Les Curieux Evenements: A Slightly Sheepish Season Summary

So, um, how was your summer?

Contrary to published reports, we here at the GRBG did not succumb to The Plague. We did, however, have our hands full with new babies and reclusive copper heiresses, to the point where the blog sort of withered on the vine.

We're not sure what that means for our output going forward. But we are sure that we're going to redeem this season as best we can with an omnibus season wrap-up post. We'll start with our usual accountability check on the league's predictions, and finish off with the updated all-time league standings. (Teddy)

I had wanted to do something like this at the end of the season, so kudos to my esteemed co-author for taking the lead here.  In any event, 7800 soiled diapers, 90 depositions, and a dozen inexplicable Taylor Teagarden hits later, here we are.  Let's try to get some year-end commentary together.  (El Angleo)

12: The Moon Colonists (League Prediction: 10th)

We never got a chance to TA the early May trade in which the Colonists traded Matt Kemp, Roy Halladay, Adrian Gonzalez, Matt Grasso, and Mario Manningham to Quoth the Jennings in return for a 1, Ike Davis, Colby Rasmus, Ryan Madson, and the draft rights to five-month-old Garrett Hamm-Garciaparra. At the time many were worried that the trade would ruin the league. Those people turned out to be right, not for the expected reason that the trade put the Jennings over the top.
No, the trade was cataclysmic because it gave Angelo FOUR picks in next year’s first round. If we manage a livedraft next year, the combination of four Angelo #1s plus half a case of Mickey’s grenades should lead to hilarity. In light of that, further analysis of this team is mostly beside the point. (Teddy)

Kudos to those who had predicted me for DAFL and to Teddy for noting in our season-opening post that my squad had a good chance to tank this year because of its odd structure.  What's most notable about my season, other than the uber-trade, is just how putrid my draft was; only Addison Reed can be counted as a remotely useful player that I took.  By contrast, the waiver wire yielded Austin Jackson, Chase Headley, R.A. Dickey, and Kris Medlen.  So maybe those picks next year should be dealt for waiver priority.  (El Angelo)

11. 1st mouse late bird (League Prediction: 3d)

Well, not so much on that prediction. The Cockamouses looked like legit board candidates at the start of the year. But the worst 10 weeks of Albert Pujols’s career torpedoed them before they could even get started, and led to a tear-down trade intended to get the franchise back some of what it had given up in next year’s draft. All of the various trades were defensible based on where the team found itself at the time, although the unfortunate net effect is that they are going to have to reboot using a non-lottery first rounder next year. Luck plays a role here. (Teddy)

Teddy's noted this before but slow starts just annihilate you in rotisserie leagues, because come June, you'll be so far out of it that you have no clue what to do to improve.  The Healer's options to get better as the season went on were limited by the lack of a #1 for next year to use as a chip, but even if he dealt that for 8 useful players, it may not have been enough.  Right idea, some bad luck at the end of the day.  (El Angelo)

10. Spreading Santorum (League Prediction: 12)

 It's not easy to finish in 10th when you own the first Triple Crown winner in 45 years. Or, wait, maybe it is easy as long as you only get 8 pitching points. This was not the year to have drafted Jonathan Sanchez. (Teddy)

In addition to Miggy, this offense also had a bunch of guys who had really good years on offense -- Mark Trumbo, Michael Bourn, Elvis Andrus, and even an out of nowhere comeback for Toriiiiiiii.  But this really turned out to be one of the worst pitching staffs in memory.  When Johan St. Johan went down, Jason Vargas became their stopper.  That's wrong on multiple levels.  (El Angelo)

9. Jeters Never Prosper (League Prediction: 1st(!))

Whoops! Led by a uterly flabbergasting season from Derek Jeter, the shaky preseason IF actually held its own this year. Instead, the great god of Pitcher Variance up and bit them in the ass this year—Josh Johnson and Dan Haren were each among the 15 worst BABIPs in the league among SPs. There’s just not all that much you can do about that. The team rebounded a bit towards the end of the season, even as they traded away their only effective pitcher in Jered Weaver.  Of course, rebounding from 11th to 9th arguably just made things worse. (Teddy)

This roster was laden with guys who a lot of people thought would have huge breakthrough years -- Jesus Montero, Matt Moore, Dexter Fowler, and Yu Darvish.  While Darvish was fine, the others never really elevated their level to the greatness that was hoped for, offsetting a somewhat shocking year -- well, part year -- from Melky Cabrera and Jeter.  This actually strikes me as a team that's going to have a scary keeper list and a good pick to boot next year.  (El Angelo)

8. Quoth the Jennings (League Prediction: 9th)

As team cousin Ken Jennings would quoth in the form of a question, WTF?  So, Roy Halladay and Adrian Gonzalez suck now, I guess? (BTW, what was the Vegas line on Gonzalez getting traded in both fantasy and reality this year?)  I have to say, there but for the grace of Pedro go I, because I would have targeted a lot of the same players back in May if I’d had the chance (did try, unsuccessfully, to poach a few of them in August). The team unwound its position pretty well under the circumstances, but they were selling into a bear market. (Teddy)

The best news for this team is that they didn't burn a year of Bryce Harper's eligibility by keeping him on the prospect list the entire season.  Beyond that cold comfort, few fantasy teams have ever had as large a gap between name recognition and performance.  Wright and Heyward obviously had great years, but other guys regressed incomprehensibly -- namely, Kemp and Gonzalez -- or were quietly underperforming alll year (Starlin Castro, McCann).  Or you could simply say that this team gave nearly 1000 at-bats to Mets, so of course they sucked.  (El Angelo)

7. Le Dupont Torkies (League Prediction: 11th)

Maybe the first genuinely boring season in Torkies history, which can probably be chalked up to the owner's midseason acquisition of another future J. Crew Kids-model baby. The team bumped up against the limits of its closer-centric roster--they could have given up 50 saves and only lost 1 point in the standings. But the real problems were on offense, where they couldn't do anything but run.

BTW, our preview for this team was a hilarious mix of prescient analysis (we nailed the forthcoming offensive problems) and shame-spiraling stupidity (we managed to shit on Gio Gonzalez and Johnny Cueto in the space of a single sentence). Why do we do these accountability posts again? (Teddy)

Since I don't have a ton to add, let's look at those pre-season predictions.  We've taken everyone's predictions and scored them by delta -- i.e., if you picked Chad to finish 4th, you get 2 points for being off by 2 slots.  Amazingly, of the 8 ballots submitted, 6 were in the band of 44 - 48 points, meaning three quarters of the voters were off by basically 3 1/2 to 4 slots per team.  The first outlier was Jon, who had a delta of 39 and correctly picked Scot to win it all (and another finish correctly down the ballot).  The other?  Sir Teddy himself, at a garrish 52 points, which is amazing because it includes two dead-on predictions, albeit of teams we've already covered.  (El Angelo)

6. Wu Tang Financial (League Prediction: 8th)

The first of two eminently respectable finishes for the Elders boys this year. This was the first year since 2008 that both of them finished in the first division (and it's only the second time ever). If WTF can find some table-setter types in the draft next year, they could be frisky. (Teddy)

If the September Tim Lincecum actually is who shows up for the entire year next year, these guys are starting off with a helluva rotation.  A nice season for this team that needs a couple of bats and some luck at the closer slot to make a run at it next year.  (El Angelo)

5. The Spam Avengers (League Prediction: 2d)

A good-looking preseason roster was torpedoed by injuries to Mariano Rivera (a big reason why the team finished DAFL in saves) and Jacoby Ellsbury (whose loss opened up a hole in the OF that they never quite filled. Honestly, looking at their end of season roster, it still seems like they should have done better than a distant 5th. (Teddy)

Their season was caused in party by one of the effects of our keeper structure, as it completely robbed them of any depth.  A deeper team could overcome losing Joey Votto and Ellsbury for over 120 games combined, but that depth was simply hard to come by when they only kept 4 hitters and picked in the 12-slot two straight years.  I also think that this owner saw the writing on the wall early on -- that Scot was going to be hard to catch -- and decided not to make a run at a bronze medal by giving up future assets.  The result was a non-threatening 5th.  (El Angelo)

4. Suicide By Jaguar (League Prediction: 6th)

Ouch, babe. This was the closest 3rd/4th place finish since 2003, when Angelo edged Jon off the board by 2.5 points As you can see here, the team fell off a cliff in August and never made it all of the way back. Still, though, this went a long way toward restoring the reputation of a franchise that has seen some shit.

