Armchair Thoughts

Not a whole lot of creativity with scores this week. A lot of nines, fives, and sevens (except for Joe, thanks a lot)...Consistency once again stays in the top spot despite losing, and it was a full week of upsets, minus TMac, who I predict will not win another matchup all year. Not too much to say on that really, so let's get on to the recap...

The Common Team 9, Yung Joseph 3
After Joe's 4.5 year review and the nickname I was given as the best of the lousiest and the lousiest of the best, I felt a name change was in order. In typical Joey J fashion, as soon as he makes a prediction or a shot at someone, he usually fails to follow it up. What's really surprising is Joe is has lost two weeks in a row now and has had what he called his worst fantasy week ever. Perhaps YJ's reign could be ending as perpetual leader of the Armchair Fantasy Leagues? On a side note, only 17 days until Manny is back!

The Sandbaggers 9, Tony McDonald 5
Who do you call when you need to bust up a five-week losing streak? Tony McDonald! Grimmer had been on the downslide for a while now, but there's no better pick me up than playing an owner who stops checking his team once Memorial Day comes around. If you do end up somehow finding your way onto this post Tmac, I'll give you a hint and say now would be a good time to drop Chien-Ming Wang. While 14.34 would be a solid scoring average in basketball, it's not exactly what I would call a stellar ERA.

Superhydrophobocity 9, Consistency 5
After the shellacking he took last week, SHP came back strong with 15 dingers this past week, thanks to three in one game from Torii Hunter. Schneider has lived up to the team name though, that's for sure, as he's gone loss-win-tie-loss-win-tie in the last six weeks. I'm going to go out on a limb and say he ties this week. Finally, JP, thanks for taking the week off against my team. I needed it.

Abusement Park 7, Religious Sects 5
Pretty sure Mike hasn't moved from the five or six spot the entire season. Simply amazing, especially with how much has changed around him through the first ten weeks. Riley had a rare loss in steals this week, but hey, not much you can do when your hammered at the College World Series in Omaha for half the week. BJ Upton alone could have taken steals for Mike with 7 last week. I think I might join the "Riley's team is going to fall" bandwagon. It's hard to like a team that would have been stellar three years ago, with Tejada, Helton, Lowell, Varitek, Abreu, Oswalt, and Ryan all were their best days behind them. Sorry Riles, but your just a couple seasons too late.

The Poblano Effect 7, Just 2(5) Guyz 5
Luke goes back to his losing ways, but actually is in second place? There weren't really too many swing categories here that he lost either, so it might be time to worry LT, specially with Lidge, Peavy, and Bedard hurt now. Speaking of pitching staffs, how has Jack even stayed in anything but second to last with a staff full of washups and nobodies besides Dan Haren and maybe Gil Meche? Oh and LT wins player with the funniest name award after picking up Randy Choate...

Transaction of the Week
Consistency adds Anthony Swarzak, sp, MIN
OK so there's not really a transaction that stands out, so i just decided to pick an idiotic one Andy made. Schneider decided to pick him up after his last start in the majors, and so immediately had to drop him once he got demoted. That's what you get for trying to add a spot starter to just keep on your team. Leave those guys to me, Joe, and everyone else who uses them during the week. Your addition of Rick Porcello thoroughly pissed me off, and your add of Randy Wolf this week ruins it for the rest of us. Might as well add Josh Outman next dude.

Oly's Rankings
1. Religious Sects
2. Superhydrophobocity
3. Da Commish
4. Yung Joseph
5. Consistency
6. Just 2(5) Guyz
7. Abusement Park
8. The Poblano Effect
9. The Sandbagger
10. Tony McDonald

Hope you like it Mike. Just thought I'd mix it up a little this week.

Hot Clicks of the Week
I don't have any real funny clips or stories, so these will be more thought provoking clicks....

If you think there was too much hype about Stephen Strasburg, you might want to wait on reading about next year's number one draft pick.

Jack's dream come true...

Ross Ohlendorf is kinda smart

Read very carefully Schneider...you may want to bookmark this for yourself.

Two Texts from Last Night of the week...

(973): just went home with some hot chick. she has posters of the jonas brothers in her room. i basically ran out of the house.

and

(778): You're perfectly engineered for doggy style

The Hockey Phrase Bible...pretty self explanatory and hilarious...courtesey of Danny Grimmer...personal favorite of mine is the swamp donkey.

