The Fantasy baseball Generals A blog dedicated to illuminating the core theories and strategies of fantasy baseball. Statistics Unique Visitors: Total Unique Visitors: Outgoing: Total Outgoing: 0 0 0 2714

Articles from The Fantasy baseball Generals

Unorthodox Strategies 2007-09-12 19:02:00 Looking at some unorthodox strategies. In preparing for next year, you may be thinking about various strategies. This is a good time to address some of the more unorthodox ones. The use of unorthodox strategies is a key component to conflict and warfare. As early as Sun-Tzu the power of the unorthodox, especially mixed with the orthodox, has been a key factor for the general. As Sun-Tzu stated ...

What if the Wild Card Existed in 1969? Jeremy Kills The Miracle Mets! 2007-09-11 13:48:00 Jeremy gets in to the spirit of speculation about what would have happened in some select prior seasons if the Wild Card existed?? First up: 1969. Having just finished watching the Bronx is Burning miniseries - totally worth it guys, get the DVD - it got me to thinking about those great Yankee, Red Sox and Orioles teams from the mid to late 1970s. Was it fair to have a team like the 1978 Red ...

The Rays and Their Use of Free Talent 2007-09-11 09:55:00 The Rays get the most out of some "free" talent. The Devil Rays are poised to make some big leaps forward in the next three years. They look a lot like the Brewers did, and though they are in a tough division, they may still be able to make some big strides. Some of their success will be built on their tremendous base of prospects, almost too many to count, coming up through the system. However ...

Two Teams Respond With Their Own Trade Pipeline 2007-09-10 22:16:00 The final post on the trade pipelines and shenanigans in my high stakes league. Carl von Clausewitz, in his amazing book On War, discussed one of the key theses in understanding war. He wrote that with the potential unlimited application of force, one side is compelled to respond in kind. Without limits, what occurs is a a race to the extremes. If one side uses force without compunction, the ...

Links to My Latest Hardball Times Articles 2007-09-10 14:08:00 I have been remiss in posting my Hardball Times Columns. So here they are for the past three weeks. August 21 August 29 September 4 ... Articles

Another Fantasy Ethics Issue 2007-09-07 09:51:00 On a recent podcast I heard a fantasy ethics question that was worth discussing. Last week, in the run up to Labor Day, I was listening to the MLB.com Fantasy 411 podcast, one of the podcasts that I listen to daily, along with ESPN.com's entertaining Fantasy Focus podcast. Someone emailed in with a question about a situation and wanted to know if what was proposed was unethical. Since I have ...

Comparing Two Head-to-Head League Draft Strategies 2007-09-06 05:49:00 Since most head to head leagues are in the playoffs, this is a good time for a post mortem to address draft strategies and how the can be executed or flubbed. Here is a comparison of Matt's draft strategy versus mine. As Matt addressed in his post, he and I had somewhat different strategies, but ended up in a virtual tie for the points championship in our mixed league. Matt gets the W, but I ...

Matt Wins The Points Championship--His Strategy Dissected 2007-09-05 19:59:00 Matt discusses how his draft strategy landed him the best record and regular season points scored title. In my head to head AL/NL 12 team fantasy league, I have been fortunate enough to win the points title, barely edging out Pat after he stuck his nose in front on the penultimate day of the season. I have also won the last 13 weeks of head to head matchups. To what do I owe my success? A ...

Eric Wedge's Use of the Indians' Pen 2007-09-05 08:08:00 Analyzing the Indians pen and pitcher usage by Eric Wedge. The Indians are surging. They have gone 9-1 in their last ten games, pulled into a 7 game lead in the AL Central and have all but locked up the division. Fantasy players in deeper leagues are familiar with how good their relievers have been, especially Rafael Betancourt and Rafael Perez. Joe Borowski has been pretty good also. I was ...

Why Hit Rate and Strand Rate are Important: The General's Most Valuable Tools 2007-09-04 01:04:00 Two of the most valuable tools for the Fantasy General. Here are the basics. I have received a few inquiries on out use of hit rate and strand rate and why we use them in every player analysis, so I wanted to address these two stats. It all started with Voros McCracken. In one of the most famous and far-reaching discoveries in baseball, and certainly one of the most important in statistical ...

The Wheels Come Off For Mike Mussina. But Will Kennedy Be Any Better? 2007-08-30 08:04:00 Mussina has been besieged by a perfect storm of misfortune and performance. As a Yankees fan it is simply killing me to watch Mussina get lit up. 19 ER in 9.2 IP while trying to snare the Wild Card will not endear him to Yankee fans. How has he fallen so far? After a surprisingly good 2006 (at least in my mind) he has regressed in his fortunes as well as his performance. To date he is 8-10 ...

The Braves' Closer Situation 2007-08-29 08:17:00 The Braves' closer situation after the surprise jettison of Wickman. Who knew Bob Wickman was such a bad clubhouse influence? I was genuinely surprised by this move, as I didn't really hear any chatter. After the fact I heard that he was complaining about not pitching is save situations, so I can't fault the Braves. On performance Wickman is no great closer, more in the Todd Jones and Joe ...

Ramon Hernandez--An Ill-Fated Pickup 2007-08-28 09:31:00 About a month ago I picked up Ramon Hernandez in a head-to-head league. That sure worked out great. In my head-to-head points league a few weeks ago I had John Buck at the catcher position. Ramon Hernandez was coming back and I took a chance and added Hernandez and dropped Buck. Oops. It was a reasonable decision at the time but it sure hasn't worked out. In the last month Hernandez has gone 9 ...

Responding to the Trade Pipeline and the Second Half Player Fallacy 2007-08-28 01:39:00 With all of the nefarious dealings going on, clearly I couldn't sit on my hands. So here is the first of my two moves in response. Clearly after the slew of trades going on I had a few options. The first is to just cry about the whole thing and do nothing. Since I am not Bud Selig crying about stadium financing, this wasn't an option. I had to deal. There was no way for me to even respond to ...

Trekking to Tampa to See The Rays 2007-08-27 08:46:00 Jeremy runs down his trip to Tampa to see the Rays in action. I think I may have found something that the Devil Rays lead the league in - scantily clad women. Now, I would imagine that there are very few fantasy leagues out there with SCW as one of the categories - although I would love to see Bill James take that one on. One would only imagine the formula - Cup Size+Leg length-Clothing Amount/ ...