fantasy baseball team

ok, here's the team for the year. i feel like a few trades will be made, but i'm happy with the team except for over-paying for a few guys. all the really good players were going for a ton of money so i went ahead and overpaid for a few. i was able to use the entire $260 budget. here goes:

POS NAME COST
C Russell Martin 17
C Rod Barajas 4
1B Ryan Howard 41
2B Mark Loretta 5
3B Miguel Cabrera 35
SS Stephen Drew 21
CI Xavier Nady 6
MI Omar Vizquel 4
U Corey Koskie 1
OF Juan Pierre 30
OF Andruw Jones 31
OF Jeremy Hermida 4
OF Luis Gonzalez 5
OF Shane Victorino 6

P Tom Glavine 8
P Brad Penny 8
P Doug Davis 6
P Anibal Sanchez 6
P Jose Valverde 3
P Tom Gorzelanny 4
P Jonathan Broxton 5
P Scott Linebrink 5
P Cla Meredith 5

should be fun!!

fantasy baseball draft

so tomorrow is the big day. i've got the exact kind of fantasy baseball league that i wanted and it's with a great group of acquaintances / friends from back in d.c. who are all diehard washington nationals fans like me. yeah we're crazy like that but it'll be great in a few years.

so the league:

• 5x5 roto (rank in each category as compared to the league):


• offense: runs, homers, rbi's, stolen bases, and batting average


• pitching: wins, saves, strikeouts, era, and whip ((walks+hits) / innings pitched)


• nl-only (yeah we don't need those lazy dh teams)


• auction style draft (my first! more below)


• keeper league

many fantasy sports leagues use a serpentine draft format where everyone picks a number out of a hat and numbers 1 thru 12 select a player and then numbers 12 thru 1 select a player and back and forth it goes round by round. in an auction draft, everyone has a budget (typically $260 for 23 players - 14 position players and 9 pitchers) and you go around simply bringing a player up for auction. this way, you have access to any and every player, though you may have to pay big for them and you have to spend at least $1 on all 23 roster spots. as for the keeper league part, we've decided to make the rules that after the season, can sign up to 5 players each year to 1 to 3 year contracts for a price a bit more than you get them in the draft. risk/reward and all that jazz.

obviously, the draft has to be done in person. well, that's not totally true because there's this awesome site fantasyauctioneer.com, but they didn't want to use it. almost all of them are in northern virginia so i'm going to audio chat via skype or ichat. wish me luck!! (and no injuries this season!)

mowing the lawn

so i meant to write about this a couple of days ago - i mowed the lawn this past weekend. well, all weekend that is. we had dinner guests on saturday and sunday evening so i would get started and then need to get cleaned up. well, that and the fact that the 3pm sun was really stinking hot and exhausting. anywho, i got three-quarters of the sod portion done on saturday in around 75 minutes. then sunday afternoon, i finished the sod part up in about 15 minutes and lowered the mower about as low as possible in order to scalp the non-sod part (read: the stupid hill). well, this ended up presenting some problems as the mower was so low that going over the numerous bumps and rocky portions proved to be difficult, dangerous, and dusty. after over and hour and a half and multiple breaks for water, i gave up with a bit remaining. i finished that part on monday night in about 15 minutes.

the yard was still pretty yellow even after the 'haircut.' however, this morning, after a big rain, the yard was coming up a beautiful rich green. hooray!

bracket update

i went 7 for 8 in the sweet 16 round of games and 0 for 4 in the elite 8 round of games so i'm done. i actually picked 3 of the 4 losers correct. lindsay actually went 7 for 8 and 3 for 4 so i'm eagerly awaiting the update of her work bracket pool. that gives her 51 out of a possible 60. however, she has kansas over osu in the final so she can only max out at 52 of a possible 63. if they'd just weight the later rounds more heavily like almost every other bracket challenge, she might have an insurmountable lead by now!