What I'm saying, I guess, is that Andy is the Pittsburgh Pirates. You're welcome? (Teddy)

It's tough to say that one guy killed your season, but Evan Longoria missing half the season was probably the difference between 3rd and 4th place.  That said, I do want to give the manager a ton of credit for playing the shit out of the season.  This team used SIXTY-ONE different players this year, including contributions by guys named Tyler Moore, Justin Ruggiano and Jeff Locke.  Possibly my favorite of them all was somehow getting 11 innings from Wade LeBlanc with 8 K's to go with a sub-2.00 ERA.  Then again, you could have simply rotated starters that faced the Mets, Cubs and Astros all year and probably finished in the top half of pitching.  (El Angelo)

3.  Paging Dr. Rumack (League Prediction: T4th)

This team had two things going for it. One, it was one of those teams that was pretty good in everything, which let it clunk up past the teams below, all of which had at least one major hole. Two, Buster Posey. They also managed to hit the board without making any win-now trades, so their powder is dry for next year. Can't ask for much more than that. (Teddy)

This team managed to finish fifth in saves with their closers being Alfredo Aceves, Ernesto Frieri, Brett Myers, Santiago Casilla, and something named Jared Burton. If you were looking for an argument against spending high picks on relief pitching, you've found it.

2. Westish Harpooners (League Prediction: T4th)

Given that I got only 47 mostly-shitty games out of Troy Tulowitzki, I'm not entirely sure how this happened.  I will say that I got two things really right: taking a risk on the health of Joe Mauer, and circling, underlining, and highlighting Allen Craig on my draft sheet because of his oddball 2B eligibility. That's a 17th-round pick that will go down in song. (Teddy).

Also taken in the 17th round this year: Jake Peavy, who pitched like he was a '08 Padre again.  The fact that you competed this year while 4 of your first six picks on Jon Lester, Colby Lewis, Mike Minor, and Drew Stubbs is inspiring to us cellar-dwellers.  (El Angelo)

1. Big Damn Heroes (League Prediction: 7th)  

Really just significantly better than everybody else for the entire year. And not really in keeper jail next year either. So, yeah. Pretty good. (Teddy)  

I'm not sure we have ever seen, or will ever see, an outfield/DH quartet as strong as 2012 versions of Mike Trout, Andrew McCutchen, Curtis Granderson and Edwin Encarnacion.  The 4 combined for 431 runs, 146 homers, 395 RBIs, and 92 steals.  This was on top of having a guy who should finish in the top 5 in MVP voting (Beltre) and Adam Dunn's resurgent season.  Just a mind-boggling offense.  Congrats to a dominating season.  (El Angelo)

So with all that said, here are the updated all-time standings:

	AVG FINISH	CHANGE	AVG PTS	Cashes	Cash %	Wins	Win %
Tucker	3.5	-	82.5	6	0.545	4	0.364
Scot	4.3	+1	80.9	6	0.750	2	0.250
Alex	4.4	-1	78.2	4	0.400	3	0.300
Jake	5.1	-1	72.7	5	0.455	1	0.091
Chad	5.6	-	72.7	4	0.364	0	0.000
Darrandrew†	6.3	+1	67.3	3	0.300	1	0.100
Angelo	6.8	-1	59.0	3	0.273	0	0.000
Corey*	7.0	-	61.3	1	0.125	0	0.000
Matty G.	7.2	+1	63.4	0	0.000	0	0.000
Will	7.3	-1	61.7	1	0.100	0	0.000
Jon	8.3	+1	52.3	0	0.000	0	0.000
Andy	8.4	+1	55.8	0	0.000	0	0.000
Sahil	8.5	-2	52.4	0	0.000	0	0.000
Barto	9.0	-	48.5	0	0.000	0	0.000
Vihal	9.0	-	48.5	0	0.000	0	0.000
Other Scot	9.0	-	48.5	0	0.000	0	0.000
Mike*	9.0	-	47.5	0	0.000	0	0.000
Val	12.0	-	27.5	0	0.000	0	0.000
Legend:	† Coupled as an entry because of past joint ownership
	* Corey split '07 with Mike; finish assigned to Mike

Year in Review: Those Who Can Do, Those Who Can't, Prognosticate

Many moons ago, when spring was in the air and hope sprang eternal, we here at the GRBG commissioned an AP-style poll of league owners asking them to take a shot at predicting the final standings. Eight of the twelve owners responded. For those with poor short- and medium-term memories, here is how the aggregate poll stacked up against the final standings:So, not so much. Regardless, we here at the GRBG wanted to give credit whwere it is due, and point out a couple of predictors who displayed well above-average accuracy. We used two metrics to measure how accurate picks were, which yielded two different "best" prognosticators.

First, we just looked at which owners got the highest number of exactly correct picks, and which most correctly predicted the teams who would hit the board. By that method, the winner is the Commish, who correctly called The Spam Avengers winning it all and the Gowanus Superfunders coming in third. He was also the only owner to exactly nail three different teams' finishing places, though because the third exacto ended up towards the bottom of the field, we will draw the curtain of charity across the details of that pick.

Second, we totalled up how far off people were across all of their predictions. To do so, we assigned penalty points for each slot a pick missed by (so if an owner picked Le Dupont Torkies to come in 1st, they'd get 4 penalty points for LDT's 5th-place finish in reality). By that method the most accurate predictor was Jake, who amassed only 28 penalty points. That means on average he was only about 2 slots off on each team, which is prety damn good.

Some other random notes:

- The worst predictors? Corey and Teddy, who got one board pick correct between them, and rang up 53 and 51 penalty points, respectively. While Corey's performance was slightly worse, Teddy's is probably more embarassing, given that he co-writes a blog which predicts and analyzes the damn league.

- The worst miss? Two different people had The Spam Avengers in 11th place, which was good for 10 penalty points. Again, curtain of charity.

- Jake and Sahil each correctly predicted their own finishing slots. Given where they ended up, one wonders why they didn't put their clairvoyance to work getting better players.

- Two different people predicted themselves to win the league. They were both wrong. Hubris, people!

We think that this worked out pretty well this year, and are leaning towards using this approach again next year. If you disagree, drop in a comment.

All-Star Break Review: How Everyone's Doing

The arrival of the All-Star Break gives us a three-day interlude in fantasy sports as well. Since the home run derby, futures game, and ASG itself have a de minimus bearing on fantasy overall, we thought this lull would be a good opportunity to reflect on how everyone's teams have performed to date.

We have a few of bases of comparison: the vaunted Deathship, which shows how every team would have done if owners had drafted and then fallen into comas; the aggregate predictions we ran in April; and our own previews. Let's bring them all together and see what we've gotten right, wrong and didn't see coming so far. (El Angelo)

This has not been a particularly pleasant exercise at many points in the GRBG's history, so I find myself pre-flinching, bomb-squad style. Nevertheless, our public deserves accountability. I guess. (Teddy)

12. Wu Tang Financial (11th in predictions, 12th in Deathship)

While both the aggregate predictions and the Deathship have been mostly on target, there are two teams with which they're both dead-on-balls accurate. This is one of them. Everyone agreed from day one that this was a basement dweller and nothing has changed. The good news: he'll be able to draft B.J. Upton at the #2 slot next March. (El Angelo)

Too true, though, as with many last-placed teams, they've also had more than their fair share of bad luck and unforeseeable underperformance (who had Zack Greinke down for an ERA near 4.00 at the break?). And it's once again worth noting the deft timing that allowed him to get a return on Troy Tulowitski before he hit the shelf until after the trade deadline. (Teddy)

T10. The Little Green One (7th/T7th)

The 7th in the predictions is deceptive because as Sir Teddy noted, the team was clearly boom-or-bust, and the 7th reflected that the owners were divided over the team's fate. They could be a slot or two higher if they had held on to some of their veterans, but for what purpose? (El Angelo)

