With a couple of weeks to go till the start of our Strat-O-Matic home league season, taking a break from Scoresheet this year, I am still focusing on my STATS Fantasy Baseball team.
What really has my interest in all my leagues is the free agent pool. In my AL only leagues, you can imagine just how thin thngs are, especially in the CBS Experts League--which is an AL--where there is a daily FAAB add/drop opportunity. In other words, if you are not right on top of the free agent pool, well, you are out of it (and, yes, my injury riddled team is in last).
On the other hand, in Tout, I was in third yesterday, and I went in today to check the status of Red Sox newbie Jed Lowrie and I actually can try to grab Lowrie in that league, but, in CBS, he is, to quote the Everly Brothers (or recently, Alison Kraus and Robert Plant), "gone, gone, gone."
Well, I doubt in my mixed STATS league Lowrie will be considered unless he starts to rake like, maybe the Giants John Bowker. Bowker, you might know, homered last Saturday and Sunday, becoming the first rookie to ever homer his first two games as a Giant. That list includes names like McCovery and Mays and Ott and Cepada.
But, part of the reason I was considering this, is, as I noted last week, in the STATS league we had our first free agent draft last week. That is when the players not selected by the 12 teams who selected 26 players to start, get to pick clean the player carrion left behind. And, that list of leftovers is pretty good. For example, I nabbed Joe Crede and Dana Eveland.
But, there were a number of very good players that fell under the radar and cosmic forces. Mike Jacobs, Cliff Lee, Scott Baker, Aubrey Huff, and Andre Eithier were among the names who fell in that category and were teamless until today (that is they may have been picked up yesterday, but they could not active on a roster till today).
Which is a little surprising. In fact I was able to pick up Justin Germano, at the time the NL ERA leader. Had did that happen as Germano really had a decent 2007(7-10, 4.46) as a rookie. He pitches on a good team, in a pitcher's park, and, well, he was leading the league in ERA. And, I did not draft first as this league gives the last place team first dibs and my LAwr of Averages squad is in the middle of the pack.
It makes it fun to speculate though. Because if he keeps it up, somebody is going to grab Bowker next Monday and wonder how they got him.