update: lindsay is locked into first or second. some other combos would make her win, but ucla and g'town winning on saturday would lock her into first.

knoxvegas

oh yeah, so we went out of town this past weekend. it was a standard issue, quick trip to knoxville (leave as soon as you can on friday afternoon and try to get there around dinner time because getting there after midnight like you did when you lived in d.c. really stunk. and you had to actually take a legit half-day off work to make it there by then.). we had a great time visiting with family and friends and the bopping around town on saturday wasn't as bad / busy as i thought it would be. jake never really took a nap on saturday because of the visiting so when we went out for a burger with friends by ourselves, he actually fell asleep for good at 7:30pm. when we found out he was asleep and not being a handful, we ended up also going over to the friends' house and watching the evening basketball games. that's always nice for us to be able to get out by ourselves. once in a blue moon, ya know? ;-)

oh and regarding the tourney, i'm doing pretty good with my bracket (26/32 in the first round and 14/16 in the second round), but lindsay (28/32, 13/16) is in like 2nd place out of around 500 people in her office bracket thing - and she's poised to continue doing great. come on shopping spree!

blue like jazz

this weekend, i finally finished blue like jazz (subtitle: non-religious thoughts on christian spirituality) by don miller. it's a great book with funny, sometimes off-the-wall prose that will really make you think. it's an easy read because miller tells so many stories to get his message across. i was going to say more, but i'd rather just encourage anyone who reads this to pick up this book - from the library or whatever.

know what's cool?

when your wife's work puts a $200 shopping spree on the line for march madness brackets and she gets real serious about it and you can hang out and watch games together and root together. last night was fun - we even skipped (well, let the TiVo in the other room do the job) watching grey's anatomy to watch the games. we both fell asleep during the last set of games, but when the alarm went off, we hopped online to see the final scores.

after one day, she's at 14 of 16 and i'm at 13 of 16. we both missed mich. st. (i almost went back thru and changed all my brackets to msu after i heard one of marquette's best players was going to miss the game. should've. izzo and msu always seem to do better than i expect in the tourney) and gonzaga (what can i say i hate the big "11" and gonzaga seems cool even if they weren't as good this year. lindsay even made her own pick on that one saying, "i remember gonzaga did good in the tourney last year."). i also missed xavier. i picked byu flippantly (and on all my brackets) and L just went with her gut and picked xavier to be different on a few.

hopefully, today's games will be closer in score.

new music

looks like i first mentioned my cool local public library here, but i wanted to give a quick update. 28 cds (yes, 28) and some awesome new music later, i happened upon a song that makes me jump out of my seat and get uncontrollably excited: 'blue orchid' by the white stripes on their 2005 album get behind me satan. i always thought the white stripes were kinda weird, kinda cool, and kinda cheeky, but this song is a simply awesome rock song. jack white knows music (see also: his grammy for best country album award for producing and collaborating with loretta lynn).

other highlights from the new (to me) music adventure: muse (4 albums worth), a great rock-electronic-alternative band; wolfmother, great rock music that feels oddly similar to led zeppelin for some reason; keane, a solid alternative band even if a ton of their songs sound similar; norah jones, i just hadn't heard her 3rd album yet - great like her first two albums.

oh and before you ask: i plead the 5th.

golf - driving range

i went to a driving range for the first time ever (only putt putt for me beforehand) and, as expected, i stunk. however, i went with a buddy from small group, matt, and he used to play a ton and he rocked some 250 yd. drives.

it was a beautiful day and when you hit that many balls it really is exercise. i got a bunch of tips and tried hard to keep it all together. by the end, i had a tad more loft.

i think next time we're going to play either raquetball or tennis. i used to play both a ton, but i haven't touched a racket in quite a while now.