Yeah, to me the most surprising thing here is the current 7th place position in the Deathship. (By the way, can I just briefly note how happy I am that "Deathship" caught on, both as a concept and a term? I feel like by next year, the league will be like the Tour de France, where the winner of the league gets the glory and the yellow short, but the Deathship winner will get to wear a ridiculous polka-dot shirt as a consolation prize.) By that I mean that when left alone, this team actually achieved mediocrity, rather than a boom or bust. But the decision to sell was a good one in a year where there were more buyer than usual early on. (Teddy)

T10. pastywhite tyrones (12th/11th)

Sneakily good hitting-- their 40 points is not bad, considering the Dustin Pedroia and Jose Reyes injuries--is offset by some truly horrible pitching. Matt Garza's not a bad first starter, but the problem is that R.A. Dickey is playing a prominent role here, and they have no closers. The pitching's shallow and bad enough that climbing out of the bottom tier is going to be impossible, but that said, pitching is variable enough year to year that it wouldn't be a surprise to see this team keep 8-10 hitters and compete next year with a fresh staff. (El Angelo)

Agreed, the move here is to keep the offense more or less en bloc, and then try to catch some arms on the way up next year. The Torkies actually used that strategy to good effect a couple of times a few years ago, so you can see a blueprint at work. Not to say that it's easy, but you can see how the ship could get turned around with a good draft next year. (Teddy)

9. Le Dupont Torkies (2nd/10th)

Wank. Looks like we have the mirror image of the team that befell the same bad destiny that hit It's Enrico Palazzo last year. This time it's horrible hitting that's doomed the team, and given how bad they're doing in the Deathship, it's clear these guys were probably DOA coming out of the gate. Of course, only a few of us realized that at time, instead basically making the mistake of counting on a veteran team to make one last run.

The silver lining for Tucker (and scary bit for the rest of us) is that Scot's shown that one down year means nothing with good drafting. Who wants to bet that this team won't be in 10th this time next year, when armed with two picks in the top-16? (El Angelo)

It looks like we might have been a year early predicting the demise here. But for those inclined towards belief, we note that the Torkies still have a ton of IP to burn (they're on pace to go 70 innings under the max limit), and better health than they've had for most of the season. We can't see them getting up to their usual spot in the top 2, but a money finish is still not totally out of the question if the bats get going. (Teddy)

8. Suck It, Silver (1st/3rd)

And here's everyone's colossal misfire. For now, I'm less curious about what's gone wrong versus everyone's predictions, and more curious why he's getting killed versus the Deathship. On its face, the answer appears to be entirely about offense, which is getting Corey a pathetic 14 points in our league versus 37.5 in the DS. Let's do a side-by-side comparison of what his team has earned in each category in our league (left) versus the DS (right):

Runs: 404 vs. 404
HR: 95 vs. 94
RBI: 366 vs. 364
SB: 63 vs. 64
OBP: .336 vs. .344

The OBP difference aside--which would only put him up 5 more points and into 7th place--this basically proves something we've all suspected, that in-year changes do matter. The stats that you'd get simply based off your draft aren't good enough, you need to acquire better players. Not coincidentally, Corey is in the bottom 4 of the league in transactions.

But is that his bad managing? Corey entered the year with a deep roster, and only Adam Lind has really completely shit the bed this year. Everyone's been just enough below average to not give up on them. More problematically, it is difficult to find good hitters in the free agent pool, especially infielders. Which means Corey's only real sin is not being more active in the trade market. But when you're down 30+ points, I can understand being hesitant on the trigger finger. (El Angelo)

I'd put the same point slightly differently. This has been maybe the most positively managed first half since the very early days of the league, when keeper slots didn't yet force bad teams to sell early. Almost everyone (and believe me, I talked to almost everyone about potential trades) had the goal of hitting the board this year, and managed accordingly. The result was that standing still in the middle lane was not an option, unless you wanted to get passed on both sides. And that's what's happening here. A year after riding a great draft to the money, this team is riding a merely good draft to the middle.

That said, because there are only two really good teams right now, these guys are still in it to hit the board. The problem is that there aren't that many teams left to loot for upgrades, meaning the necessary improvement will have to come internally (we're looking at you, Aaron Hill) or over the wire. (Teddy)

7. The Situation Room (8th/4th)

The entire difference between the Deathship and my current lot in life is Kelly Johnson's explosive April and May. Had I kept him instead of futzing around with shitty players before dealing for Dan Uggla, I'd probably be a little higher in the standings. That said, the initial prediction looks about right, what with Lester, Hernandez and Upton all off the roster in a rebuild mode for '11; if I finish higher than this slot, I've screwed something up. (El Angelo)

As I've probably made clear, I think a couple of teams behind you are ripe for a run, so I think you'll settle back nicely. Maybe not as nicely as you'd like, but nicely nonetheless. (Teddy)

6. Jeters Never Prosper (6th/9th)

The team's season is exactly as boring as we expected. And their drafting didn't help. Here's a recipe for mediocrity, courtesy of a draft summary:

R1--Aramis Ramirez: horror show.
R2--K-Rod: Met.
R3--Jason Kubel: Meh.
R4--Nate McLouth: Disaster.
R5--Kevin Slowey: Bad.
R5--Octavio Dotel: Finally, a good one!
R6--Billy Butler: Blah.

This isn't to pick on Jake--most of these picks were defensible when made. But when you go 1-5-1 on your first 7 picks, you're going to have trouble competing. (El Angelo)

You've neatly summarized what happened to me last year. Of course, I ended up getting lucky and winning the draft lottery, which set me up well for this year. So hope abounds here. (Teddy)

5. Duck-Duck-Duck-Fuke (10th/2nd)

I give up. (El Angelo)

It is absolutely uncanny how bad we--and now, given this year's methodology, the rest of the league--are at predicting how this team will do. Hell, even the Deathship is bad--I don't know how you can make a clear win-now trade in the real league yet still somehow be behind your original roster in the Deathship. The usual laws of physics appear not to apply here. I therefore encourage the owner to name this team the Event Horizons next season. (Teddy)

4. Enrico Palazzo (9th/6th)

Manager of the half year by a mile, the team that finished next to last in the previous year is suddenly in contention. How? Well, they've constructed a monster offense that leads the league in all the power categories, is second in OBP and is 5th in steals. Compare that to last year, where the squad crapped all overitself to 26 1/2 points. Credit goes to drafting David Wright and Carlos Quentin, hitting the jackpot with Paul Konerko (in the 16th round--holy shit!) and Alex Rios on bounceback years, and getting David Ortiz at the right time.

Can this keep up? Well, you'll note that 2 of those players are old, 2 are pretty breakable and the 5th is a Met, so I remain skeptical that they can keep sprinting to the finish. And they still have no closer. So to me, this looks like a 5th place team. Which is a huge step forward from last year. (El Angelo)

I dunno, I look at the pitching and see no particular reason why it should be this bad. That's especially true now that Jon Lester is on board. Yes, the lack of saves is going to hamstring them some, but it's not that hard to project an increase in the SP-driven numbers that at least cancels out any regression from the old guys on offense. I think they're more likely to end up 2nd than 5th (unfortunately for me). (Teddy)

3. Gowanus Superfunders (4th/5th)

My co-author is in 3rd place despite getting nothing out of Brian Roberts, still not getting anything from Carlos Beltran (told you so), Adam Jones playing worse than Tom Jones, and trading for a busted shortstop. What's next?

Well, if they really want to contend, they're going to need at least two of those guys to contribute in the second half, because the easiest place for this squad to improve is steals, which Beltran and Roberts should provide if their legs work. And presumably their runs total would go up as well. Which leads to the key question: how many points is it going to take to win the league? If it's ~85, they've got a shot with some health breaks. If it's closer to 90, they look like the 3rd best team. (El Angelo)

See, I think I can get more steals without too much problem with the guys on my current bench (Scott Podsednik and Jose Tabata). The problem has been that I couldn't start those guys consistently without dragging the rest of the offense down. That's where Beltran (who is officially back as of Thursday) and Tulo will hopefully help--it's not that they'll steal bases on their own, it's that they'll let me run a steals-only guy out there consistently without further decimating my OBP.