Song of the Week

Say Hey by Michael Franti and Spearhead



Twins Update

Cent		W	L	GB
DET	F	34	29	--
MIN	F	32	33	3.0
CHW	F	30	34	4.5
KCR	F	28	34	5.5
CLE	F	29	37	6.5

Not a whole lot of chatter for all the work myself and Jack have put in. So comment or die.

[Note: This blog entry was updated June 10, 2009 at 4:26 AM Minnesota time after I found there was in fact a large error in only Superhyrdro's stats. I fixed them.]

Here's what we witnessed after Week 9:

1) Superhydro, after all the hype leading up to this week, got smoked.
2) Religious Sects, after being bashed repeatedly for his horrible WHIP numbers, put up the single best WHIP number out of any team in any week.
3) Tony McDonald is the worst team by any statistical ranking.
4) Yung Joseph tooted his horn a bit too much.
5) Just 2(5) Guyz has quietly moved into 2nd place

Here's the Simulated Winning Percentages after Week 9:


Superhydro, now that the error has been fixed, is in 4th place. Yes, he's still been the most unlucky, but not by as much. Look for him to leave that 9th spot very soon. JJmakesmeHARD(Y) is the 2nd most likely team to jump. As for the flip side, Yovani's Young Gun's should soak up their time in the top 5, because I don't know how much longer that will last.

However, let's look at the ASS 2.0 stats for each team in the past 3 weeks:
[Again, thanks for your responses everyone ... NOT]



Luke Luke and more Luke. He has just put up Ruthian numbers these past 3 weeks; leauges ahead of everyone else. Yung Joseph, who has touted himself as a top tier fantasy baseballer, sits at a mediocre 6th place over the course of the past 3 weeks, perhaps his best weeks are behind him. Something tells me that's wrong though. Abusement Park has fought to stay afloat and not take the predicted plunge.

Another funny side note, before we get to the media portion of our WIR. My mother who has been diligently reading my blog about Spain, saw that I was following another blog by someone named Da Commish. She clicked on it, read it, and wanted to know who JP was and why I wanted to marry him ....

Aaaaand to the Media:

I have two videos of Florida Congresswoma Corrine Brown. She first made an appearance by commending her UF Gators back in '08 (Be sure to go to the YouTube website and read the comments. It says she holds a Masters in Public Speaking from UF. God help us.):



Go Gata! Then she met with California Congresswoman Maxine Waters to talk some smack:



Maxine knows a little bit about her Lakers, but Corrine knows nothing about her teams. Bandwagon anyone? Yikes.

And to cap it off, we all know we love Bret Michaels. Let's watch his exit at the Tony Awards last night:

Good night, and good luck.

Now that we have all played each other one time this year and are quite close to mid-season, I decided to look into the archives and compile a crap load of information together. To warn you now, it is very long and took a while to do. But, it is also VERY interesting stuff and there is something in here for everyone (including all previous members of the Armchair Fantasy Baseball League). Here is the review of all reviews....

To Begin, I put together all of the head-to-head matchups of the current members. The first row is the record against that opp. The second row is the total stat catagory W-L-T over the years. We will start with TMac as an example: First is his record over the years, in parenthesis is his playoff record that year, and it is not included that record. eg. He lost 3-7 to Mike in the playoffs of '06.

Tony Mac 90-112-18, 101-97-12 (3-7), 121-86-13 (10-10), 133-142-33




playoff records- included in the all-time records below

Finally, I decided to put together everyone's record over the years. All playoff records are included (winner's bracket games only). W-wins L-losses T-ties P-playoff appearances RT-regular season titles LT-league titles (not Luke Thompsons') M-moves Tr- trades

sorry about the tough read of the standings, this thing does not allow more than one space in between letters and numbers or something, explains the weird formatting.

A couple of weeks ago, Joe gave me the idea of reviewing the draft as the season went on. I thought it was a great idea for a midweek thing, and so here is the first installment of Draft Review, beginning with Round 1. It is still kind of early, but we are almost half way so I figured we could start now because there are twenty five rounds to cover for the rest of the year. Feel free to argue against my points that I make because as we all know, this wouldn't be as much fun if we didn't. Oh and Jack, I vote for three weeks. Sounds like a good number to start with and increases the accuracy of the ASS Rankings. With that, on to Round 1...

