This will be the last year for the Draftday Fantasy League, formerly the Cardrunners League. At least as a publicly viewable experts' league and blog.

The league itself has been fantastic and hugely enjoyable, and I think it acheived many of the goals Bill and I had when we set out to create it three years ago. The level of play has been extremely high, and I'm thrilled to have met and competed against some of the best in the fantasy baseball community.  I hope to continue playing privately against many of these people, but as anyone in the community knows, the effort required in consistently creating interesting post content is high and that pales beside the effort required to grow an audience. With no one really devoted to either of those activities, it makes little sense to continue to ask Draftday to sponsor our league.

I look forward to experimenting with some new intresting formats and ideas for ways to possibly improve the game of fantasy baseball. If anyone is interested in participating in such a league, please drop me a line at eric@agmangames.com. 

As we approach the last month of our final season, it is with a very exciting finish. My Gimps currently lead the pack, but have only a few points lead over Clark Olson, Razzball, and Derek Carty. Bill is also in striking distance of a win. Particularly interesting is that Clark has been fielding a punt starting pitching team, and trying to come in just over the 1000 Innings minimum threshold with dominant finishes elsehwere, including in WHIP and ERA. Unfortunately for him, one of his last remaining starting pitchers was Bartolo Colon. Very curious to see if he can still get to 1000 Innings, and if he fails whether his moving to last in ERA and WHIP as a penalty (which gives every time but Razzball two points) winds up making the difference. 

I'd like to thank both Cardrunners and Draftday for hosting our league, without their generosity we would never have been able to get this group together in the first place.

I'd like to thank all the competitors who played over the three years, a number of these campaigns were amongst my most enjoyable fantasy competitions ever. 

Chris trades Adam Lind (recently sent to AAA) to Clark for Travis Hafner and 20 claim dollars

Gimps trade Josh Hamilton Kevin Youkilis and 56 FAAB to Chris Hill for Ian Kinsler, Andy Petite, and Ricky Romero.

I don't think I'm happy. What's fair value for Hamilton right now?

Bill sends Doubront and Kuroda to Trevor for Dustin Ackley

In a monster trade, the GImps send Jered Weaver and Daric Barton to Bill Phipps for Mark Teixera and Andrew Bailey. 

In a smaller deal, Gimps send Kyle Drabek and the remains of Brian Roberts to Derek for Alexi Casilla

Also, GIMPS ARE IN FIRST!

In what will either be a disaster or a prescient buy low, Gimps trade Ricky Romero and Grant Balfour to Chris Hill aka Perfect Fish for Max Scherzer and Jose Valverde.

First off, let's face it: I have absolutely no business playing in this league or commenting on the draft. I just happen to be one of those degenerate gamblers who keeps moving up in competition until they can't win, then I stubbornly play until I am busted or moving up to the next level. So here I am with experts, rocket scientists, and card players far better than moi. My sole entry qualification: I know how to play Q3 when the flop comes A 3 3. (Which is code for: "I have the entry fee and Eric knows I am a giant fish". Hey, in a league this good one sure loser is a good thing to have. That would be me.)
That said, I certainly improved from last year. I didn't blow the bank on Morneau, Lackey, Hughes, Feliz and Papelbon. I actually found out the values experts were paying in the AL auctions for LABR and Tout Wars (this is publicly available, who had a clue?). I read everything Derek Carty wrote on Baseball Prospectus in hopes he would appear, and even if he didn't, I was sure BP's PFM values and Derek's insights would prove to be tremendously valuable. I was correct in that.

In short, I educated myself to at least reasonable beginner's status. Just where you want to be against 9 of the best players in the country.

(more…)

Check out the auction tab in the links to the right to see the 2012 auction. 

I am swamped at the moment, but I definitely had a number of thoughts I'll share when I get the chance.

Thanks to Cardrunners for hosting us these past two years, we have now switched sponsors to Draftday.com, which seems like a more natural home for us anyway.

I'm excited for the Draftday 2012 draft, which is coming up on tuesday. I'll try to have rosters up shortly thereafter.

I've updated the competitors 2012 page on the sidebar. We have a great field for this year, notably including the return of Bill Phipps and the inaugrual campaign of Rudy Gamble and Grey Albright from razzball.com.

Our draft date is the 27th of March, rosters will be posted then.