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.