If I have hope, it's in the return of those guys, plus the fact that I have several traditional second-half players on my team (Johan Santana, Ryan Howard, Tulo, Mark Reynolds). But for me to hit the board, everything needs to start going right now, and keep going right the rest of the way. That's a big ask. (Teddy)

2. The Revenge Society (3rd/1st)

For all the pickups, trades, and strum und drang, this squad's a couple of points behind its DS standings. That said, it's a pretty balanced team with two studs on the DL (Chase Utley & Clay Buchholz) and a lot of chits to trade if they're going to make a run for it. I liked last year better when this team sucked. (El Angelo)

Yeah, for all my bitching about the Tulo injury, TRS didn't get much more out of Utley before he hit the shelf. The Buchholz injury hurts them less, (a) because it's less serious, and (b) because they have plenty of pitching (and are on pace to go 40 innings over the limit, so they could do with a work slowdown anyway). Like me, it's a race back to health in the MI for TRS, because there just aren't good temp options up the middle this year. Random prediction: keep half an eye on Chris Davis, who is again a starter in Texas post-Smoak. (Teddy)

1. The Spam Avengers (5th/T7th)

Here's what's scary: these guys were in DAFL for brief portion of this year, i.e., they squandered a month and are still in first, and still have room to improve. They're dead last in steals and have solid upside to improve in steals and RBI's, especially if they make 1-2 more moves. I liked them at the start of the year, and love them to win it now. Well played to date, Alex. (El Angelo)

I think these guys are closer to their ceiling, points-wise. It's very much true that they have some easy upside on offense. But they are also on pace to blow through the IP limit by a whopping 100 innings. That's good news in some ways, because it means that the team's great rate stats are locked in. But there are no more points to be had for this team in those categories, because they're already at the top. For the counting stats, the pace news is not so good. At a +100 inning pace, you need to reduce TSA's Ws, SVs and Ks by about 7% to account for the looming IP wall. That would trim between 3.5 and 5 points off their total, depending on how you round. That makes things at least a little more competitive than they look on the surface.

Still, I don't think that there's any doubt that these guys are the favorites as we turn for home. Note the gap between this team's actual standings and the Deathship--the owner has driven the hell out of this team to date. 90 points should be enough to win this year, and the path to 90 is clearer for this team than it is for any other. (Teddy)

EDIT: For the visual learners among you, we tack on this section of Super Fun Excel Graphs showing the league standings and points measured at roughly two-week intervals over the course of the season to date.

The asterisk by the June 18th date is there because it marks the point where several teams began to sell off assets. Now by league rank:

The most volatile team? Our leaders, The Spam Avengers. Check the growth pattern on their points:

And finally, our least volatile team is actually the current second-place franchise, The Revenge Society:

A Silly Thought, Part 2

Now that we’ve set up our weird little thought experiment, let’s take a moment to (1) consider what, if anything, it actually tells us, and (2) as is SOP here at the GRBG, seize the opportunity to praise or mock people based on limited samples of questionable data.

Lesson the First: You Can’t Fight Genetics

Some years you get the bear; some years the bear gets you. The data impart this lesson in two ways.

First, a substantial portion of league success is down to getting good seasons out of the guys you draft. The bizarro league accurately reflects the group of teams who will finish in the 2-4 slots, and pegged three other teams to within one place of their reality rankings. Never mind that those six teams have completed something like 250 transactions between them; their destinies were pretty well set from day one.

Second, the huge PECOTA misses are mostly reflected in both the bizarro and reality standings, meaning that the power of player variance (or owner clairvoyance) usually trumps in-season maneuvering. For example, IEP’s precipitous crash is reflected in both the bizarro and reality standings; it’s tough to see what he could have done to pull out of the nosedive even if he had bothered to pay attention this year. And in the other direction, AA ends up in the same place (2d) in both leagues despite completing numerous major trades in the live league. All that sound and fury amounted to basically nothing compared to being right about Carl Crawford back in March.

Lesson the Second: Unless, That Is, You Live in D.C.

The Torkies, Funiculi, and Loose Bowels all did their best to fight their genes. Of course, while the Torkies and FF decided to overcome their limitations and beat their bizarro doppelgangers by 4 and 6 places, respectively, the TLB decided to devolve all the way to the bottom. According to reliable reports, the commish spent much of yesterday beating a femur against a large stone obelisk; we can but trust that positive results will follow shortly.

So with those bits of wisdom carved into digital stone, let’s move on to the awards.

The “Suck it, Nate Silver” Award

Goes to AA for just crushing his PECOTA projection, which appeared to assume that he had drafted a team of conceptual performance artists rather than ballplayers. Also the winner of the “Best Draft” award, and likely reason why half of the league will switch to Ron Shandler next season.

The Tim Geithner “Why Do I Bother?” Award

Goes to wormcheese mousebird. After trading away half of his opening day roster (and a couple of chunks of mine to boot), he ended up all of one place away from where PECOTA and the bizarro world predicted he would. Let’s see, the owner engaged in frenzied activity in support of frequently criticized grand plans, yet maintained a permanent belief that the fundamentals were strong and the team would soon turn the corner. Can’t understand how a guy like that ended up at the Fed.

The King Lear Memorial “Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks!” Trophy

Goes to IEP. Fate’s a bitch.

The Barack Obama Presidential Citation for Overcoming Adversity

Goes to Flaccid Funiculi; beating your fate by 6 spots is a nice achievement. It shows that anyone can achieve in this league, even those who, like FF, were born in Kenya.

The Chase Utley MVP Award

Can’t really go anywhere but to Le Dupont Torkies. The 6 spot gap between PECOTA and bizarro world? The cynical could write that off as luck. Taking that “lucky” roster another 4 spots to the top? Well, that’s pretty good.

A Silly Thought Experiment and Concomitantly Modest Proposal

As we've noted elsewhere, the "official" GRBG league predictions as generated by Baseball Prospectus's PECOTA data were less than razor sharp crossbow accurate. But, as noted in the prediction post, there were three problems with our use of PECOTA. One of those problems--PECOTA's inability to factor in the performance of owners--clearly contributed to the predictions' shortcomings.

We here at the GRBG wondered whether there was a way to separate out managerial performance and see how PECOTA would have done based on the rosters as drafted. As we wondered this, our eyes wandered to our Yahoo! notification stream, which informed us for the 200th consecutive day that Troy Percival was on the injured list, yet in our starting lineup. And then we remembered:

The Death Ship.

Because of various wacky mishaps with the draft system (and a certain owner's apparent inability to read a watch), on draft day the league created an alternate reality. That reality contained slightly warped copies of all our teams, with rosters as they stood after the completion of most of the draft. The bizarro league was then sealed up and left to play itself out without material interference from us. It became, essentially, a control group. So did PECOTA do any better predicting the bizarro world? Here are the predictions vs the actual standings:

PECOTA	Bizarro Standings	Reality
It's Enrico Palazzo	Wu Tang Financial	Le Dupont Torkies
Wu Tang Financial	Aroids Anonymous	Aroids Anonymous
Unenviable Position	Recalcitrant Cobbler	Mission Accomplished
Evil League of Evil	fakeleague (Ang)	Recalcitrant Cobbler
Mission Accomplished	Le Dupont Torkies	Flaccid Funiculi
Recalcitrant Cobbler	The Loose Bowels	Wu Tang Financial
The Loose Bowels	The Spam Avengers	wormcheese etc.
wormcheese etc.	wormcheese etc.	Unenviable Position
The Spam Avengers	Jake!Wrong League (Scot)	Evil League of Evil
Flaccid Funiculi	Unenviable Position	The Spam Avengers
Le Dupont Torkies	Draft? (Will)	It’s Enrico Palazzo
Aroids Anonymous	It’s Enrico Palazzo	The Loose Bowels

Well, PECOTA did seem to come closer to the control group than it did to manager-affected reality, so maybe there's some value there after all. More interestingly, the gaps between the projections, control group, and reality give some interesting insights into who has done the best job as an owner this year (hint: not me). We'll cover that in a later post. But I'll tell you what: we should definitely make the Death Ship league an annual tradition so we can track this stuff.

