 7, I was curious about what I'd forecasted for the 2011 season that long ago, so I read them.
The escalated uncertainty that was destined to spring forth from the aftermath of the NFL's labor dispute was bound to render some of them irrelevant, and others just don't sit well anymore. But the responses that still rang true with me - my unwavering suppositions - struck me.
Fantasy football, at 1.21 jigawatts Tap your mouse here for more »
