Week 4 Recap – Canton Heroes vs. off alot

Another bad week from me.  Another week of underperforming running backs lands me with the lowest score in the league for the second week in a row.  It happens.

By the way, if anybody wants to know, I won the championship in four out of the five fantasy baseball leagues I played in this year.  I was in the third place game in the fifth league, but devoted my time to the other four and didn’t pay much attention to it and still ended up with a 5-5 tie, but lost the tiebreaker and thus ended up in 4th place there.  4 1sts and 1 4th – Yeah, I’ll take that every single year please.

Back to football.

Let’s start with Ray Rice, who granted we all knew was going to be limited due to his injury, but the entire Ravens running game was overly limited in that game against Buffalo, who had just given up over 120 yards to Bilal freakin’ Powell the week before.  The Bills defense is obviously a doormat, or if they aren’t they’ve got me fooled.  But even a blind squirrel finds a nut every once in a while and the Ravens pretty much stuffed a handful down their throats and helped them out this week.  The Ravens still only lost by a touchdown, but I have to think that if Ray Rice or Bernard Pierce either one is healthy for that full game (Rice’s hip and Pierce’s strained calf) that they don’t have to rely on the throwing game so much so early and then Flacco doesn’t throw the five interceptions that he threw and the Ravens score a couple of more touchdowns and win that game by at least two scores.  Despite those five interceptions and Rice only getting 5 carries and Pierce only getting four carries, the Ravens still only lost that game by a field goal.  The Bills are not that good a team and don’t get fooled by the obscenely low fantasy numbers the Ravens guys put up this week.  So, the fact that I played Ray Rice, expecting that even though he was limited, 40-50 yards and a TD or maybe even 2 TDs wouldn’t have been surprising at all.  Instead, he only got 17 yards.  He did almost get a touchdown catch at the end of the game, but Flacco must have thought he was throwing to somebody else because he threw it a mile over poor short little Ray Rice’s head.  Way to justify your big contract, Joe.  Your team was in a game they should have easily won, but because of you they were behind in the final two minutes and you lead them down to the red zone and have a chance to redeem yourself and you throw a 12-foot high pass to a 5’8” running back.  Get the ball down a little bit for Rice or throw it to somebody else.

Try as I might, I just can’t get Stevan Ridley on the bench and keep him there.  With Randall Cobb and DeAngelo Williams on their bye week, I was kind of forced to play Ridley at the Flex behind Rice and MJD as my lead two backs and Ridley actually outperformed them with his best game of the year so far (though he has set the bar incredibly low there).  So, things are a little more promising for Stevan Ridley, though it seems like everyweek somebody wants to jump on the bandwagon of one of his back-ups in the timeshare.  Last week it was Brandon Bolden, but he was a non factor.  This week, they’re jumping on LaGarette Blount because he managed to break a 47-yard touchdown run.  That’s what we call a lucky break.  Look at the rest of his stats for the game.  You take that one run away and he’s got 8 carries for 17 yards, barely over 2 yards per carry.  He’s not going to be fantasy playable.  He’s just eating up a spot on your roster that could be better used.  Hell, you’re probably better off with a back-up kicker than you are with Blount.  Unless you’re desperate or stupid, you’re not putting him in whereas while I don’t advocate holding two kickers, you would at least presumably use your second kicker and you should not be using Blount.  Even if Ridley gets hurt, that job goes to Bolden or Vereen if healthy.  Blount might get a bigger share in the run game this next week because of that lucky break making his stats look all pretty, but don’t expect more than that 2.2 yards per carry from him moving forward.

Now, you could notice that I’m 1-3 at this point and just disregard some or all of the advice above, but this is common sense stuff I’m talking about here.