1st Pick: Hanley Ramirez, ss, Yung Joseph
I will admit I was a little surprised when Joe took Hanley instead of Fat Albert, but hey, he's Joe and he does everything differently than everybody else. Looking at it now though, it was a smart move because there is more disparity between the top shortstops as opposed to the top first basemen. Joe was still able to get a solid first basemen in Adrian Gonzalez, and he has a shortstop how is hitting .342. His power production is a little down, as he's only on pace to hit 25 homers, but with Adrian and ARod on his team, Joe will be fine with that from the SS position.

2nd Pick: Albert Pujols, 1b, Religious Sects
This was pretty much a no-brainer for Caff. Granted it was Yahoo! who chose Pujols, but still Mike probably would have done the same thing. He's the best hitter in the game, and has not disappointed this year with a .346 BA, 1.168 OPS, and 17 homers. The dude's a freak.

3rd Pick: Jose Reyes, ss, JJmakesmeHARD(Y)
This seemed like a solid pick at the time with Reyes debatably the best shortstop in the game with Hanley, but Reyes recently was injured and then injured himself with a torn hamstring while on the DL. SI.com says he'll be out until July, but Yahoo! makes it sound like it's not as serious. Even without the injury, Reyes started out kind of slow (at least for him), hitting only .279 and 2 dingers. He was still solid with 11 steals, but we'll see if that changes when he gets back or not.

4th Pick: David Wright, 3b, Tony McDonald
Wright is the second best third basemen after ARod, and so Tmac did pretty well to take him here I believe. He's batting .345, although he only has three home runs this year so far, which is not what you want out of a first round pick. Fourteen steals so far though is pretty solid, considering last year he only stole fifteen in the whole season.

5th Pick: Grady Sizemore, of, Just 2(5) Guyz
Even before going on the DL, Sizemore had been struggling mightily. Hitting only .223 this year, Sizemore may need surgery on his inflamed elbow which would keep him out until late July. With all all of this being said, it makes Luke's rise from the cellar even more impressive without his first round pick in the lineup for the majority of the run. I don't know if it can last though once Manny comes back because Juan Pierre will probably go back on the bench, unless he gets traded. Luke would be wise to trade one of his stud pitchers (hint hint Luke) to get some more hitters for his team, because he won't last at the top of the standings with Ben Zobrist as his shortstop.

6th Pick: Miguel Cabrera, 1b, Consistency
As can be seen by Joe's all-time review, Andy has pretty much sucked in fantasy baseball (let's be honest Schneides, you've been terrible). With that being said, he has stuck to the top of the standings this year, and a large part of that is due to Cabrera. He is one of the most consistent players in the game when it comes to hitting, and he hasn't disappointed this year hitting .340 with ten dingers so far this year.

7th Pick: Lance Berkman, of, The Poblano Effect
This was probably the surprise of the first round for me, but hey, when doesn't Jack surprise with his first round choice? Everybody should remember the time Jack selected Tony Gonzalez with his first pick in fantasy football. Berkman has not hit anywhere close to where a first round pick should hit, with a .246 average and .847 OPS. His BABIP is .261 though, so all hope is still not lost for Jack.

8th Pick: Ryan Howard, 1b, Superhydrophobocity
I'm not a big fan of taking a first basemen not named Pujols in the first round, only because there are so many solid first basemen (case in point, Adrian Gonzalez leads the league in homers this year, but was taken with the last pick in the sixth round by Joe). With 17 homers and 47 runs batted in, he has done fine in power categories, but he's hitting .259 and strikes out more than anyone not named Mark Reynolds. If I were JP, I would have gone for Mark Teixeira here because he hits for a higher average and similar power.

9th Pick: Josh Hamilton, of, Abusement Park
Hamilton's only played in 35 games this year, and is going to be out a while longer because of surgery, and so there really isn't much analysis I can do here. Riley's not hurt that bad really because he had some other solid outfielders, although it would be nice to have Hamilton in the lineup instead of Luke Scott.

10th Pick: Jimmy Rollins, ss, Da Commish
Rollins may have been a little reach for me here, but I wanted to make sure I got a top-notch shortstop and so there he was. He hasn't hit like a top-notch shortstop, with a .222 average and an extremely ugly .583 OPS so far this year. He does have a .238 BABIP though, and so I'm hoping he rebounds soon.