Mid-Season Accountability Review

The year 2009 has not been a strong one for predictions for the authors of the GRBG. We thought that Mine That Bird had no shot in the Derby, that the US was going to get waxed in the Confederations Cup, and that Zach Duke would implode. With that in mind, let's take the All-Star break to review our predictions, see what's gone right/wrong so far for the teams in the league, and consider forecasting what the second half has in store. Warning: our predictions, it turns out, makes our Derby prognostications look savvy. (El Angelo)

The 2009 PECOTA predictions have been the greatest spreadsheet-related disaster since Bernie Madoff first pirated a copy of MS Office 95. If we had any intellectual integrity, we'd shut down the blog. Luckily, we in fact don't have any intellectual integrity, so off we go. (Teddy)

12. The Spam Avengers (predicted: 9th)

Key quote from preview: "It's a good-not-great roster with a lot of pratfalls."--El Angelo

For starters, I'll note that somehow the 6 teams I previewed are currently in 5th, 7th, 8th, 9th, 11th and 12th. I leave it up to the reader to guess whether that's a curse or coincidence.

At any rate, the prediction has been kinda-sorta true, but this team has been markedly worse than I expected. What happened? Well, Jimmy Rollins has been a colossal stiff when not playing the Mets, and the bounty from the Drew/Upton-Milledge/Votto swap hasn't quite panned out: Lastings never made it back to the majors, and Votto missed a month with anxiety disorder. Throwing away that much firepower seems like too much to overcome. (El Angelo)

A team picking that high in the draft can't afford to eat its first round pick. Throw in a double miss on Votto and Milledge and it's crash city. That said, PECOTA actually got the neighborhood right for TSA--this far down things like managerial indifference start to swamp the data no matter how you pick 'em. (Teddy)

11. It's Enrico Palazzo (predicted: 1st)

Key quote from preview: "This perennial contender is a player or two shy of the top this year."--El Angelo

Perennial contender and PECOTA's pick goes to shit. What the hell happened? Three things. First, this team's pitching has utterly collapsed. For the last two years, this team has succeeded because of its arms, not its bats. Here's a chart showing their points earned in years past:

Yr	W	Sv	K	ERA	WHIP	Tot
07	11	7.5	11	12	12	53.5
08	7.5	7	12	11	12	49.5
09	6.5	1	1	1	5.5	15.0

Second, the hitting that was passable in years past has not been a strength at all, thanks to some killer performances and injuries from the infield. Russell Martin and Dan Uggla have gone from huge strengths at weak positions to just plain ol' shitty. When Carlos Delgado went down for an extended period, the team's hitting demise was set (to say nothing of Raul Ibanez's new injury).

Third, the owner appears to have taken the year off. While I can't say I blame him when the team is this poor, it's possibly the key difference between 11th and, say, 6th. Though given the top-heavy nature of next year's draft class, it's probably the smart move. (El Angelo)

SP-heavy teams are subject to collapse without warning, but this is ridiculous. Next year, rather than post the projected PECOTA winner we'll just send that owner a dead black cat in the mail and get it over with. I will say that the above chart points out the extent to which RPs influence the rate stats--it's nota coincidence that the team's collapse in SV gone along with a collapse in ERA and WHIP. (Teddy)

10. The Loose Bowels (predicted: 7th)

Key quote from preview: "The league's most average team."--Teddy

Turns out that was optimistic. How do you know you're having a rebuilding year? When your outfield consists of Colby, Cody and Ryan. Collecting women and Irish guys will not lead you to greatness. (El Angelo)

Those are the names of either a Little League outfield from San Dimas or a family of golden retrievers. (Teddy) Again, though, the PECOTA predictions saw a mash-up from 10th to around 6th, so the prediction was pretty much on the mark once you factor in trades. (Teddy)

9. wormcheese mousebird (predicted: 8th)

Key quote from preview: "If they can dig up some starters during the year that push them towards respectability, this team may be able to be middle of the pack; otherwise, it's a push for 2010."--El Angelo

This roster is really odd. They're doing fine in saves, runs, steals and OBP, and suck at everything else. Though for most of the year, their entire strength has been 3 closers, a couple of speedsters, and a guy in Petco Park. Looks like a push for 2010 is in order. (El Angelo)

Yep, those couple of starters never materialized. The power numbers should go up a touch over the rest of the year with Adam Dunn on board, though some of the SV might get flogged off as well. The upshot is that this team feels about right at this level, as PECOTA shockingly predicted. (Teddy)

8. Unenviable Position (predicted: 3rd)

Key quote from preview: "a smartly constructed roster with some minor flaws in the infield, and some health and development question marks on offense in general."--El Angelo

To do well in fantasy sports, you need not only for your players to do well, you need some of them to do above and beyond what's expected. Go to this team's roster and find a single player that's having a great year other than Ryan Braun, who's an established stud. I'll wait. (El Angelo)

Well, Mark Reynolds, honestly. But I've been killed by a succession of events that were independently predictable, but collectively extremely unlikely. Four pitchers (Ervin Santana, Wifey McBeater, Anibal Sanchez, and Troy Percival) have essentially been out for the duration, and my OF, projected by PECOTA as a source of strength, has cratered with Milton Bradley exploding, Alfonso Soriano imploding, and Eljiah Dukes, I dunno, deploding? Is that a word? It's my second perfect storm of suck in four years and honestly, I'm gettig sick of it. (Teddy)

7. Evil League of Evil (predicted: 4th)

Key quote from preview: "Here's my pick as the preseason favorite."-El Angelo

From what I can tell, this is pretty much attributable to bad luck, a couple of injuries, and drafting at the back of the pack for 4 straight years finally mattering. (El Angelo)

We didn't really factor in the bundle of joy which (understandably and correctly) distracted ELoE at the beginning of the season when he faced some injury and underperformance issues that he might otherwise have managed his way out of. By the time he came to it was fire sale time. (Teddy)

6. Wu Tang Financial (predicted: 2nd)

Key quote from preview: "This franchise has been only slightly easier to fuck than Iola Morton."--Teddy

Wait, you're saying that's out of context? Fine.

Actual key quote from preview: "We're a little more skeptical, though even we have to admit that the roster here looks talented and durable enough to make trouble."--Teddy

Random prediction: this team will still compete this year, barring them intentionally reversing course and trading off assets. I'm not saying for the top spot, but I think they're the 4th best squad in the league. (El Angelo)

Yeah, a little more rise wouldn't stun me either. They won't get that board spot, but they're a first division squad. PECOTA gets a little more time here. (Teddy)

5. Aroids Anonymous (predicted: 12th)

Key quote from preview:"They should be, at worst, mid-pack competitive most of the year."--El Angelo

Unlike Teddy, this is roughly where I thought these guys would be, but that's mostly because I had a lot more faith in Carl Crawford than my partner. Though the fact this team's competitive despite getting nothing out of Matt Holliday is impressive. (El Angelo)

Here is where PECOTA just starts crapping all over itself. I admit to having shared PECOTA's skepticism on Crawford; not much to say there other than I'm an idiot. The largely unforeseen overperformance of the Toronto pitching staff has also helped. But for a team that has made no major trades to go from a prediction of DAFL to a board-challenging performance is both impressive and a testament to the human frailties of Nate Silver.

