M as in Mancy: A Fantasy Baseball Experiment (Week 2)

April 17, 2017

Firstly, the important stuff:

I won every pitching stat, lost every hitting stat. Mmm hmm. That's one way to do it.

But you know what? I'll take it. After starting the year 3-9 I was desperate for a sign that a team of M-named players wasn't a stupid idea. I'm no longer in last place, and baby, that's good enough for me.

THE GOOD

Mitch Haniger, bless his rookie heart, hit .391 with 14 TB last week, and is the 6th best fantasy player in my league. To the Redditor who suggested him to me at the beginning of the year: I owe ya a beer.
Michael Pineda took a perfect game into the 7th last week before I jinxed it by turning the game on and texting my brother. Sorry, Mikey.
All the rest of my pitching. Stroman? Shoemaker? Harvey, Perez, Estrada? All of them have M-names and all of them were terrific.

THE BAD

Small sample size be damned: Tanaka has been bad and he should feel bad.
Matt Holliday should be having a bounce-back year... but in a crazy Shyamalanesque twist he's not having a bounce-back year.
Mark Trumbo and Manny Machado are in last place on my team in just about every stat. Trumbo somehow has a stolen base, though. Where are the dingers, Mark? Where are the dingers?
Matt Kemp is on the DL because I still can't have nice things.

THE UGLY

Marcus Semien, there's just no room for you. You're no longer in the running for becoming America's Next Top Model. At least until Machado goes down with an injury.
One major problem with my fantasy gimmick: there's only one closer who fits the naming scheme (Mark Melancon). So I drafted him, and then I also drafted Matt Bush with the hope that he would steal the closer's role from Sam Dyson after a few weeks. Well, Dyson has blown four saves already, perfectly setting the table for Bush... who then came down with a shoulder injury and had to be injected with platelets. So I dropped Bush, and he was immediately picked up by another team. Why do bad things happen to good people, Batman?

That last bullet might prove to be more of a problem as time goes on. I somehow won Saves this week with just one save (wooooo!) but that's, uhh, not going to last. I may need to evaluate my potential options going forward and maybe punt on saves entirely by trading Melancon. I'll do a longer, more in-depth post about that in another week or so when things have shaken out more.

So that's how things stand. What'd I miss? Any players I need to have on my radar right now? It takes a village to have success with a gimmicky fantasy team and, uhh, I don't know where I'm going with this metaphor. Current roster is below.

M as in Mancy: A Fantasy Baseball Experiment (Week 1)

April 10, 2017

(For those wondering what all this M business is about, read this post to catch up)

Ahh, the beginning of a new season. When hopes are fresh, the grass is green, and dreams are un-shattered. So how'd my team of M-named heroes do in the first week of Fantasy Baseball?

Spoiler alert: everything is terrible and I want to go home.

Somehow I won SB, and squeaked by with RBI. Aside from that everything was pretty much awful. Four of my starting pitchers were affected by postponed games, so I didn't get a lot of double-starts in Week 1 like my opponent did. But it's not as if that mattered: there was a lot of suck in the first week.

THE GOOD

Miguel Sano is hitting .350 with 7 Runs, 2 HR, 8 RBI, and 17 TB.
Similarly, Matt Kemp is batting .500 with 2 HR and 18 TB.
Manuel Margot is good at baseball things (2 HR, 17 TB)
Matt Harvey, Michael Fulmer, and Michael Wacha have been good at throwing the baseball to the catcher during baseball games.

THE BAD

Michael Conforto isn't playing at all in that crowded Mets outfield, so I went ahead and dropped him for Manuel Margot (that part is nice)
Matt Kemp has a hamstring injury because I guess I'm not allowed to have nice things.
Mark Melancon should try not giving up runs instead of giving up runs.

THE UGLY

LITERALLY EVERYTHING ELSE WTF

Seriously, the first week was a disaster. I was losing my matchup 0-12 for much of the week, and I'm firmly in last place right now. Having said that, my opponent had just about the best week of anyone in the league. If I had been matched up against any other team I'd have somewhere between 6-10 points right now. So that's nice. Or at least I keep telling myself that.

Here's how my team looks now, for those wondering.

M as in Mancy: A Fantasy Baseball Experiment

April 3, 2017

Last year, I drafted an entire fantasy baseball team made up of players with names beginning with J. It started as an accident, drafting Josh Donaldson/Jose Abreu/JD Martinez, and once I realized they all had J names is spiraled out of control.

I posted updates on Reddit throughout the season. The team ended up in 2nd place and was competitive all season. It was nuts. Crazy and fun and wild and nuts.

This year I'll be repeating the experiment, and posting updates on my blog. But I have a new gimmick this year.