To recap some of the roster moves I made over this past week, my trade for Robert Griffin III went through, so the Heroes wave bye-bye to Pierre Garcon and say good riddance to bad rubbish in the form of Jay Cutler via that trade.  Now, it’s RG3’s bye week, so I need a quarterback and since I’m up against Peyton Manning this week, I need lightning in a bottle and I can’t rely on Geno Smith after his terrible day against the Titans this week, so I’m going with Brian Hoyer and hoping the Browns / Bills game tomorrow night ends up being a shootout and I get proven right about how crappy that Bills defense is.  Don’t get fooled by the week they had against the Ravens.  Remember what they did two weeks ago against the hapless Jets’ offense which prompted me to add Geno Smith on the off chance he used that game for a launching pad for a hot streak (he didn’t).  But hey, that was before I had RG3.  After this week, unless he gets hurt, I shouldn’t need another quarterback for the rest of the season.

With that 2-for-1 trade going through, I had an empty spot on my roster, which I used to grab Percy Harvin, who should become the Seahawks #1 target for Russell Wilson rather easily once he’s healthy.  And since he’s hurt, I got to stash him on my IR slot and create another open space on my roster, which I used to grab Greg Jennings, who Fear the Roo made the mistake of dropping.  Unfortunately, I didn’t play Jennings because of the Vikings QB situation, but I knew that having Matt Cassel take over for Christian Ponder would be a beneficial move for Jennings.  I just wanted to see it in action for a week before I trusted him enough to plug him into the line-up.  He’ll probably be seeing plenty of playing time for the Heroes moving forward presuming that Christian Ponder doesn’t get handed the reins at QB again.

So, here is an updated look at the Heroes roster for Week 5.

QB – Robert Griffin III (bye), Brian Hoyer

RB – Ray Rice, Maurice Jones-Drew, DeAngelo Williams, Stevan Ridley, Bernard Pierce

WR – Randall Cobb, DeSean Jackson, Greg Jennings (bye), Eddie Royal, Cecil Shorts

TE – Coby Fleener, Charles Clay

D/ST – Broncos

K – Sebastian Janikowski

And so you all have the opportunity to laugh at my misfortune, here is my Week 4 Box Score.

Canton Heroes – 60.7

– QB – Robert Griffin III – 14

– RB – Ray Rice – 1.7

– RB – Maurice Jones-Drew – 2.8

– WR – DeSean Jackson – 3.4

– WR – Eddie Royal – 4.2

– TE – Coby Fleener – 13.7

– Flex – Stevan Ridley – 7.9

– D/ST – Broncos – 12

– K – Sebastian Janikowski – 1

off alot – 93

– QB – Tony Romo – 18.5

– RB – Adrian Peterson – 26

– RB – Alfred Morris – 7.1

– WR – Calvin Johnson – 10.4

– WR – Hakeem Nicks – 3.3

– TE – Tyler Eifert – 3.9

– Flex – Lamar Miller – 12.8

– D/ST – Bengals – 4

– K – Garrett Hartley – 7

It’s Not All About Football in Fantasyland

I may have mentioned it before, but while I am coming off of a 2-year hiatus from fantasy football, I have continued to excel at fantasy baseball over that same time frame.  This year, I have successfully managed 5 teams in multiple formats into first place or the first seed in the playoffs.

For those of you in standard 12-team leagues, this has probably been the first week of the playoffs in fantasy baseball for you.  For me, that’s 3 of my 5 teams.  However, since all 3 of those teams earned the number one seed, I’ve essentially had the week off in all of those leagues.

Of my remaining two teams, one of them is a 12-team rotisserie league, meaning that all of your stats from the season add up into one total.  The person with the most Home Runs over the course of the season gets 12 points, the person with the second most gets 11, the team with the third most gets 10 and so on.  This is measured over all 10 of the stats relevant to the standard leagues (Runs Scored, Home Runs, Runs Batted In, Stolen Bases, Batting Average, Wins, Saves, Strikeouts, Earned Run Average, and Walks/Hits Per innings Pitched.  In that league, my team is over 10 points ahead of first place with substantial leads in multiple categories that I don’t anticipate being encroached on in the last couple of weeks of the season.

And finally, there is my 8-team home league that I’ve been playing with my college friends since 2008, which I won for the second time last season and I’ve had the top seed in the playoffs clinched this season since pretty much the All-Star Break.  Our playoffs in that league don’t start until next week and there are no byes.

