The Fantasy Football league starts this Thursday. Last Wednesday we ran through our mini-draft to flesh out our keeper teams. I.e. dropped four players and drafted 4 new players to my existing 16 man roster. I didn’t have much to decide this year since 2 of my players (Keyshawn Johnson and Jake Plummer) retired and another player is a mere Tight End. The problem was the 4th player…which I needed to drop to get a draft pick in the first round, albeit the LAST pick of the 1st round since the franchise is coming off the 2nd consecutive year as champions. I reluctantly dropped my last year’s draft pick WR Greg Jennings who is probably going to be something special I’m sure now that I’ve dumped him.
It was worth the drop since I scooped up rookie-ish QB Matt Schaub for HOU, an up-and-coming franchise. All the RBs and stud WRs were picked up early as usual. Now I’m QB complete hopefully for the next 10 yrs. I finished my draft with a starter in Wes Welker (4th year and playing in NE) and a flyer rookie Terrell Owens type WR in Dwayne Jarrett (on another offensive upstart in CAR). I screwed up my last pick when I tried to find somebody, anybody to hold onto as a keeper RB for down the road. I jumped at the guy sharing loads with Ronnie Brown (Jesse Chatman) but quickly realized he doesn’t fit my strategy and dumped him onto the waiver wire and replaced with a rookie RB out of Denver in Selvin Young. Perhaps the next Terrell Davis? We’ll see, but definitely more upside than Chapman considering I don’t need to use him this year.
Clashing with my focus on the upcoming football year, the baseball pool is winding down. When I mean winding down I mean coming to a tumultous nail-chewing finale. For the past few weeks I’ve been wavering on whether I should throw the towel in and shut down activity or make the blockbuster trade and make a run for 4th, 3rd or possibly 2nd. Last week about the same time as the football draft, I crafted up a huge trade that I thought would give me the best chance to finish in the money. The downside is I mortgaged my future. I traded away the keeper stud of the year in Fausto Carmona. Owning him for cheap next year would certainly have given me a good headstart. I was agonizing over this decision. The downfall to the trade is that I still am not a lock for the $$ AND I now have lost my prime keeper.
As of today the 14 player trade has helped me. I sit in 4th by 4 points and off of 3rd by 3. I can achieve 4 pts in offense almost with certainty but will likely lose 2-4 pts in pitching. This puts me in a spot that is ‘likely’ to finish 4th and ‘possibly’ get third. But there are elements in play that can quite effectively put me out of the money.
The long and short of it is Carmona is no guarantee next year. I also have Billy Butler as a solid keeper so why not make a go at it when, after all, this is the point of an auction pool? One keeper allowed per year is not significant enough to sway the huge benefit I received in the trade. Now, if we had many more keepers the decision would have been much different.