Well that's it for this time around with the Draft Review. I'll post more rounds as we go on. Obviously this one doesn't have too many surprises, but once we get farther down in the draft I should have more to say. Hopefully I can get a Week Recap done here this week also.

Well this week brought along a tie at the top of the leaderboard, a complete shellacking of a team who has finally succumbed to the call of summer as his team goes down the drain, and more predictions and a blockbuster trade. What a busy week! Oh and in case you haven't heard, Superhydrophobocity has been really unlucky. I don't know why we don't just give him the championship now folks! I mean nothing says domination like having Marco Scutaro, Brandon Inge, and Jorge Cantu your third basemen. We might as well take away the title from Notre Dame and rename Superhydro "God's Team". I will probably delve farther into this with stats and more arguments for the mystery that is JP's supposed unluckiness, honestly, how can you say you are unlucky when you win 9-5? Unlucky means things do not go your way. Last time I checked, winning your matchup 9-5 is a good thing, therefore SHP's owner's smack talk right now is absolutely ridiculous and also do they teach grammar over in the IT school JP? It's not addition. It's edition. And it's not "is has sucked." It's "it has sucked." And just because Jack's little gizmo declares you the best team does not mean anything because last time I checked, it's the standings on Yahoo!'s website that declare the winner of the league. I have plently more to say about this whole thing, but in the best interest of everyone, I will save it for a later post. One final word about it though. I don't know if same-sex marriage is legal in Spain, but if it is, JP, you should hop on the first flight to Barcelona, find Jack and a priest and say your "I do's" because you too are pretty much in love with each other for like the past three weeks. I'll probably take heat for saying all of this seeing as I'm playing JP's team this week, but I don't care. It had to be said, and there may be more that is said. We needed some more fire put back into the league. Now, onto the rest of the recap...

Just 2(5) Guyz 13, Tony McDonald 1
Yeah um...none of the catergories were even close. Tmac has gone into hibernation for the summer, and so I will be the first to say I hope he wakes up for fantasy football. Luke had solid performaces from pretty much everyone on his team.
Yung Joseph 9, Abusement Park 5
We had three name changes this week, and I think Riley's is a pretty solid one. I don't see how Joe's strategy of picking up pitcher after pitcher is working for him, because as this week shows, it guarantees him wins in two categories but loses him three (losses, ERA, and WHIP) because of the performance of the pitchers on his team. Hitting categories were pretty close together, so I'm not about to jump on the "Riley's team is going to drop" bandwagon. He is the antithesis of how everyone views JP's team right now. The way I see it, they both have relatively solid teams. Not great, but not terrible. Oh and Joe, your prediction about Riley dropping does not get declared right after just one week.

Superhydrophobocity 9, JJmakesmeHARD(Y) 5
Back to the original name for DGrimm because of the big trade (more on that later). With his depleted team though, Grimmer took a hit big time in the hitting categories. He held his own in the pitching ones, and frankly again JP, I don't see how you are unlucky when you win 9-5. You were playing a team with Alberto Callaspo at short for Christ's sake. Grimmer's pitching has been solid all year, and so I don't understand how you thought you are unlucky this week. Just because Jack has declared you the second coming of Jesus Christ himself does not mean that you will start winning every fantasy matchup 14-0.

Yovani's Young Guns 7, The Poblano Effect 6
Boy am I glad to have my name back! And Jack, I think we should all go for some nostalgia and bring back Hot Stove Cool Music as well. Maybe it'll turn around your team's fortunes? It's got to after you only hit two dingers this week man. Another solid week by Tex, and most my pitchers pitched real well this week too. Jack's pitchers pitched well too, but I just paid a little more attention this week. Case in point, I pulled all my starters on Sunday to avoid getting anymore losses, while Jack let Jorge de la Rosa go and got a loss from one of his relievers to let me take the losses category for the week. I finally do something right as a manager. Bye bye Adam Jones...you will be missed.

Religious Sects 6, Consistency 6
Different week, same story for Consistency. Another close matchup, but if these continue Schneider will be the one dropping in the standings and not Riley. David Price had 17 K's to help out Caff this week, and also most his hitters performed very well also. Sorry you two, but there's not much else to say about this matchup.

