Monday, August 22, 2011

Reviewing the 2011 Fantasy Baseball Season

Our league's regular season is winding down.  Looks like my team, "Boomer's Wallbangers", will end up with a nice 12-8 record, but only good for 5th out of 10 teams, just missing the top four for the playoffs.  This despite having the third highest total points.  Such are the vagaries of head-to-head.  I thought it would be a good time to review the season. In this post, let's look at how the players I drafted worked out.  Here were my initial thoughts, but today, naturally, they are different.  As a reminder, this was an automated draft, so the computer, and pre-season rankings, made many of the decisions.  Though a lot of the As and Giants pitchers picks came from me.  (Those I remember "bumping up" I'll put in italics).  I'll rate them on a scale of "bust", "disappointing", "o.k.", "good", and "awesome".  "RY" is shorthand for "Ranking (at that position) for the Year".  "RM" is for the past month.  For example, Evan Longoria is ranked, by our points, as the 6th best third basemen for the entire year.

1. Evan Longoria.  RY 6th.  Disappointing.  But RM is 3rd, he's bouncing back at the end of this year.
2. Troy Tulowitsky RY 1st.  A good pick.
3. Josh Hamilton  RY 32nd.  Disappointing.
4. Nelson Cruz  RY 17th.  Slightly disappointing
5. Jose Reyes.  RY 4th.  A good, possibly awesome pick.
6. Jayson Werth RY 38th.  I dropped him at the All-Star Break - IMO, a bust.  I'm surprised that his ranking is not lower!
7. Michael Young.  RY hard to tell cause he's played all over, but I'd rank his year as awesome.  His RY at 3B is 2nd.
8. Zack Greinke.  RY 29th.  Disappointing start of the year, but he'd coming on now.
9 Chris Young (the outfielder)  RY 16th.  He was excellent the start of the year, but has been dismal the past couple of months.  (I dropped him a while ago.)  So I'd say an o.k. pick.
10. Max Scherzer RY 31st.  A good pick.
11. Kelly Johnson.  RY 13th.  He was awful for me the first 6 weeks, I dropped him.  He had a slight revival but has reverted to lousy and has been dropped by a couple of other owners.  A bust.
12. Joe Nathan   Largely a Bust.
13. Tim Hudson.  A good pick.  I ended up trading him for Todd Helton.
14. Jonathan Sanchez.  Luckily, I traded him, plus Elvis Andrus, for Justin Verlander.  So he helped me, but objectively he's a bust.
15. Brian Roberts a complete bust
16. Andrew Bailey   o.k.
17. Trevor Cahill.  good first half, awful 2nd half.  Hard to rate
18. Madison Bumgartner.  This was a good pick.  Unfortunately, in one of my big mistakes this year, I dropped him while he was struggling (and so was my team) and was slow to pick him back up.
19. Tsuyoshi Nishioka a bust.  Of course, at this stage in the draft, you don't expect everybody to pan out, you are just hoping for a positive.  Not here.
20. Denard Span.  He was o.k., then hurt for the season.  Disappointing.
21. Gio Gonzales.  This was a great pick, until after the All-Star break.  But still good overall.
22. Kurt Suzuki.  RY 15th,  Meh.  I went through a lot of random catchers this year.
23. Austin Jackson.  He was instantly traded for Ike Davis.  Who played well for a couple of months and was then out for the year.  So, I'd say disappointing (if you count him as Ike Davis)
24. Wade Davis.  He was dropped fairly soon.  o.k.
25. Logan Morrison.  RY around 50.  This was a great pick.  Until Florida dumped him.
26. Michael Pineda  RY 24th.  A great pick.
27. Kila Ka'aihue  A bust.


There were a few awesomes and good picks, but, overall, there were too many busts in this draft.  But I feel good that man of the italic picks worked out well.




Tuesday, August 16, 2011

Warren Buffet Editorial "Stop Coddling the Super-Rich"

Warren Buffet wrote an editorial for the Sunday New York Times.  I agree with a lot of it.  Progressive talk radio (the two shows I listened to yesterday) was all thrilled with it as a repudiation of Republican policies.  And, in limited ways, it is.

As background, and painting in overly broad strokes, Democrats have called for repealing the Bush tax cuts for the rich, those making more than $250,000 a year.  Republicans point out that many of those taxpayers are running small businesses, (the Wall Street Journal found that about half of that tax income came from small businesses) and increasing their taxes would hurt job creation.  I agree that further burdens on small business would be a mistake in this weak economy.  To me, the obvious fix is to write the tax laws so that the increased taxes fall only on rich individuals, not those running small businesses.  To my knowledge, nobody in power has proposed any such thing, and maybe it would be difficult to write such a law defining exactly what is a "small business" without loopholes.

As an alternative, I like Buffett's proposals.  They should please Democrats by raising the tax burden on the rich, should please Republicans by lessening the impact on small businesses, and they should please everybody by raising tax income to cut the deficit.

Many of the "mega-rich" make their money by investments, and the long term capital gains tax rate is a special low rate of 15%.  Perhaps this rate should be raised.  But there are arguments that we should encourage long-term investments.

By contrast, short-term capital gains are, in general, taxed as normal income, up to ~35%.  But there is a carried interest loophole for investment bankers that allows them to treat much of this short term gain as long term.  Closing this loophole would raise 4 billion a year.

Now, the UK has a similar lower rate.  Not sure if there is any purpose to it.  Barring some explanation of why it is needed, it should be repealed.  Buffett argues for their repeal, and I think he would know if there were any good reason for the special low rate to exist.  Republicans blocked this reform during the recent debt crisis.

Now, 4 billion a year is a nice start, but it ain't much in the grand scheme of our deficit.  So Buffett adds proposals for two new tax levels, at 1 million and 10 million.  Sounds good, and at these higher income levels they would be less likely to adversely affect any small businesses.  He is not very specific about the new levels.  I saw one estimate that this could cut the deficit by 3%.  Still not much, but it's something.

Before Democrats crow over their vindication from Buffett, they should read the entire editorial.  (emphasis mine)
Job one for the 12 is to pare down some future promises that even a rich America can’t fulfill. Big money must be saved here. The 12 should then turn to the issue of revenues. 
Even I know that 3% is a small reduction in the deficit, and Buffett is far smarter than me.  He clearly states that cutting entitlements is essential.