As Mary Chapin Carpenter might have sung, "Sometimes you’re the bat; sometimes you’re the ball". What does this mean for you, the fantasy baseball manager? Only that sometimes you make the wrong move, and sometimes you stumble into a great move. Baseball being largely about failure (as Roger Angell informs us), odds are you’re repeatedly doing something to hurt your team’s chances of success. While a real baseball skipper can affect but a handful of games, you have the power to screw up your entire season every time you make a decision. The thing one has to remember is no matter what the outcome might be, at least try beforehand to think about the possible outcomes, and then learn to live with the results.

My league had just had its 2006 Draft, and I'd read that one of my pitching picks, John Thomson of Atlanta, was being relegated to the bullpen for a week or two. No problem, thought I, as I can reserve Thomson, who shouldn't – at worst -- net me much out of the pen. That’ll give me a chance to see if he’s recovered from his 2005 injuries, and evaluate one of my reserve picks.  To replace Thomson, I check my new reserve roster. Like you, I’m in the immediate post-draft daze of comprehending my current team. It’s made up of familiar leftovers worth freezing from last year, sprinkled with new, yet familiar names, but not yet familiar quirks of being their new owner-cum-manager. Perhaps you notice in the first week’s stats some line on a player you were outbid on. If he has a good day, or start, you wish you could have – should have? – gone higher in your bidding. Perhaps another is a pitcher who’s just gotten pounded by one or two teams in succession, or is a hitter in an early-season funk. Good thing you decided to let that one go. Yes, the new season’s just starting to reveal possible gleams of gold, but are they the real thing, or are they iron pyrite named Tuffy Rhoades?

Our league has a roster of 40 players total: 23 active, and 17 in reserve. I always draft two or three left-over starters for my reserves; for I’ve learned the hard way how often starting pitchers break down. So I see what’s left when we’re in the reserve draft, and try to find a couple of chaps who can step in for a couple of weeks or so, and capably fill a hole in my rotation without embarrassing anyone. I chose Adam Eaton, knowing he’s on the DL till at least the dog days of summer. But -- if he comes back, and is effective -- I’ve got a decent starter stashed away for the stretch drive at a bargain price.

Sometimes one has to guess at the lesser of fairly equal evils. There are a lot of guys out there in 4th and 5th starter roles and they can be useful guys to stash. But, they’re always a crap shoot. Still, at the very least, they are, now, in some big league team’s rotation, and that’s more than the rest of us can say. One dark horse I drafted is Seth McClung, who could build on what little he’s done, but is Tampa really any better than Colorado, when it comes to picking pitchers? Also new on my team is Jason Johnson, who is not in Colorado, and that’s a lot of upside right there. But the guy I’m going to call up to replace Thomson had a great second half in 2005, and he also has a lot of upside, so Josh Towers of Toronto gets the call to my active roster. Hey, what's the worst that can happen? As Tony LaRussa teaches us, “hope for the best, prepare for the worst”.

By the arcane rules of my league, (an 8x8 league, based on Front Office rules), any pitcher who's activated must stay active for 2 weeks, unless injured and placed on the DL, or demoted by his real team. So the worst that could happen with Towers active is that he could start four games, lose them all, and give up a highlight-reel of guys running the bases as he gets taken to the woodshed. And all this in a very few innings for maximum negative pointedness.

This must have been my lucky fortnight, as Towers only started three games. In this instance, I was the bug on the windshield, most definitely the ball being crushed by some serious lumber, with nothing less than 66.5 point reversal piece of wood upside my team’s head.

This is what I – and many other owners, real and fantasy -- got from Josh Towers the first two weeks of the young season:
3-GS  W-0 L-3  12.7-IP   9-K  5-BB   25-HA   ERA 9.237  WHIP 2.368   28.5 pts

Atlanta, meanwhile, pulled the ol’ switcheroo. This is what those owners with faith in John Thomson found in their Easter bunny basket:
2-GS   W-0  L-0   14.7-IP   14-K    3-BB    10-HA    ERA 1.227   WHIP 0.886   +38.0 pts

(And then there the lovely stats of my un-activated Tribe hurler, Jason Johnson, whose owners happily realize that he also had a nice start with his new club:

3 GS W-2   L-0    19.7 IP   8 K   4 BB   16 HA   ERA 1.831   WHIP 1.017 +47.5 pts

Now I could (and did, for a couple of days) mentally beat myself up about all of this. But I also know that if Towers had had even a halfway decent line in any of those 3 games he poured gasoline on, I would be congratulating myself for my perspicacity and general fantasy baseball genius-ness. As it is, I took a chance, and it didn’t work out. Then make the best informed guess you can. Try to look at all the possible moves dispassionately. Don’t keep a player active just because you like him, and “he’s due”. And, most importantly, don’t second-guess yourself if the result isn’t what you expected. Dissect the move in retrospect, and see what you can learn. Was it a mistake? If so, why? Were there any better options?

Would I make the same move again, knowing what I know now? Unlike certain failed presidential candidates, no, of course not. But I can live with the knowledge that, at the time, what I did seemed like the best possible option available. It didn’t work out, but them’s the breaks. Now it’s time to move on to the next decision: should I reserve Livan Hernandez, or Rodrigo Lopez? And if so, activate X? Or Y?