Wednesday, April 14, 2010

The Villain

This will be my last post, and I hope to drop science on you one last time on the game of imaginary baseball. Both my teams are in the top three in their respective leagues currently, powered by the hot starts of Curtis Granderson, Jason Heyward, Ryan Howard, Rickie Weeks, Tim Lincecum and Matt Garza. I've told you who I hate and who I love and why, I told you why I'm obsessed with the youngins, and I've told you why someone would pay 26 dollars in an auction for 120 innings of Stephen Strasburg (alcohol). The last piece of information will be a warning on which owners to avoid, and I'll use the most evil, cunning, dastardy antihero in all of fantasy baseball as my example: my best friend and former roommate, Collin Berglund.



Some of you may know Collin, as he's a student of the Philip Merrill School of Journalism. He's also a government and politics major with a penchant for seeking out the lesser owners of a fantasy baseball league and pilfering their teams via trade. He's orchestrated deal after deal after deal that include 8 or more players changing sides, effectively confusing the opposing owner with so many names, thereby rendering them incapable of realizing that they're in fact worsening their team in every way.

How does he do this, year after year? He proposes deals to everyone in the league. Some bite, some don't. The ones who don't he erases from his mind - they're not willing to play his game, so he doesn't waste his time. The ones who bite, he proposes one reasonable deal trading inconsequential players back and forth. Then he continues to propose deals until he can pull off a blockbuster like the one he just did (Collin is Providence Grays, and he's giving up the players below his team name):


Providence Grays________Jabula
Kurt Suzuki____________Brian McCann
Chase Utley____________Evan Longoria
Nelson Cruz____________Jacoby Ellsbury
David Aardsma__________Brian Roberts
Jason Frasor___________Chris PĂ©rez


On paper, this looks like a relatively fair deal. Utley and Cruz are on fire right now. Roberts is hurt. Aardsma and Frasor are two closers, Perez is only a stopgap until Kerry Wood comes back.

A look deeper, however, shows just how sinister this trade is. Giving up Utley means almost nothing to Collin: he has Ian Kinsler, who might be the second-best 2B in the league, on his bench. He's essentially trading the difference between Utley and Kinsley for Evan Longoria, which is basically trading 6 HR, 25 RBI, 10 points of batting average, and a few negative steals for Evan Longoria. Which is absurd. Beyond that, he can just trade Roberts when BR is healthy to any one of a number of insane Orioles fans in our league who value him too highly.

The next level just gets even worse. He's selling high on Cruz (leading the majors in HR and RBI) for a proven commodity in steals in Ellsbury. Collin lacks team speed, and has an abundance of HR and RBI, and will only have more with Evan Longoria joining his posse. Ellsbury led the majors in steals last year. His one offensive weakness gets solved in one fell swoop.

Finally, the coup de gras on this abomination of a trade: the other three players. Frasor just lost the closer's job today. It's been officially announced. He's essentially worthless. Aardsma is admittedly solid, but so is Perez. Perez doesn't have the job locked up, but saying he'll lose it when Kerry Wood is healthy is pretty much like saying Mark Prior is making a comeback: it ain't going to happen. Wood doesn't stay healthy, the job is Perez's.

Furthermore, Kurt Suzuki is a below-average catcher. We're in a 10-team league that starts only one catcher. Which means that if a catcher isn't one of the top-10 catchers in the league, he's completely replaceable and not worth owning. Suzuki is completely replaceable and not worth owning. Brian McCann, however, as far as catchers go, is somewhere between incredibly valuable and ridiculously valuable. With career averages of .294, 21.5 HR, 91.5 RBI and 2 steals, and never below 18 HR or 87 RBI in any of his years. He's never missed significant time with injury and he's only 26. Pretty much as good as it gets from a catcher not named Joe Mauer (and he's not much worse than Mauer). Oh, and he's getting Brian Roberts, a top-5 2B. Just thought I'd remind you of this.

The most incredibly dastardly part of all this is that the victim, in this case Jabula (not his real name), always defends his side of the trade. Collin is such a good spin artist that he can successfully convince someone that they are not getting swindled, and that they're making out well in the deal. Mind-blowing.

This is why Collin has placed in first in every single fantasy baseball league he's ever been in except for one, where he came in third. Destroying other owners' teams and building a mega-team for himself by what I can only surmise is his form of an Irish Jedi Mind Trick is a pretty good way of consistent fantasy dominance.

I should re-state that he is one of my best friends and I love the guy, but he's pure evil. It would be more tolerable if he wasn't so damn good at it. Add in the fact that he's a Red Sox fan, and I have no idea why I like him so much.

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