The Undermoles: A Fantasy Baseball Epic

[Vince]

I just wanted to share my glory with you all here about my fantasy baseball team this year. I play ESPN Fantasy Baseball with my dad and a few guys we have met through fantasy games in the past, and our league is always a good league with a bunch of good-natured trash talking. Baseball is not my strong suit fantasy-wise (which is strange, because I know baseball better than any other sport), but I try anyways. The way ESPN Fantasy Baseball works is there are 10 teams, in two divisions. The top two division leaders go to the playoffs, as do the next two best records as wildcards. Both wildcards can come from the same division, if they have the next best records.

So that sets the stage...here comes the story.

[Vince]

Well, by about week 10 it became apparent that my division, the West, was the weaker of the two divisions. Our teams were all below .500 and we weren't near the caliber of the league leaders in the East, where all but one team was above .500. Even this early in the season, it was clear that both wildcards were coming out of the East and that only the division winner in the West was going to make the playoffs. After week 15 (of 22), my team, The Undermoles, had just lost 1-9 to a fellow Western Division team to fall to a season long record of 53-97, good for the cellar of the league by far, and only better than 1% of all ESPN teams. I was quite depressed (I've never had an ESPN fantasy team finish less than 5th), and the fodder of many, many jibes on the bulletin board.

[Vince]

I stuck with it, however, and made some trades. Most notably Chipper Jones, Richie Sexson and Frank Catalanatto for Magglio Ordonez and Jim Thome and Morgan Ensberg for Javier Vazquez. Season long slumpers Tejada and Chavez started to pick it up...Magglio Ordonez got hot, and waiver wire pick-up Scott Podsednik (now officially my favorite major league player) started rocking it for my team, and we started to win games. 7-3 in week 16, 8-2 over the first place Binghampton Wetcrax in week 17. 7-3 in week 18. Someone on the bulletin board mentioned my team and winning streak in the same sentence...two rough weeks of 5-5 and 6-4 against middle of the road teams knocked my confidence a little, but I was within striking distance. There were two weeks left in the season, and I was out of the cellar.

[Vince]

After my near miraculous run of 35-17, I had managed to get up to 90-110 on the year, and 3rd place in the West. The two teams ahead of me were tied at 96-104, the Pittsburgh Nazguls and Unassisted Triple Play, 6 games ahead of my Undermoles. In week 21, I faced off against the Nazguls, and Triple Play was up against the #1 team in the league, the 122-78 Binghampton Wetcrax. I was excited about my chances, but a little daunted by the fact that the Naz were 15-5 against me thus far this year.

[Vince]

In a bit of confusion, while I was travelling, I was not able to get Javier Vazquez into my starting lineup on the Monday of the confrontation with the Nazguls. He proceeded to pitch a complete game, 7 k shutout against my beloved San Francisco Giants, giving me the double whammy of having my team lose and not getting credit for the fabulous game in fantasy. Undaunted, my team played Nazguls extremely well, and went into Sunday's last day up 9-1...however, his pitchers combined for 2 wins on Sunday, tying us for wins on the week. The way ESPN works, one team gets home-field advantage and the first tie of the week goes to that team as a win. Nazguls had homefield advantage, giving them the win in Wins. His pitchers also managed to acquire ERA by 0.08, making the final result of the week 7-3 in my favor. That start by Javier Vazquez for my bench stuck in my craw so hard it hurt...

[Vince]

Meanwhile, Unassisted Triple Play lost to Binghampton Wetcrax 7-3 as well...so now, heading into the final week, here's how it looked -
<pre><font face="courier">
Team Record GB
Pittsburgh Nazguls 99-111 --
Unassisted Triple Play 99-111 --
The Undermoles 97-113 2.0
Jackson Sharks 94-116 3.0

Week 22 Matchups:
Nazguls vs. Sharks
Undermoles vs. On the Go (119-101) - Second Wildcard Team
Triple Play vs. Tritons (89-121) - Second Worst Team
</font></pre>
So going into the final week, things were bleak, but not impossible...

[Vince]

Week 22 was going well...by the end of Friday, it was close, but I was miraculously ahead!

Undermoles vs. On the Go 8-2
Nazguls t. Sharks 5-5
Triple Play t. Tritons 5-5

At this point I had calculated the tiebreakers, and both Triple Play and Nazguls had beaten me head-to-head for the year, so I had to get ahead of them in the standings to make the playoffs. Saturday came, and my team stayed strong at 8-2. I was starting to get excited until I checked the Nazguls' day out...4 wins, 2 saves and 26 Ks!!! Sharks went from being ahead by 2 wins and 10 Ks to losing both categories! At the end of Saturday, things were looking grim...