4. Recalcitrant Cobbler (predicted: 6th)

Key quote from preview: "Probably not going to hit the board, but certainly one to watch."--Teddy

Even a broken clock is right twice a day. (El Angelo)

Woot! (Teddy)

3. Mission Accomplished (predicted: 4th)

Key quote from preview: "Even with the issues at closer, this team has enough firepower and upside to keep the owner in the top half of the league, and focused on this year instead of some amorphous future horizon."--Teddy

I'm a bit surprised how well this team has done this year--I had been shooting for a 5th-7th place finish. This is all attributable to Albert Pujols turning into a modern day Ted Williams; if you replaced him with Mark Teixeira, my team would have, without exaggeration, 11 fewer points. Now that I've added 3 closers for the stretch run...I'm not saying I can win, but I like my chances to stay competitive, barring a horrible injury. (El Angelo)

Yeah, everyone got this team right so far, though the massive post-trade transformation of the roster pretty much invalidates the old projection going forward. It sure seems like this team will stick around, though I honestly expected it to be a little farther up in the standings by now, so maybe I'm overrating it post-trade. (Teddy)

2. Flaccid Funiculi (predicted: 10th)

Key quote from preview: " This sure looks like a rebuilding campaign, and should be marked by a ton of activity in the trade market."--Teddy

Here's what I wrote about Will's team in our 2007 mid-season review:

I have given up trying to make sense of Gaynor's teams. I thought they would be good two years ago, and they sucked. I thought they weren't any good last year, and they were good. I thought they'd be near me this year, and they're doing great. In an effort to not kill his chances in the second half of the year, I'll just demur.

I stand by it this year, because as I noted in the comment section on this team's preview, in the past, we have misunderestimated Will's teams. (El Angelo)

Yeah, honestly, I fucking punt here. Edwin Jackson my ass. (Teddy)

1. Le Dupont Torkies (predicted: 11th)

Key quote from preview: "They should be in the mix, but will have to drive the hell out this team to get back into the money again this year."--Teddy

Putting aside PECOTA's horrible blunder, Teddy's preseason words were quite fortuitous. Our defending champ has done a masterful job in the first half of this season, riding a roster without a lot of superstars (are there any here besides Chase Utley?) and withstanding the losses of A-Rod and Joe Mauer to still be atop the league. Making it possible are some great performances on the pitching side, as this team has 52 pitching points (60 is the max possible).

Can this continue? There's not much room for improvement in the pitching side, but there is some room for improvement on the hitting side. There's also a chance to lose ground in hitting too; they could easily be passed in R's and HR's and sacrifice a few points, despite making some savvy trades this month. My guess? They finish the season in 89-91 point range, basically daring anyone else in the league to beat them. Good luck to all. (El Angelo)

I at least knew enough to question PECOTA here based on history. And while we're here, a note on manager involvement: the current top three in the league standings are all in the top four in pitchers' IP. Can't win from the bench. (Teddy)

Hey, How'd We Do?

So, last year we here at the GRBG took a shot at predicting the finishing order of our fantasy league. We suppose that we're obligated to compare those against the actual order of finish, even though that will probably undermine whatever credibility we have left on the subject. Here's a summary of our predictions versus reality:

Basically, we were within shouting distance for 8 teams, but missed big on 2 teams in each direction. So what happened? Let's see where things went right and wrong for our picks last year.

12. President Skroob (Ang 12/Teddy 12)

We were right about:

The team not being very good, though that was akin to correctly predicting that the Washington Generals would struggle against the Globetrotters last season. Still, we'll take the bullseyes where we can get them.

We were wrong about:

The staff, which I unfortunately described as featuring "the best 1-7 starting pitching in the league." Whoops--the team finished with 7 of a possible 48 points in the starting pitching categories, as injuries to Chris Carpenter's arm and Barry Zito's talent torpedoed the team.

11. Mike/Windy City Windfalls (Ang 6/Teddy 5)

We were right about:

The weakness of the pitching staff--Pedro Martinez, Roger Clemens, and Jason Jennings on the same staff? Yikes. We also pegged the risk profile of the team, which Ang described as one "that's going to either run into the top 2 slots, or crater badly and trade off assets for next year." There was an unmistakeable cratering, and even a fun, if ultimately unsuccessful effort to trade off assets.

We were wrong about:

Who the freaking owner would be by the end of the season. Though, to be fair, it would have been hard to see that coming.

10. bondermans grundle (Ang 10/Teddy 11)

We were right about:

The finishing slot; the manifest insanity of drafting Rich Aurillia in anything other than a fantasy back-forking league.

We were wrong about:

The "upside" of a staff featuring future AAA castoffs Ervin Santana and Kei Igawa.

9. The Spam Avengers (Ang 3/Teddy 1)

We were right about:

We correctly predicted that none of the team's players would be eaten by wolves. Other than that, not much other than the riskiness of the starting pitching.

We were wrong about:

Where to begin? My pick of the team to win it all? Ang's choices of Mike Cameron and Morgan Ensberg as potential bounceback guys? Our mutual confidence that the first signs of weakness in the residential mortgage-backed securities market wouldn't cause a broader sell-off in the stock market? Mulligan. Or mulligans, plural, I guess. I don't have a very good explanation for what happened to this team; as late as August I expected them to make a run.

8. Lefty's Revenge (Ang 5/Teddy 7) (Hey, I finally got one closer than Ang!)

We were right about:

The team's roster construction likely forcing it to punt steals (they ultimately finished 11th in that category) and saves (T-10th), thus dooming it to mediocrity.

We were wrong about:

Julio Lugo's production in Boston being "likely to skew more heavily towards R and OBP and less towards SB." Lugo ended the season with 33 steals and an OBP below .300. Laser accurate!

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7. Nigerian Gentlemen (Ang 8/Teddy 8)

We were right about:

The bullpen, which Ang described as featuring "a pair of Shea Stadium washouts and a guy who isn't closing for the Red Sox but would be the opening day starter for the Nationals." The team ultimately finished T-10th in saves.

We were wrong about:

Anibal Sanchez as a breakout candidate, as we failed to appreciate the degree to which Joe Girardi had fed Sanchez's arm into the sausage grinder.

T-4. Ed Rooney's Office (Ang 9/Teddy 9)

We were right about:

The team not having enough offense to compete as drafted; the record-breaking K potential of the starting OF (Adam Dunn, Delmon Young, Juan Pierre); the strength of the starting pitching.

We were wrong about:

The team not being able to violate a bedrock fantasy tenet by finding lots of offense (in the forms of Carlos Pena and Mike Lowell) on the waiver wire. Combined, Pena and Lowell accounted for 31 more HR and 107 more RBI than the players originally drafted to fill their slots. The difference bumped the team up by 9 points and several places in the league.

T-4 Evil Empire (Ang 11/Teddy 10)

We were right about:

The team not having enough pitching to compete as drafted in Aaron Harang, Chris Capuano, Doug Davis, Jon Garland, Josh, Nate Robertson and Kenny Rogers Roasters. Holy Christ--other than Harang, that's a who's-who of who Hindenberg'ed last year.

We were wrong about:

Again, the transactions page. This time, it was pitching pickups Jeff Francis and Tim Wakefield that steadied the ship, giving EE a big bump in W's. Also, while we knew the pen was strong, we didn't think it would be league-best strong.

T-4. The Sex Cannons (Ang 2/Teddy 2)

We were right about:

This team making a run at the board for the first time in forever; the team's likely power production (finished 1st in HR and 3d in RBI).

We were wrong about:

The likely OBP production of the team; the idea that after one law degree, three jobs, one marriage, and 243 cans of Duke-blue face paint, our Peerless Leader would finally cash some money back out of this league. Don't feel too bad, though--we have it on good information that he sinks all of our league dues into T-bills for the duration of the season, so he at least sees some return on his time investment.

3. Hand Banana (Ang 1/Teddy 4)

We were right about:

The imminent implosion of Bronson Arroyo and consequent weakening of the pitching staff; how stupidly good the offense would be.

We were wrong about:

For the first time, I'm kinda stumped here. I dunno, maybe we were overly skeptical of Curtis Granderson?

2. Le Dupont Torkies (Ang 4/Teddy 3)

We were right about:

The weakness of the outfield as drafted (Bobby Abreu, Raul Ibanez, Chris Duffy); the relative ease with which the OF could be fixed on the fly during the season.

We were wrong about:

Jhohnhnhy Peralta as a bounceback guy; plus we were a little too down on the team as a whole, given the franchise's track record. Still, as with the last two teams, pretty close in general. Unlike . . .

1. Its Enrico Palazzo (Ang 7/Teddy 6)

We were right about:

Very little, though that's at least in part because we couldn't think of anything to say about them. We did glom onto the idea that a trade involving Mike Young could help them better allocate their talent, but that trade ended up happening after IEP had pretty well guaranteed themselves a spot on the board anyway.