Transaction of the Week
Well I think we know what this one is going to be....
JJmakesmeHARD(Y) receives Jhonny Peralta CLE ss, 3b, Adam Jones BAL of, Ryan Doumit PIT c, and Paul Maholm PIT sp
Yovani's Young Guns receives Manny Ramierez LAD of, Yovani Gallardo MIL sp, and Scott Downs TOR rp
This one all hinges on how Manny does once he comes back from suspension. From the sounds of my negotiations with Grimmer, Manny was a pretty hot commodity. I think this was a relatively fair trade because Grimmer gets someone to fill the shortstop hole while Reyes is out, gets an OF he is performing out of his mind right now in Jones, gets a solid catcher when Doumit comes off the DL, and another starting pitcher. I can afford to wait for Manny with my other outfielders being OK for now, Yovani gets me a solid starting pitcher I did not have, and Downs will help a little bit with saves. Also, I feel giving up Doumit and Maholm wasn't a huge deal because Doumit probably wouldn't have made the lineup with Soto and Wieters on my team, and Maholm pitches for the Pirates and does not get many K's. So in my opinion, I won this trade by a small margin, but that margin increases if Manny goes off like he did last year when he became a Dodger. Your thoughts are more than welcome about the trade.

Oly's Rankings
1. Yung Joseph
2. Just 2(5) Guyz
3. Superhydrophobocity
4. Religious Sects
5. Consistency
6. The Natural
7. Da Commish
8. JJmakesmeHARD(Y)
9. The Poblano Effect
10. Tony McDonald


Hot Clicks of the Week

Easily number one, I highly advise every body to check out our league member's blog about his trip to Espana.
Jack's Spanish Journey

The Bro Bible....pretty self-explanatory. Good website to kill time.

Also, if some haven't heard of it yet, I want to make it a league mandate to go to Textsfromlastnight.com....absolutely hilarious and a great time killer. I bet there are plenty of texts from our league members that could make this site, in particular Mike Cafferty's texts.
Just an example, here's one text....

(305): Thanks for jumping on that grenade for me last night. You're the best wingman ever (615): She ate 7 of the 8 slices of pizza. I deserve a purple heart and sex w your sister

Yes I'm here again, people.

Here's the results after Week 8:


Not much shifting after only one more week, clearly that's going to happen as we get later in the year. Superhydro moved up one in the league, a trend that ASS 2.0 predicts will continue. If you look at the head-to-head stats, he is near the top in almost every category we score. He should be leagues ahead of us, but he's in 4th.

The Natural is still in 4th in the league, which shouldn't hold unless something changes.

With this new ASS 2.0, I can adress the problem of Mike being winless in WHIP matchups. (0-8-0, keep up the good fight.) But is it merely poor pitching or poor luck? In actuality, he was supposed to have a W% of .177. So that's a 17% swing, not entirely off, but expect him to get his first W soon.

Other notable (almost) undefeated (or (almost) defeated) category teams:

Religious Sects / Runs / 7-0-1 = .938 / ASS 2.0 = .738
JJMakesmeHARD(Y) / SBs / 0-7-1 = .063 / ASS 2.0 = .176
Yung Joseph / OPS / 7-1-0 = .875 / ASS 2.0 = .525 (Quite quite lucky)
Yovani's Young Guns / OPS / 1-7-0 = .125 / ASS 2.0 = .322
JJMakesmeHARD(Y) / Ws / 7-0-1 = .938 / ASS 2.0 = .674 (Quite lucky)
Just 2(5) Guyz / Ls / 7-0-1 = .938 / ASS 2.0 = .812 (Luke has the Ls category all wrapped up)
The Poblano Efffect / SVs / 7-0-1 = .938 / ASS 2.0 = .723
Religious Sects / HLDs / 6-0-2 = .875 / ASS 2.0 = .755

Aside from Luke "owning" the Losses category, Superhydro owns HRs, with an expected W% of .805 in that category. (in actuality he's only 5-3-0 in that category, which must be the most unlucky and most suprising.) In Week 2, Superhydro hit 19 HR. The next closest is 15, in Week 1 by Consistency and Week 4 by Superhydro. That's a lot of HRs.
Tony McDonald, the worst HR team, has hit 8, 8, 4, 6, 14, 5, 3, and 5. Those 19 HRs in Week 2 by Superhydro are more than Tony McDonald's Week 3, 6, 7, and 8 Weeks combined.

Anyway, time to go. I've got the dirt on every team now. The only question is what do I do with it? Yikes.