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[AugustWest]

I check my team pretty much every day, but I know so little about what the hell I'm doing that I don't end up doing much.

[Arachno-capitalist]

I check every day

[littlefallsmets]

Turbo Ninjas, I salute the all of you. Good game.

Kept a dude guessing until the end.

[melack]

I just dropped from second to fourth place. I think I'm making the wrong moves here. Even looking at my roster, I can't recognize half these names. Tom Gorzelanny? Kelly Johnson? Is that even a man? When did I add these guys?

I think I need to take a step back let things sort themselves out.

But if you guys need a second baseman or a starting pitcher, I'm still your guy.

[melack]

But I guess things aren't so bad. I just remembered that my three best pitchers are and have been on the DL for most of the month. Once they get healthy, my pitching staff will be an absolute beast.

[littlefallsmets]

Basically, my biggest mistake so far has been that I dropped Aramis Ramirez when he got injured and went with the competent-but-nothing-special Melvin Mora at third. But that was early and... I can't hold that against myself too much.

My third reliever is kind of a question mark, my back-up catcher can't hit anything other than the occasional dinger, I only have one bench guy to fill both 3B and SS on rain days or off-days... and I only have one legitimate base-stealer on my squad.

Some of these problems I can probably fix off the free agent list down the road but... finding a second decent base-stealer is kind of a stumper.

I'm waaaaaaay over thinking this. But it's distracting me from the fact that the Mets put their number 2 pitcher and their starting second baseman on the DL on the same goddamned day so... what the hell.

[iron_felix]

Even looking at my roster, I can't recognize half these names. Tom Gorzelanny? Kelly Johnson? Is that even a man? When did I add these guys?

Can'd by this Braves fan for suspecting Kelly Johnson might actually be a woman.

[melack]

Hmm, Kelly Johnson got a stolen base for me tonight. For all I care, she can have like five pu$$ys if she keeps that up.

[littlefallsmets]

I have gone completely insane shuffling my bench.

I figured out a set of nine guys who I actually want to be my set "usual" nine batters every day, barring rain-outs off-days and rest-days... and I otherwise just fuckin' cleared the deck... reconstructed my bench strictly on the lines of power and position flexibility.

I now have five different batters who are listed for multiple positions and a pitching staff constructed so that there's only one "benched" starting pitcher at any given time and so I can keep all relievers in the line-up at all times and...

The hope is that there will be never be a save that I "miss" in the shuffle.

Because here's the thing:

On a day to day basis, baseball is an insanely random series of events.

In any given game, the powerhitting catcher with no knees can luck into the back-end of a double steal and end up with a stolen base. In any given game, a banjo-hitting shortstop can get a mistake right down the middle and crank a home run.

If so much of the scoring of this particular game is going to be based on the simple accumulation of these semi-random events based as much on being there as talent relative to the rest of the major league... home runs, saves, stolen bases...

Then you gotta be in it to win it.

When your best nine AREN'T in, you gotta have the bench flexibility to at least... get them up to the plate where they MIGHT luck into a stolen base or a home run. Ditto for your pitchers and saves.

At the end of the day, every roster is gonna have about a third very average players and... they're gonna cancel each other out in terms of the averaged stats (ERA, AVG, WHIP) and stats you need to get a lot of every day such as runs and strikeouts and RBI...

When it comes to the bench of your team, you gotta just get as many guys on the "field" every night and roll the goddamn dice on their gathering the accumulated stats while their averaged stats are canceled out by everyone else's averaged stats.

This is not to say that you should just have... all multi-position players over talented players?

But there's something to be said for keeping your second-line position-flexible so that you can hold onto every goddamn one of those cheap collected statistics for the win.

I would still upgrade my back-up catcher if the opportunity presented itself.

I would still upgrade my third reliever up to a "star" if the opportunity presented itself.

I still essentially only have one actual "base stealer".

But barring injuries, my concerns are falling lower and lower on the chart.

I at least now have my "core" hitters and starters figured out and the flexibility off the bench to pick up the cheapie points on the off-days.

[melack]

Here's what bothers me the most: The unpredictability of off-days. You can't tell if your guy is going to get the day off to rest unless you check each team's lineup when they're posted an hour prior to first pitch. I can't be bothered to do that for all my guys. Catchers are usually a little more predictable since the backups usually play on Sunday afternoon games. Too bad my catcher is a Cub, so pretty much all of his games are afternoon games. So I just keep the same guys in the same spots in my lineup, hoping that some utility asshole doesn't start in place of one of my guys.

[Nabubrush]

Jesus fuck I don't understand baseball. I mean, I'd have to not drink to have any chance of pulling this off.

[melack]

That's a tall order for someone who drinks (a lot).

[robot_god]

John Maine got NL pitcher of the month.

[melack]

And I just picked him up! Oliver Perez, too. Now I've got two Mets and like 73 Yankees.

[littlefallsmets]

Ah, Maine and Perez.

The two most frustratingly erratic starting pitchers in baseball goddamn history.

On any given start, either one of them can pitch like Roger Clemens or... the corpse of Samuel Clemens! And usually never in-between. A no-hitter into the seventh or fuckin' batting practice.

Welcome to my hell, melack. I hope you enjoyed your fingernails.

Those motherfuckers'll be gone in, like, a week.