We were wrong about:

What's the plural for mea culpa?

So, with that in mind, we approach the start of a new fantasy season. We'll try our hand at predictions again, though the above should be a reminder that they should be taken with a Bartolo Colon-sized lump of salt. Get ready for the draft, and somebody call me about trading for Jarrod Saltalamacchia!

Midseason Recap

With the All-Star break and all of its concomitant pageantry upon us, it's time for us to use the power of this fully armed and operational blog to look back on our preseason predictions. Basically, on a Wrongness Scale of Ballpark Sushi to Hammer Pants, our predictions slot in at a solid Rumsfeld.

But the GRBG's committment to accountability is second only to its committment to small-batch bourbon. So, despite the embarassment factor of re-hashing our mistakes in public, we're going to forge ahead. Below are mideseason recaps of each team, from worst to first, with our preseason prediction alongside for reference. For the curious, here's a link to the league website. (Teddy)

I'm tempted to email Nate Silver or Jim Baker from Baseball Prospectus to ask them if they can invent a fantasy statistic like volatility, because with the exception of about 3 teams, this has been a pretty bouncy first half of a season. I think we've had no fewer than 5 team occupy the first spot (excluding the first two weeks), and there are still a bunch of teams in it.

To make this review even more complete and to give y'all even more ammo, I'm going to assign each team a major league counterpart, by whom I think they most resemble, based on where they are right now, where they should finish, and their '08 prospects. I'm nothing if not a glutton for additional material for criticism later on. (El Angelo)

12. President Skroob (Preseason Prediction: Ang 12/Teddy 12)

To our credit, we here at the GRBG managed to correctly predict that the team with exactly zero veteran keepers was going to do poorly this season. Pretty slick analysis, there. The real question is whether the team is pointed in the right direction for the future--it can be easy to chase successive waves of prospects only to find that you've attempted to surf to the league title on the backs of so many Todd Van Poppels.

The short answer there is that it looks like help may in fact be on the way. With Alex Gordon, Ryan Braun, and Edwin Encarnacion, the team has three young, potentially elite cornermen. The same is true in the rotation, with young Adam Miller coming along to support a Chris Carpenter/Barry Zito core. There's a ton of work to be done in the outfield and up the middle (Dioner Navarro and Ryan Theriot aren't going to cut it), but with a good draft, this team could be right back in it next year. (Teddy)

While the wisenheimer in me would first think the parallel for this team is the New Orleans Zephyrs, that's probably being unfair even to myself, and in reality, this is the league's version of the Kansas City Royals: some good keepers that will build to next year's squad which may be near contention. May. Even I'm not that optimistic. I had hoped that we'd have this year's Devil Rays, to be honest. (El Angelo)

11. Mike (Preseason Prediction: Ang 6/Teddy 5)

Once again our prediction was dead-on, assuming you're willing to use the sum of Ang's guess and my guess. That said, a tip of the cap to El Ang for this nugget from the season preview:

I'll go on record with saying there's no shot they'll actually finish in 6th---this strikes me as a team that's going to either run into the top 2 slots, or crater badly[.]

Mike has suffered through a who's-who of bullpen injuries, with BJ Ryan, Huston Street, and Brad Lidge all shelved. He's also had to deal with 2/3 of his starting OF (Johnny Damon and Andruw Jones) being diagnosed with hyperactive suck glands. This team needs to get younger and healthier in a hurry, or the good work it's done over the past few offseasons will be wasted. (Teddy)

The current place in the standings isn't what's really a surprise for the fantasy version of the St. Louis Cardinals, it's how they've gotten here. I thought the strategy was a bold one at the start of the year, but it requires perfect execution, and while M**e hasn't ostensibly made any mistakes, his luck quotient has a zero denominator at this point. Even with a conventional approach to the squad, it's unlikely that any team in a league this close could survive killing off three closers and a pair of bad OF's, let alone one that doesn't have sublime starters.

What we do have here, though, is a squad that's in the catbird seat for trading possibilities: it's folly to think that Clemens and Maddux can help these guys next year, and valuable chit like Holliday, Jones, Lee and Furcal are all in their walk year. You have to think they're major players in the trade market now, especially with a bunch of contenders needing help in those precise places. Not to ratchet up the pressure, but how this team handles the next 4 weeks is going to be a fun test of M**e's abilities to setup next year. (El Angelo)

10. abe vigodas spleen (Preseason Prediction: Ang 10/Teddy 11)

Back on track with the predictions. Ol' abe's problem is that they're burdened with average to slightly below-average players at every position. That situation is a lot harder to remedy than a situation where there is a core of stars surrounded by, well, Ryan Theriot. The pitching might be OK going forward, with Smoltz/Cain/Bonderman leading the way, but there's not much to speak of on offense besides Vlad. (Teddy)

I'm a bit more bullish on this team than Teddy---Bay is obviously a helluva player, and Adrian Gonzalez has established himself as a very good 1B. And that doesn't count the fact that there's a bunch of fun flyers here like Zimmerman, Peralta and Hill as guys that can help you. More importantly, they have very good starting pitching, which is eons harder to get than very good hitting on draft day. I like the direction the Fantasy Devil Rays are taking. That being said, I think there's no way in hell they rise above this number at the end of the year. (El Angelo)

9. Lefty's Revenge (Preseason Prediction: Ang 5/Teddy 7)

Here's the first team whose underperformance can be chalked up neither to plan nor to injuries. Rather, essentially every player on the team other than Prince Fielder and Lance Berkman has chosen to turn in a first-half performance that fell below expectations. Perhaps a lineup reshuffling is in order, with Mark Teahen displacing Chad Tracy Austin at 3B and Jeff Francoeur slotting into the OF. The real problem is that the team needs table-setting types who steal bases and score runs, and those guys just aren't freely available during the season--it's easier to find guys who accidentally get 85 RBIs batting cleanup for some terrible team. (Teddy)
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That's true, but there's also a bunch of guys here that have had good-better than expected seasons; while healthy BJ Upton was outperforming his expectations, Chris Young hasn't sucked, and even Javy Vazquez has quietly had a solid year. The real killer here is the 62 innings of absolute garbage that Anthony Reyes and Jason Schmidt posted this year. If those guys had pitched ZERO innings for this team, their ERA and WHIP would have dropped enough to gain them 9 points (sadly, I did the math), which would still keep them in 9th place, but would have at least made their showing primarily a result of the flukes Teddy alluded to and the roster flaw that these guys can't steal a base. As that is not the case, what we have here is our version of the Texas Rangers. Maybe they can get Juan Gone to provide them with some of his steroids. (El Angelo)

8. Hand Banana (Preseason Prediction: Ang: 1/Teddy 4)

Whoops. So, what the hell went wrong here? Part of it was the foreseeable failure of some of the starting pitchers, as Bronson Arroyo and Andy Pettitte (among others) have come back to Earth a bit. But a lot of it has been dumb luck--the pitching has been solid in every category except Wins. If we're being honest, a lot of the Wins category is luck--all you can do is pick pitchers with decent K rates and WHIPs and send them out into the world to do the best they can.

The offense has the opposite problem. OBP drives most of the other offensive categories. Yet HB is solid in every category but OBP. To me, that's a signal that the offense might regress in the second half (and is a big part of why I still don't like my own team). In HB's case, though, his lineup has such a track record (be it in the minors or majors), that they're still likely to improve. This team reminds me of my own last year--everyone knows it's better than this, but the slow start and league contract structure might mean that HB has to tear it down and start again anyway. (Teddy)

See, much like the real-life Yankees, I don't think this team necessarily needs to blow it up and try again, they're closer to the money than they appear. The gap between them and an additional 10 easy points (and a spot in 4th place) is 25 runs, 10 HRs, 9 OBP points, none of which is too ridiculous a proposition for a team with a lineup that's just loaded. The pitching doesn't really have the margin for growth the offense does, but there's no reason these guys couldn't play infinitely better in the 2nd half, catch fire, get to 80 points, and get a piece of the purse. The real question is whether it's a sounder strategy to look to win next year with a very very solid core and punt this year's money to deal off Crawford, etc., for useful players for next year, as while 3rd place isn't out of the question, 1st place just might be. (El Angelo)

7. Le Dupont Torkies (Preseason Prediction: Ang 4/Teddy 3)

We're now into the peloton, as only four points separate the next four teams, all of whom are chasing the lead pack of 3. So, really, teams 6-7 are better than their ranking makes them look, and teams 4-5 probably aren't as good as the rankings make them seem.