Undermoles vs. On the Go 8-2
Nazguls vs. Sharks 6-4
Triple Play t. Tritons 5-5

[Vince]

Checking things over on Sunday afternoon, my squad was looking good...batting at a good clip, holding steady on my other categories...so it seemed to be out of my hands. Could Sharks manage a pitching win to tie up the category and use homefield advantage to bring their matchup back to 5-5? I checked their matchup's pitching stats only to see...

Nazguls - 0 wins
Sharks - 1 win

They had tied it up! I was headed to the playoffs!!! But...

Nazguls - 3 HR
Sharks - 0 HR

No!!!!!! Another category back to the Nazguls. The week ends, and Nazguls have beaten Sharks 6-4.

Utterly dejected, I leave a bulletin board message about the great battle, and how he better represent for the Western division and watch out for next year's Undermole team.

[Vince]

I went back to my boxscores to sadly look over my team...when I realize that my batting average was pretty darn good for the day, and Average was one of the two categories I wasn't winning. Checking out Penelope On the Go's average, I notice he hit a miserable .163 for the day Sunday. Starting to feel the faintest bit of excitement again, I break out my calculator and notepad to add up the batting averages, and it seems that my .326 sunday average will bring my new batting average up from .298 to .30208 for the week. I jet over to Penelope's pages and furiously tally up his at bats for the week, and his hits for the week...his .163 sunday average dropped his weekly batting average to....30182!!!!!!!!!!!! Undermoles win 9-1, and head to the playoffs, against all odds!

[Vince]

Final Standings:
<pre><font face="courier">
Undermoles 106-114
Nazguls 105-115
Triple Play 103-117
Sharks 98-122</font></pre>

[Vince]

So not quite epic, and not really a dynasty...but I was so stoked when I found out I'd be making the playoffs...I'll update on the rest of the playoffs as they go.

2003 Playoffs, FBL League 'The Show II'

Semi-Finals:

1) Binghampton Wetcrax (137-83)
vs.
4) Penelope on the Go (120-100)

2) The Undermoles (106-114)
vs.
3) Crispy Slips (127-93)

Crispy Slips is my dad's team, and there is trash talk flying to start the week (ESPN Weeks run from Monday to Sunday). Playoff format states that we play each other for two seperate weeks, and the team with the better record at the end of the two weeks goes on to the Championship.

Crispy and I both subscribe to the 'streaming' philosophy of Starting Pitching...with no restrictions on innings pitched, we pick up any number of starters who are throwing that day, and then drop them the next day for more people who are starting the next day. This usually leads to better Win and Strikeout totals, but worse ERA and WHIP (walks+hits/innings pitched).

As of Wednesday's games, the Undermoles have a commanding lead, as Jim Thome, Jeff Kent and Mark Teixiera have solid .500+ batting averages thus far on the week. Crispy is suffering as his stud batter, Albert Pujols (acquired in the pre-season basically for Glavine) is only 2/15 with 0 runs and rbis.

After ditching the Craig Monroe (OF, Det) experiment early in the week, new pickup Carl Crawford has paid instant dividends, 5/11 with 4 runs, a HR and a .400+ Batting average. Crispy, however, is reeling with only 4 of his 14 players having more than 2 hits on the week thus far.

Pitching has been a close matchup, as Crispy has managed to hold on to the ERA and WHIP categories, while remaining close in the other three categories as well. While Undermoles Manager Vince debates cutting Jose Mesa for the umpteenth time (.1 IP, 2 hits, 4 ER, 2 BB, 0 Ks, 108.00 ERA, 12.00 WHIP), he looks to continue to stream to match Crispy's strong win and strikeout numbers.

Wednesday Status:<pre><font face="courier">
TEAM W SV SO ERA WHIP R HR RBI SB AVG TOTAL
Crispy Slips 5 1 36 3.47 1.05 14 2 15 2 .228 2-8
The Undermoles 5* 2 46 4.29 1.21 29 7 24 5 .385 8-2 </font></pre>
At the end of this week, the 'Total' numbers will be locked in, and the stat categories cleared for the next week. So if things ended today, only a 9-1 or 10-0 victory by Crispy next week would get him into the championship game (1st tiebreaker is playoff seeding, and since I was a division champ, I'm the #2 seed).