MLB Teams -- Final State Of The State

Par for the course

The baseball regular season ended this week and with it my lovingly-drafted, painstakingly managed fantasy baseball teams.

Here are the results:

As you can see, like last year, only one of the four cashed. Now that isn’t so bad considering there are three 12-team leagues, two of which cash, and one 15-teamer, three of which cash. That means 9 in 51 cash which is about 1 in 5.5. And I had 1 in 4 these last two years, though both were second place cashes, not wins. Basically, 2023-2024 has been roughly at par, though this year I lost money because the cash wasn’t in the $1750 Main Event.

Okay, let’s take a brief look at the teams.

The Jack Kitchen team started off with what I thought was a windfall with Corbin Caroll at 1.8, seemed like a disaster and turned out to be a par (but for the batting average.) That team I drafted in early February without looking at any ADP, and it showed in the middle rounds with scrubs like Josh Lowe and Jordan Walker at 5.8 and 7.8, respectively. The early rounds were fine, but none of them were big wins, and missing badly in the middle was too much to overcome.

The Main Event, managed by Dusty Wagner, started off okay with Trea Turner at 1.13 and Yordan Alvarez at 2.3, but Shohei Ohtani was available when I took Alvarez, and even though I knew MLB wasn’t going to lift a finger re the betting scandal, I foolishly worried Ohtani might be affected by it. For a while I could live with myself by remembering I got Marcel Ozuna in Round 13 as my DH, something I obviously would not have done had I taken Ohtani, but given the all-time fantasy year Ohtani put up, Ozuna-Alvarez over two roster spots is not close to having Ohtani in one.

Still, my top-four picks (Corey Seager, Zac Gallen) were fine, and where this one went off the rails was the pitching behind Gallen. Paul Sewald started hurt, then imploded, Shane Bieber started great, then tore a UCL after two starts, Yu Darvish missed most of the year, and not even Dusty could save this staff. Accordingly we finished third in hitting points with 54, and tied for last in pitching with 19. If there’s any consolation, even Ohtani wouldn’t have saved this team unless he could pitch.

The Alex Puma team just didn’t have enough juice to overcome Fernando Tatis at 1.9 and the injury to Yoshinobu Yamamoto at 3.9. Bryce Harper in the second round was fine, but you need some Ohtanis, Aaron Judges or Bobby Witts to overcome the shortfalls, and there were really none on this team.

Finally, the team that cashed, basically an overall-championship draft bequeathed to Ryan Garofalo that he managed into second place.

Seriously though, he did a good job overcoming Tatis at 1.10 and injuries to Tyler Glasnow and Yamamoto. For a good portion of the year, we were without our 1st, 3rd and 4th-round picks!

But unlike the Puma team, Garofalo had some windfalls to work with like Jazz Chisholm at 5.10, Raisel Iglesias at 6.3, Jackson Chourio at 8.3, Chris Sale at 9.10, Josh Naylor at 12.3, Ozuna at 14.3, Kenley Jansen at 16.3, Ezequiel Tovar at 18.3 and Brice Turang at 28.3.

Garofalo did a good job streaming pitching on the back end, Yusei Kikuchi got us Ks and wins, Mark Vientos and Victor Robles were good pickups, and that was enough for second. He was bitching about the season on Twitter yesterday, but in his heart of hearts, he knows my tough-love style of management and elite drafting is what ultimately got us the (modest) bag.

I want to make a special shout-out to Draftcheat, aka Peter Christensen, who bought into this league, started his draft with Judge and Ohtani, but still managed to finish in sixth place! Probably didn’t help his first starting pitcher was Bieber in the 12th round, but a nutless monkey could cash with Judge/Ohtani at 1-2!

One other silver lining was that I had a sidebet with Mike Massotto (who also bought into this league and finished 9th), but I’m not sure whether his Main Event team beat the 10th place one I had with Dusty to offset that.