This team has one of the stranger offensive lines you'll see. They're among the league leaders in runs, RBI, and OBP, but have neither power (T-8th in HR) nor speed (T-9th in SB). I have absolutely no idea what to make of this. They must lead the universe in doubles. (Teddy)

This team has accumulated stats from FORTY THREE discreet players, ranging from the other-worldly season that Alex Rodriguez is putting together to the fantastic line of Ryan Shealy: 0-for-12 with 1 RBI. What's really happened, I think, is this team has become the New York Mets and accumulated something of a stars and scrubs angle---Utley, A-Rod, and Hafner are probably among the 15 best fantasy players, and the rest of the hitters are an amalgam of oddities that sometimes have and sometimes haven't produced. What this team really needs is a contributor in that DH slot: Jason Bartlett is not the answer to carrying your team to repeat. (El Angelo)

6. The Spam Avengers (Preseason Prediction: Ang 3/Teddy 1)

TSA was near the top of league for much of the early going before sinking beneath the weight of its iffy starting pitching. Like nearly everyone else in the league, TSA needs another starter or two and another OFer (Nick Markakis and Mike Cameron are not the answer) to patch the holes in his team. Unfortunately, the commonness of those holes is going to make the trade market really tight--to the extent that anyone has spare pitching, it's going to be costly. (Teddy)

This is one of the best owners in the league, but if he can pull this one out, I'll be impressed. There's actually not a lot of guys underperforming on the roster, and while injuries have hurt, building your team on Giambi, Piazza and Eunuch somewhat embodies the risk inherent in shooting for the moon. Tough pill to swallow, but I think these guys need to punt off what they can and go for next year; the starting pitching is young and interesting enough that they'll be competitive in '08 with a good draft of hitters. You know, kinda like the Diamondbacks. (El Angelo)

5. Nigerian Gentlemen (Preseason Prediction: Ang 8/Teddy 8)

This team bounced back nicely from the untimely death of its namesake, and put in a good run towards the end of the first half. This is as close to a pitching-and-defense team as you'll ever see in a fantasy league, with strong SP performances from King Felix and B[r]ad Penny supporting good offensive showings in R, SB, and OBP. If the team's theoretical big boppers (Manny and Papi) ever find their power strokes, this team could have one more surge left in it and maybe scramble its way into the money picture. (Teddy)

I wholly agree, which is why borderline teams like TSA may want to look to next year. This squad's in good shape and their big players have had middling at best seasons at the plate. Much like the Tigers, I expect huge things here in the 2nd half; there's plenty of room and ability in the power categories for them to make a run to the top. Even if Jeremy Guthrie turns into a pumpkin, he's their fifth best starter, for crying out loud. Major threat. (El Angelo)

4. Ed Rooney's Office (Preseason Prediction: Ang 9/Teddy 9)

With all due respect to myself, this is a fluke in a lot of ways. Not so much on the pitching side--this is a good staff, and their stellar performance in the 4 SP categories (W, K, ERA, and WHIP, where their current rankings are T-1, 1, T-2, and 2, respectively) is nice, but not shocking. But there is no way that anyone could have foreseen this team sitting in 3rd in HRs at the halfway mark.

And, frankly, it's unlikely that they'll stay there. After all, the odds of Carlos Pena hitting another 20 dingers after the break is slim-to-none. Some of that regression will be made up for by a better second half from the bullpen (where Mariano Rivera will likely get more save opportunities in the second half, and one of Tom Gordon or Brett Myers will get healthy), but not enough. I just don't see where the 5 extra points needed to hit the board are going to come from. (Teddy)

The mistake we made at the beginning of the year was not really appreciating the fact that this was a top-3 staff, and that fact alone would give the squad 45-50 points with just expected performance. Add to that an offense that's gone out of this world with oddball performances and flukes, and here we are. It's appropos that Teddy does the Seattle Mariners for SOSH, as that's who this team represents; a team that actually has some talent in spots, but isn't as good as its record. Still, it's doubtful they'll fall too far--there aren't a lot of assets to trade off here for next year and others around them may punt instead. Nice consolidation year for my co-author. (El Angelo)

3. Evil Empire (Preseason Prediction: Ang 11/Teddy 10)

EE is the runaway winner of the We Here At The GRBG Are A Bunch Of Dunces, Ain't We? award for the first half, as our average prediction managed to miss the team's actual first-half finish by a cool 7.5 slots. They've ridden their bullpen, Derek Jeter, Brandon Philips, Junior Griffey, and a solid catcher platoon to a spot on the board. Boy, when you say it that way it doesn't make a hell of a lot of sense, does it?

What the team really has going for it is a power threat at every position, which goes a long way towards pushing a team to the top. One potential pitfall is that the team is currently on pace to overshoot its innings limit by more than 50, so some of the pitching stats are a touch inflated. Still, they could bench everyone right now and still finish better than our prediction. Job well done. (Teddy)

I have given up trying to make sense of Gaynor's teams. I thought they would be good two years ago, and they sucked. I thought they weren't any good last year, and they were good. I thought they'd be near me this year, and they're doing great. In an effort to not kill his chances in the second half of the year, I'll just demur. (El Angelo)

2. The Sex Cannons (Preseason Prediction: Ang 2/Teddy 2)

Yahtzee! (Teddy)

There isn't even much here to note, as the team's played almost exactly as I thought it would. So on a side note, according to this site, our blog is rated NC-17, while Deadspin is rated G, apparently because we use the word 'shit' too often. Huh? Who do these bastards think they are? Fuck them. (El Angelo)

1. It's Enrico Palazzo (Preseason Prediction: Ang 7/Teddy 6)

This is possibly the league's best team up the middle with Russell Martin, Chone Figgins, and Hanley Ramirez. The pitching is solid as well, with Cole Hamels and CC Sabathia making The Leap to join Jake Peavy. There's not a lot of depth on offense, with current UTIL man Eric Byrnes a great candidate to regress in the second half, and no obvious candidate to replace him. Any injuries on that side of the ball could take the wind out of their sails pretty quickly. But their amazing depth in pitching (I haven't even mentioned Fausto Carmona or Chien-Ming yet) is going to make them tough to catch. They're looking great to hit the board at the very least. (Teddy)

My experience has been there are two ways to win fantasy leagues. The first, and less common way, is to be a savant at drafting and just blow everyone away from Day One with your accumen, either due to your greatness or the rest of the league's mediocrity. (I won a football league this way two years ago by somehow being able to get on draft day Shaun Alexander in his MVP season, Thomas Jones, Chad Johnson, Chris Chambers, Torry Holt, Carson Palmer and Jeremy Shockey. The rest of the league didn't stand a chance.) That is much more common in non-keeper leagues and is even less common in a league where everyone knows more or less what they're doing. The more conventional way is to build a squad that looks solid at the start of the year, and have everything start to break right in terms of breakout years, career years, injury-free seasons and few underperformances.

And that's almost precisely what we have here. Martin, Hanley and Rios have all broken out the right way, making them a force to be reckoned with. The other hitters have all done their job, with the exception of Michael Young, whose demise is offset by having Chone at 2B. And sure, Peavy has made this a forceful rotation, but in everyone else they've assembled, it's a squad that's high on performance, low on bullshit. They've gone from an interesting idea to the heavy favorite at the halfway point. I still think the Grossmans and Ekos can catch them, but it's not going to be easy.

As a final note: this is the first year this team is at the top, and it's also the first year they're without Barry Bonds. Conversely, this is the first year the Spam Avengers are playing like shit, and who's in their OF? Bad karma dude. Bad karma. (El Angelo)