busy week

last week, i felt like i was getting caught up all week long. i had just gotten back in town, even tried to keep up on my hw while i was in florida, but i had around 3 separate writings to do during the week. that culminated with a 3 page paper due friday night when my dad was scheduled to come into town. the same thing occurred two weeks prior when mom et al. came into town. dad hit some traffic and didn't end up getting there until nearly 11:00pm and that bought me enough time to finish it up. however, there were posts to respond to over the weekend as well.

anyways, that's over now and this week is a little lighter. the weekend with dad was good. we went to the mall saturday to get a couple things for lindsay since she's in a wedding in a couple of months. we bopped around town a bit more and then went home and watched a couple of movies and played cards and had a delicious steak dinner from the rack of steaks lindsay's parents left us with a couple of weeks ago.

after church on sunday, we went out to p.f. chang's and dad paid - yay! he went on back after that and we went home and rested. well, actually i had to do a really long sim (end of free agency and the amateur draft) for one of my fictional baseball leagues (link on the right) and i ended up missing out on a nap. but, overall, a good weekend after a busy week.

72 to 29

that's just not fair. no that's not some random women's college basketball beat down, it the temperature when i got on the plane in orlando down to the temperature when i got off the plane in lexington. brrr!!

it was a good weekend overall, but it was also great to get back home and see lindsay and jake - i sure missed them!

i tried contacting the houston astros people from thursday to gametime on sunday to no avail. we ended up having to pay to get in, but it was nice to just kick back and be a fan for a game as i chowed down on a huge italian sausage covered with grilled peppers and onions and mustard.

as for the other meals, we ended up having to pay $5 for the special lunch buffet at saturday's game, but it was pretty good. that night, we drove in circles for about an hour before finding bonefish willy's. a hole-in-the-wall seafood restaurant on the water that was worth the drive. good food and the conch fritters were delicious just as we had been told. we split those and some cheese stuffed mushroom caps and then i had a bowl of gumbo and a dozen steamed oysters. my father-in-law would be proud (well, we would've split them raw probably).

meals

oh yeah, meals - with continental breakfasts in the hotel and a sandwich or something provided in the press box each day, the dinners are the only things i have to take care of. last night, we went to chili's (yeah, not glamorous, but i was just in the mood for something regular) and i had steak quesadillas. tonight, we went to toyo sushi and i had spicy tuna rolls and four pieces of sushi (tuna, salmon, yellowfin, and red snapper). it was a very good meal. tmrw night we are probably going to bonefish willy's, a local seafood place that all the writers always talk about. we'll have the specialty conch fritters and some seafood somewhat closer to the beach.

a good day

we got up early and went over the nats' stadium even though today was an away game. we wanted to see the minor league accelerated camp guys work out a bit. we saw some stretching, long tossing, bunting drills, side pitching sessions, and a little bit of batting practice before we headed down the road to dodgertown for the game. we finally found the place to pick up our one-day press passes and got settled into the open-air press box over to the side and out of everyone's way. little did i know that as the sun set it would shine more and more on me (i was pretty much the only one uncovered haha). now i look a little bit like two face (only the left side of my face was getting sun) and my left arm is redder than the right.

as for the game, when the starters were in, the nats went up 7-3, but when the relievers and backups came in, it ended up a 12-7 dodgers win. alas. the major league players who needed to do good did good and the few 'prospect' type guys that got in the game did pretty good as well. if it weren't for those aaa relievers...

nomar got two at bats and played some 1b, but mia hamm was nowhere to be found because she's expecting twins any day now. (yes, i only wrote that part for the soccer lovers out there.)

tomorrow is the big home opener vs. their cross-town rivals, the baltimore orioles. we'll get there early and make a day of it.

the bird has landed

i'm here on the wifi in the hotel room in cloudy viera, fl. we got the press passes, but it's only good for the nationals' stadium. we got the contact info for the dodgers and astros people (away games on friday and sunday respectively) and the dodgers have already agreed to accommodate us. very cool. i'll try to contact the astros again in the morning and i'll update later. we'll be trying to watch and talk to minor league players each morning before going to the games in the afternoons.