M as in Mancy

(In case you don't get the title, it's a reference to this scene from Archer).

I'll be posting weekly updates (or bi-weekly, or tri-weekly, or whenever I goddamn feel like it get off my back mom) on Mondays this year to keep you abreast of the glory (and failures) of the team. Read on if you want to hear about my draft strategy and how I ended up with the team I did.

The draft was last night, and it went as well as could be expected. I had the 5th pick. I missed out on a few players I wanted but hey, them's the breaks. Here's a position-by-position breakdown of my draft strategy, with the player's average draft position in parenthesis. Bolded players are ones I drafted.

Catcher

M. Wieters (275)
M. Montero (1069)
M. Zunino (1137)

Yeah, my options were a bit limited here. Wieters is the guy, but at least I was able to wait until the 17th round to get him.

First Base

M. Cabrera (13)
M. Carpenter (77)
M. Holliday (168)
M. Napoli (173)
M. Moreland (300)
M. Gonzalez (462)

Although Carpenter has 1B eligibility in Yahoo, he's far more valuable at 2B and 3B so let's ignore him, because he's never going to play 1B for me. I was hoping Miggy would fall to me in the 2nd round, but sadly he did not, and I waited too long to grab Holliday. So Napoli is my first baseman. I'm still not sure how I feel about that.

Second Base

M. Carpenter (77)
M. Gonzalez (462)

Yeah, we're pretty weak on depth here. I reached for Carpenter and took him in the 3rd round. I feel confident with him holding down the position, but I sure hope I don't get stuck running Marwin Gonzalez out there if an injury happens.

Third Base

M. Machado (8)
M. Carpenter (77)
M. Franco (123)
M. Sano (145)
M. Moustakas (205)
M. Gonzalez (462)

Third basemen for daaaaaaaaaaaaaays. Machado's gunna be my SS, and Carpenter is my 2B, so in reality this position belongs to Franco and Sano. I think Franco's poised for a big breakout year, and Sano should improve on his 2016 season, so I feel pretty damn good about taking them in the 9th and 10th rounds.

Short Stop

M. Machado (8)
M. Semien (226)
M. Gonzalez (462)
M. Duffy (611)

It's the Machado show all day, every day. Snagged him with my first round pick, and then book-ended the draft by taking Semien with my last pick, just to have a backup. My entire draft strategy revolved around getting Machado, so after that everything was cake.

Outfield

M. Trout (1)
M. Betts (2)
M. Kemp (72)
M. Trumbo (88)
M. Ozuna (134)
M. Brantley (137)
M. Sano (145)
M. Holliday (168)
M. Cabrera (217)
M. Conforto (242
M. Kepler (253)
M. Margot (301)
M. Upton (366)
M. Saunders (495)

Trout and Betts were never really on the table for me. After that things opened up pretty wide. Grabbed Kemp in the 4th round, Trumbo in the 6th, then Brantley in the 12th. Conforto I'm really just holding onto in case he has a big breakout year, because he's killin' it in spring training.

Starting Pitching

M. Scherzer (14)
M. Bumgarner (17)
M. Tanaka (74)
M. Fulmer (113)
M. Harvey (120)
M. Stroman (151)
M. Estrada (194)
M. Shoemaker (195)
M. Pineda (201)
M. Moore (219)
M. Leake (292)
M. Foltynewicz (297)
M. Montgomery (299)
M. Andriese (317)

In all my mock drafts (six of them. Six!) I was able to grab one of Scherzer/Bumgarner in the 2nd round. So guess what happened on draft day? Both of them got snagged right before my 2nd pick. So I was forced to super-reach for Tanaka with my 2nd pick instead. But beyond that, I've got a lot of really solid pitching. This is going to be a quantity vs quality thing: with 9 starting pitchers hopefully I can win the three counting stats (Wins, Strikeouts, and Quality Starts) every week.

Relief Pitching

M. Melancon (142)
M. Bush (350)
M. Lorenzen (532)
M. Cabrera

Okay, so we've got a problem. Melancon is the only reliever with an M name. This was a problem because A) I needed to reach for him hard, in the 5th round, because I've seen him go much earlier than expected in my mock drafts, and B) it means I'm thin on depth. I drafted Matt Bush with the hope that he gets the closer job in Texas, and have my eyes on setup men Lorenzen and Cabrera in case their able to get promoted too. But otherwise, I'm not going to be winning Saves very much. I might even see if I can move Melancon and punt on Saves entirely. We'll see.

So that's the team. Other players I have my eye on are Martin Prado, Melvin Upton, Miguel Gonzalez, Mike Leake, and Matt Andriese. I'm sure there will be a lot of transactions as the year goes on. Cheers to another hopefully-successful-but-probably-disastrous fantasy baseball year!