Order Now The Hardball Times Baseball Annual 2010 is now in development and will ship in mid November! This year's book will feature articles by THT's staff as well as Bill James, Rob Neyer, Tom Tango and Craig Wright. If you use this link to purchase the Annual, you will be in the first group to receive it and you'll be supporting THT.  Derek Ambrosino
John Burnson Derek Carty Marco Fujimoto Eriq Gardner Matt Hagen Jonathan Halket Rob McQuown Troy Patterson Mike Silver Paul Singman Michael Street And here's the full roster. Got a question for our fantasy baseball experts? Email us:
Heater MagazineAdd 10 MPH to your fantasy team — see for yourself
HEATER MAGAZINE Winner, 2008 CBS Sportsline Fantasy League of Experts  Plus our Statistical Definitions Most Recent Comments
Top 10 prospects for 2010: Toronto Blue Jays and Kansas City Royals (8)
Top 10 prospects for 2010: Chicago White Sox and Detroit Tigers (4) Waiver Wire Offseason: NL (2) Acey-deucey (1) Waiver Wire Offseason: NL (12) Monthly Archives
November, 2009
October, 2009 September, 2009 August, 2009 July, 2009 June, 2009 May, 2009 April, 2009 March, 2009 February, 2009 January, 2009 December, 2008 November, 2008 October, 2008 September, 2008 August, 2008 July, 2008 June, 2008 May, 2008 April, 2008 March, 2008 February, 2008 January, 2008 December, 2007 November, 2007 October, 2007 September, 2007 August, 2007 July, 2007 June, 2007 May, 2007 Gear up for baseball season with Chicago White Sox tickets and New York Yankees tickets. LA Angels tickets, Houston Astros tickets, and Atlanta Braves tickets are hot sellers! You can get Boston Red Sox tickets, San Diego Padres tickets or Chicago Cubs tickets for your favorite baseball fan. Coast to Coast Tickets has the best MLB tickets like Minnesota Twins tickets, LA Dodgers tickets, Milwaukee Brewers tickets, New York Met tickets and St. Louis Cardinals tickets. Find premium Chicago Cubs tickets and other Chicago tickets at JustGreatTickets.com. Chicago Cubs Tickets Chicago Tickets  All content on this site (including text, graphs, and any other original works), unless otherwise noted, is licensed under a Creative Commons License. |
Most Recent Posts
Tuesday, September 30, 2008Why so serious?Posted by Paul Singman at 2:00pmEveryone has been in that league—you know, the one where in August or maybe even July the people toward the bottom of the standings stop updating their lineup. This is how Chien-Ming Wang and Eric Byrnes find their way into starting lineups, even when they've been declared out for the year months ago. I've even been in public leagues where people treat the leagues like mock drafts; they draft and quit. There is Mock Draft Central now people! And it's not public leagues I'm talking about; plenty of private leagues, even money leagues, suffer from the same quitting problem Most of the time people quit because they feel they no longer have an impact on the league. They aren't going to win anyway is what they say. But the truth is that once they stop following, they have a huge impact on the league. Kind of ironic. In roto leagues, teams can easily gain points they wouldn't have if everybody was following in the counting categories like home runs and strikeouts. It changes everything. What bothers me the most though, is that a substantial amount of players cannot be acquired as they are left to rot on the roster of an owner that has quit. It is hard enough to find a team that is compatible with you for trading, and when your options are narrowed down it is just that more difficult. You would think, however, that an "experts" league would be followed religiously and fought to the death over. That was not the case with a league of bloggers that Bob Taylor of Fantasy Hurler was in, and he was not shy about calling out the experts who stopped following. A couple of them did have a legitimate reasons for not following, but as Taylor pointed out, an explanation would have been nice. Now, it is nothing new for bloggers to talk all the talk and not follow their own walk, but it raises the question, how seriously should we take fantasy baseball? Do we have a right to get angry and upset over those who quit, or are we acting too uptight and becoming too emotionally attached to something that is "just a game"? About a week ago the same Bob Taylor raised that exact question, and here's an excerpt on what he had to say: Anyway, the point of playing fantasy baseball -- as with all games -- should be to win. And the best leagues, the ones that make playing fantasy baseball worthwhile, are the ones where every manager takes the game that seriously. A league with at least 12 managers who play hard from April to September will inspire intense rivalries, hilarious smack talk, legends of fierce championship battles from seasons past and all the things that make fantasy baseball great. I agree with that statement whole-heartedly and I don't think it could have been put any better. It is not because we are uptight, no-life losers that we desire leagues to be competitive, but rather because it's those competitive, claw-and-scratch-with-your-nails-to-win leagues that bring out the most fun. And in the end, that's a big part of what we're after when we play fantasy sports: fun. The pursuit of happiness, if you will. Paul has been managing fantasy baseball teams for many seasons and writing for THT Fantasy over the past year (and counting). In his first year competing in expert's leagues, he is both surprised and happy to say he finished in the top 30% of his three leagues. He welcomes readers' thoughts at his email here or in the comments below. Commenting is not available in this weblog entry. |
