Crooked Pitch

Today’s guest post comes from Mark Hinton who is a fantasy baseball addict and long suffering Cincinnati Reds fan.  When not scouring the waiver wire for players to turn his fantasy league fortunes around, Mark enjoys punishing his body with drink and heart-stopping foods.  Mark can be reached at mhinton_us[at]yahoo[dot]com.

Every year I do it. I remind myself not to do it.  It’s like a diet ….at first it’s easy, then a big chocolate cheesecake comes along and it all falls apart.  Of course I’m referring to drafting too heavily from your favorite teams.

My favorite team is the Cincinnati Reds.  Yes, I know, right there is reason enough to question my intelligence….let alone my ability to formulate a successful fantasy draft.  Last year my draft was destroyed when I overpaid for I thought were the two “steals” of the draft in Edwin Encarnacion and Aaron Harang.  You can guess how the rest goes.

For me the urge to do this is too great.  It’s only natural that when I get the chance to draft a player whose past exploits has provided me with euphoric joy that I pounce on him like a tiger on an injured gazelle. This is the road to disaster.  I follow my team so closely that I believe that only I know the “inside information” about my favorite players that will bring me a championship.    I often dream of the unbridled jealousy of the other owners when my “sleeper” pick of Homer Bailey will win the CY Young.

I’m afraid that I extend my hometown bias to teams located in the Midwest as a whole.  Several times during the season last year I would go to bed with my fantasy team leading the daily totals for my league.  Upon waking, only to discover I had fallen back to the bottom of the pack by morning.   At first, I blamed it on faulty calculations by computer systems running our league, But then, I noticed something…..I had no west coast players on my team.  Games with the Pirates, Cubs and Tigers were long over by the time The Dodgers, Angels, and the Giants were scoring runs.

This year is different, I drafted from the whole league…not just from my backyard.    Every player was drafted on their own merits, not just because I could watch them on the local cable broadcast.  My team is a great melting pot from all over the country.  This year I even let Jay Bruce fall to the second round.  Who say’s people can’t change?

This entry was posted on Saturday, April 11th, 2009 at 11:24 am and is filed under Draft Strategy, Fantasy Baseball. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.