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CREATiVESPORTS > Baseball Articles > Mr. Replay > Losing to Guys Who Aren’t Even Playing

It is often overlooked how much damage we do to our teams by lusting after the quantitive stats, as if the rate stats would fall into place. I’m sure that happens sometimes, but an awful lot of the mail I receive suggests that an awful lot of the time it doesn’t.

My favorite roto story (which I’ve told before and will tell again) reflects badly on me. Some years ago in my home league I played my heart out all summer, and ended up in fifth place. In those days, at the end of the year, we got a supplementary stat report for the league as if we hadn’t made any moves at all.

These “hypotheticals” were usually of dubious vailidity, because every change one team made led to other changes, and in this stew it was hard to figure out what meant what.

Except that in 1998, a year in which I finished fifth, the hypotheticals showed that I would have won the league if I’d fallen asleep (or dropped dead) after the draft and never touched my team again. The numbers showed that I had drafted a perfect team, and then screwed it up pursing a more perfect pitching staff.

I’m not sure there is a lesson you can learn here, except that with every toss of the coin comes different circumstances. And it’s not a good idea to chase wins.

Major League Baseball : Ask Rotoman

Did you know that Jason Giambi has had the highest OPS among qualifying hitters since July 1st? Find out the equally surprising No. 2 hitter and the rest of the Top 10 in this week’s Ask Rotoman, as well as analysis of Kameron Loe and Geoff Jenkins’ futures, and another look at the swelling ranks of September callups.

ESPN.com – MLB – Bonds works out, not activated; fight partner revealed

It will be fun to see just how much help Barry Bonds can be as a pinch hitter, so I hope he gets in their soon, but this story is worth reading for the Jason Christiansen angle. According to the story JC was IDed, but then the events are told as if he hadn’t been, which creates a surreal sort of affect.

Does Jason Christiansen get along with Bonds, or was he glad to get out of SF because of Bonds? Who knows. And really, who cares. We know what McGwire did during his 1 AB per game period. How will BB handle it?

As Marvin Gaye said in a significantly more exciting setting, Let’s get it on.

Rob Neyer – Rob and Rany

I used to read Rob Neyer, before ESPN.com was a paysite, and while he served up plenty to disagree with he was always on point. That’s the mark of an excellent columnist. And I spent a very pleasant evening talking to Rany about baseball when he was writing the rookie roundup for the Fantasy Baseball Guide. Smart guys, both of them.

This farewell to Royals fandom of theirs (written during the Royals dismal run) is probably more emotion than sense, which is why it is well worth reading. I doubt they’ll really give up the Royals, but I’ve never before seen the two of them sounding more like fantasy basebll players.

Major League Baseball : Ask Rotoman

The new one is up, with looks at a risky but potentially rewarding late-season pitching strategy, Shawn Chacon, sidebets for fantasy baseball, and a survey of recent transactions and callups.

Except for one: I meant to include Jeremy Hermida, the Marlins’ No. 1 prospect according to Baseball America. As I write this, after Wednesday’s games, Hermida has a career ML OPS of 5.000, the highest possible, and is on pace to drive in about 40,000 runs in his career with 10,000 homers. Hermida has been nursing a wrist injury recently, but apparently he’s getting over that.

Hermida was first round pick in 2002 and had a fine season in Double-A this year. Most notably he walked 111 times with 384 AB, for a .451 OBP. He isn’t expected to see much playing time this month unless someone gets hurt, but he’s here and already setting records. Who is going to tell him it’s all downhill from here?

Major League Baseball : Fantasy : Ask Rotoman

The new column features a look at potential power sources down the stretch, a comparison of Curtis Granderson and Brian Anderson, a damning evaluation of Corey Patterson (for this year, anyway), and a hatful of names who might come up come September 1.

Cot’s Baseball Contracts

Timmy of The Roto Authority turns us on to this excellently informative site covering current major league contract.

Keeping up with contracts is a big job, and this anonymous fan from Kansas says they are not official, but are drawn from reported sources. He or she does not say they’ll keep it up forever, but for now it’s a nice site with a ton of good information.

Salon.com News | Out of here?

For those of us interested in how steroids have shaped the game, this BP writer has a lot of thoughts, but doesn’t draw any conclusions except for the obvious one: There are too many variables and too much we don’t know (like, who actually has taken steroids and when) to feel comfortably right getting too definite.

Most salient point, that even now there are plenty of performance enhancing drugs that won’t be detected by any drug screen.

Those who have followed the issue closely won’t find a lot new here, but it is a reasonable survey of what’s in play and what’s at stake.

Major League Baseball : Ask Rotoman

The new column is up, with a ranking of mid-level starting pitchers for next year, a three-for-one deal invloving the D-Train and A-Sor, questions of double-dealing, and a look at whether Matt Morris is hurt or just has a dead arm. The latter is better.

The new Ask Rotoman column is posted at mlb.com, considering Jason Bay vs. Mark Prior, explaining why pitcher’s get unearned runs when they make the error, discussing how it looks for Jim Thome and Oliver Perez in the last seven weeks, and evaluating Adam Eaton.