Tag Archive | Twins

Sandy K’s Brothers (or why i suck at fantasy baseball)

Jun12

Fantasy Baseball. Ah, that game that allows you the fan to play GM / Manager and put together a team that is the best in the majors. It actually took me a few years to get into fantasy baseball. Mainly because I had heard more about fantasy football and since I don’t make it a point to watch or keep up with football, I had no interest. However, a few years ago when starting a new job, one of my friends / co-workers was running a fantasy league and needed some new owners. He was surprised that I had not been playing fantasy baseball given how much I would end up talking about baseball. At one point he said “if i had a dime for every time you mentioned baseball, i’d be at least a millionaire.”

Anyway, I decided to give it a go and join the fantasy league. The initial players I had on my team were Johann Santana and Jim Edmonds. I could have gotten a team with a couple of other big bopper bats, but since I LOVE pitching and defense, I had to take the team with Johann Santana. Anyway, the league cost money to join and for some reason this didn’t stop me from crafting the worst fantasy team ever. I didn’t think I would actually win or come close, so I decided to put together the All Jewish Team. At the time that I joined fantasy, there were not many good Jewish players in the game that you would actually use in fantasy baseball. The ones available were on the back end of their careers.

Anyway, my first team had the few Jews in the game and a bunch of guys with names that might be mistaken as possibly Jewish. The craziest thing I did was to draft Adam Stern (where is he now?) in the 3rd round. The guys in my league (and i do mean guys; it was a league of 12 teams, me and 11 men playing) were beyond puzzled and just couldn’t understand how i got in to play. In honor of the concept of my team, I decided to name them Sandy K’s Brothers in honor of the great Sandy Koufax, only one of the greatest pitchers ever and a Jew! Needless to say, with the team I drafted, I managed to set league lows. My team was son bad, that many of the guys in the league thought that my friend who got me into fantasy baseball put me in on purpose so that he could win because we were in the same division. They also were annoyed because they assumed I was a “typical” girl severely lacking in sports knowledge, let alone baseball knowledge.

The second season it took me a while to draft any jewish players and they were wondering what was up. Some had come to realize over the first season that I actually did know something about baseball, but they were still skeptical. I actually came pretty close to making the playoffs but the fact that I was able to prove I knew baseball was even better.

Fast forward a couple of years, I am now the commissioner of the league. The guys know I actually do know baseball because of pulling off some trades that they saw as ridiculous only to later realize were brilliant. However, I am still unable to get to the playoffs and actually win. There is a good reason for this. It is because, when I play the game, I think about it more in terms of some of my favorite players, pitching and defense (things I value greatly, but in fantasy only in certain ways) and because I refuse to draft or pick up players that have played for certain teams.

The last reason is the biggest problem. I refuse to put anyone who has played or currently plays for the cubs on my fantasy team. I’ve also done this with players from the Yankees as well, but I have not done that in recent years anymore. In fact, my current team has 4 Yankees on it (Swisher, ,Gardner, A-Rod, Sabathia). With the cubs, this presents problems because a LOT of players on other teams who are fairly decent have cubs stench as i like to call it on them. This automatically disqualifies them from being a member of Sandy K’s Brothers. In past years, some of those players could have helped get my team over the hump and into the playoffs and possibly winning.

Generally, I enjoy playing fantasy baseball because I can put together a team and see how it would do. And it has forced me to learn more about other teams and in particular the NL since I mainly watch AL teams given where the Sox play. One drawback though for me is the joy I feel when I see a player doing well in my fantasy lineup, but then being irritated if he is on the team opposing my white sox that day. This was the case early on when I had Johann Santana and he played for the Twins. My hope was usually for a great pitching performance for 8 innings of 0-0 baseball and then in the 9th when the twins would have to bring in someone else, the White Sox would go to town and win. That would be a win-win in fantasy, even though i wouldn’t get the fantasy win, i’d get the stats. Some day I hope i can get over my cubs aversion as i did with the yankees, but something tells me that just won’t happen. I have gotten over the opposing player thing however.

It’s only been a few weeks People!

Apr18

So, we are now 13 games into the season and White Sox fans are going ballistic. The “small ball” that Ozzie Guillen has clamored for is not working to perfection. Thus far, the team has NOT BEEN SHUT OUT, but they haven’t won many games either. There have been a lot of close games (some of 1 run and a few of 4 run difference), but for the most part the team has been in the games. Our first few opponents have been the Indians, Twins, and Blue Jays. The way we are playing the Indians, you’d never know that Cleveland was in a “rebuilding” mode. They have owned the White Sox save opening day when they were blanked 6-0 by Mark Buehrle. The Sox split with Toronto, but that led to the Chicago Sun-Times’ beat writer and other commentators to speculate that Toronto should lose its baseball team because no one was at the park. (Comments on that in another post). Just one win against the Twins and that hurts because, well, I do not like them against the White Sox. Don’t get me wrong, they are a good team and I like their style, but they are a divisional rival and thus not liked.

In any event, the pitching is doing what it is supposed to do and the offense, not so much. The Royals have a better team and slugging percentage than the Sox (but how long can THAT really last?!?). Because the offense is not clicking, everyone is up in arms that there is not a legitimate DH. There are also a very vocal group of Scott Podsednik supporters who are angry he is not still in Chicago as the lead-off guy. Oh and there is the griping about not having kept Jim Thome because the team is missing a strong lefty bat in the lineup. And finally, there is still the grumbling that Gordon Beckham should play SS and not Ramirez and Mark Teahen needs to go because he is not a 3B. All of this just makes me laugh. I am not happy about not winning so many games, but I am also not crazed about it at this time. 1) it is a long season and 2) there is time to turn things around. No one ever wants to lose those early games because they can always come back to bite you in the butt later in the season. If it were June and this were still happening, then I’d be worried and up in arms. However, it is only the start of the 3rd week and there seems to be mass panic. There are even some calling for the manager to be fired now. Personally, I prefer to let this play out a bit before jumping on the panic bus. Not to mention that I feel like many fans just can’t handle change. Either that or they don’t know what they are talking about. Can’t we just enjoy it, love that the team is in these games and start panicking in a couple of months if things don’t turn around??? Hopefully today will be the start of something good.