So, while my fantasy football season could be somewhat stress provoking, I have had absolutely nothing to worry about on the baseball front this week.  And if you want to be in that same boat next season, here are a few tips for you in head-to-head leagues.

1) In the draft, go after guys in the early rounds that can carry your team in multiple categories.  Don’t go after guys that hit .220-.240 with 40 home runs when there is a guy that can hit .320 while hitting 25 home runs and stealing 20 bases instead. Low average power guys are a dime a dozen once the season gets rolling and you can always find a hot bat on the waiver wire to add some power to your line-up.

2) Be active.  I frequently lead my league in moves made per season or if not then I’m up there close to whoever is leading the league in add/drops.  For example, over the past couple of seasons I’ve added guys like Raul Ibanez, Mark Reynolds, Josh Reddick and Bryan LaHair while they were hot and then dropped them when they cooled off and it didn’t cost me anything, but put helped me win plenty of games in the middle of the season and put me in a better position for the playoffs.  Don’t draft guys that are that streaky because if anybody does draft them, they will get frustrated with them and drop them from their team sometime around the end of April.  Draft the safe choices and get guys that can give you help in multiple stat categories and if they can fill multiple positions on your roster, that’s also a huge plus.

3) Be a streamer.  What do you think is going to win you more wins and strikeouts match-ups, drafting Clayton Kershaw and Stephen Strasburg or streaming Joe Kelly, Sonny Gray, Martin Perez, Chris Tillman, Mike Leake and Scott Kazmir while using only one spot on your roster to play the six of them?  6 beats 2 almost always, no matter who the 2 are unless one of them throws a no-hitter and thus crushes your team on WHIP and ERA that week, but you’d be S.O.L. in those 2 categories if that happened anyway, so you might as well make sure you’re cycling through the manpower to make sure you always win on Wins and Strikeouts.  In a standard head-to-head league on Yahoo, you get 6 add/drops per week.  USE THEM!  Look up who the probable pitchers are next week and pick out a pitcher on a good team who is pitching against a bad team.  Most of the time they’re going to put up a quality start for you and have a good chance of picking up a win.  And if you’re doing that six times a week by dropping off the weakest member of your starting rotation each day for a guy that is pitching tomorrow and then plugging him into your line-up for a day before dropping him back into the free agent pool, it only takes one spot on your roster to completely dominate your opponents pitchers for that week.  And the more starters you use, the less it hurts your ERA and WHIP categories if one of your pitchers has a bad start because you have so many other guys to even out the numbers.  Meanwhile, if one of your opponents has a bad start and doesn’t change his lineups and isn’t streaming pitchers, you’ve pretty much got him beat across the board on Wins, Ks, ERA and WHIP.  Any time you can execute a strategy that wins you 2-4 extra games per week than you would have otherwise, you’re pretty much guaranteeing yourself a first round bye in the playoffs.  Don’t draft pitchers in the first few rounds.  Get some stud hitters in place (they play every day, so they are far more important – pitching wins championships in reality, but having a line-up full of .300-plus hitters with decent power and RBI numbers is what wins you fantasy championships).  What I like to do is get maybe 3 top of the rotation guys that go in the first 120-picks or so, so that way I’m only using 3 of my first 10 picks on pitching, which should give me a pretty stellar line-up.  For this year, it was guys like Adam Wainwright and Max Scherzer who pitched like first three round draft picks, but who you should have been able to get in picks 50-75 or maybe even later on Scherzer.  Then, get 2-3 closers in the draft that you can rely on and pick up whatever extra closers you want off the waiver wire when some closer loses their job and somebody else gets promoted.  Then, grab a few young arms in the late rounds like I did with Matt Harvey, Shelby Miller and Julio Teheran and that gives you more than enough of a solid base in your rotation and make sure you leave a spot on your roster that you aren’t going to get too attached to whoever you put in there so that you can stream through pitchers and blow the competition away and coast into your league’s championship round.