DANICA WITH A "C"

I know that almost none of you follow IndyCar racing, but the Queen B has finally pissed me off to the point that I must dethrone her as official mascot of FNFT.  Yesterday she qualified 23rd for the Indy 500 and after the run completely threw her team under the bus in an interview.  "This is the worst car I've ever had.  The GoDaddy car deserves to be higher up than this. It's better than this. It's just not set up right."  The interview was broascast over the PA and on the big screens at Indy and she was hardily booed by the crowd.  We don't need that.

Besides, there will be at least two other other women in the race and one of them, Simona de Silvestro, isn't a bad piece of tail anyway.  I digress.

As most of you know, I make an annual journey to the land of speed and this year is no different.  Technology will one day allow me to whip out my laptop in the morning in Lot 4 where we camp and make FNFT updates like I'm not even gone, but I'm not sure we're quite to that point yet.  I will do my best to do what I can, but the worst case scenario is that website updates will be non-existent Thursday through Sunday.

PLAY ME A SONG, DEREK LOWE, DEREK LOWE

Today's lead story on CBSSports.com by Eric Mack suggests that fantasy players take a look at Derek Lowe.

Try to overlook Derek Lowe's bad start. He has been better of late. And with matchups this week against the struggling Mets and woeful Pirates, Eric Mack sees potential for the Atlanta sinkerballer

If Mr. Mack was a member of FNFT and had access to the zippy FNFT roster and stat system, he would see that what he's saying is BS.

In fact, Derek Lowe did not have that horrible of a start and he really hasn't been doing better of late.  One 11 point game should not constitute "better" in anyone's book.

ROOKIE OF THE YEAR

I was playing with the FNFT history database again. I figured out who the top scoring rookie was each year back to 2001. I considered each player's "rookie" season to be the year in which they first appeared on an FNFT roster.

Here are the top rookies each year with the number of points they scored and where the leader ranked in overall scoring.

2001
Ichiro Suzuki - 174 points - ranked 18th
Todd Walker - 157 points
Aramis Ramirez - 131

2002
Eric Gagne - 171 - 13th
Jacque Jones - 155
A.J. Pierzinski - 146

2003
Vernon Wells - 140 - 31st
Hideki Matsui - 121
Marcus Giles - 108

2004
Travis Hafner - 99 - 69th
Victor Martinez - 97
Pedro Feliz - 81

2005
Jorge Cantu - 139 - 37th
Felipe Lopez - 128
David Wright - 124

2006
Jonathan Papelbon - 159 - 18th
Nick Swisher - 120
Gary Mathews Jr. - 96

2007
Daisuke Matsuzaka - 167 - 10th
Nick Markakis - 162
Ryan Braun - 162

2008
Ryan Ludwick - 144 - 30th
Chris Young - 139
Edinson Volquez - 133

2009
Adam Lind - 123 - 51st
Kurt Suzuki - 96
Kevin Slowey - 94

L28

OK, I've been doing a lot of maintenance. If you read yesterday's post, you know about the new columns in the FNFT stats. Well, I've changed them a bit. Instead of "L30" for the last 30 days, I've changed to "L28" for the last 28 days. The way the MLB schedule is, it make more sense to use some number of full weeks in this summary.

So, the columns are:

FP = FNFT points in all games this year
FP/G = FNFT points per game in all games this year
L28 = FNFT points in the last 28 calendar days
L28G = FNFT points per game in the last 28 calendar days

Note that L28G is not just "L28/28". It's based on the actual number of games that the player has played in the last 28 days.

Here's another tweak: Ever since I created this thing, the FP column has been calculated by applying a formula to the player's year-to-date stats. Because I can't exactly account for some of the bonuses we use, this number has always been a rough approximation of the player's total points but not an exact count. I've changed that. The FP statistic is now the exact number that you would get if you added each players FNFT points in each individual game they have played. This makes the FP/G and L28G columns directly comparable. If the L28G number is greater than the FP/G number, then the player has been hotter recently than his average for the year - and vice-versa.

Give me some feedback on this if you have any. Does the 28-day window seem reasonable? I could change it to 21 or even 14. The caveat is that I have to use the same window for both hitters and pitchers (well, I wouldn't have to but it would be a trillion times harder to make them different). Since starting pitchers only play every five days, I think you need a big enough window to capture at least 3-4 starts.

WHEN YOU'RE HOT, YOU'RE HOT

There are some new columns on the FNFT stats pages - "L30" and "L30G". These are each players' FNFT points and average points per game in the last 30 calendar days (not games - days). These stats will be updated daily just like everything else and you can sort them just like all of the other stats.

The value of these numbers will become more evident as the year wears on. Wait until you need to pickup up an outfielder in July. I can pretty much guarantee you'll be using this. I'll be adding it to all of the places it's logical, including your main roster page.

RULE CHANGES

This is very minor.  There are a couple of rule changes that I think I've talked about in the past but never implemented.  I'm going to pull a Bill France and implement them mid-season without asking anyone.

The first is that I've eliminated the rule saying that if you cut a player you can't pick him up for a month.  I thought I had gotten rid of this last year, but it was still in there.  There's absolutely no point in having that rule anymore.  It's a holdover from the days when Craig Haralson would effectively have a 35-40 man roster by making 8-10 transactions a week and re-picking up players before anyone else knew they were cut.  We've gone to a single pickup per game and a all of the transactions are clearly posted.  It's something I don't want to have to police.  So the rule is gone.  It was Rule K.4. if you were keeping track.

In it's place, I have a new rule stating:

K.4. Pickups for the next FNFT game can begin being made at midnight of the previous game day.  This rule, in conjunction with Rule K.2. essentially says that you may not make any pickups between 12:00 noon and 12:00 midnight of an FNFT game day.

You know when you log in and underneath the login box is says:  "NEXT GAME: Game 9, Friday May 14"?  That's the game number that gets posted in the transactions table for your pickups and helps me keep track of the one pick up per game rule.  I used to set that manually, so sometimes you would log in  Saturday morning, it would still say the next game was Friday (yesterday).  I changed that to update automatically at midnight of each game day. So basically, you can't make any pick ups on Friday night for the next game unless you stay up real late.

That is all. You may get on with your day.

THORNTON STRIKES AGAIN

Unbelievable.  Matt Thornton pitched 2 innings, struck out 5 and didn't allow a base runner, scoring 18 points in the process.  He now has the top two highest all-time FNFT relief pitcher scores.

In those two games he has scored over 10% of Gerry's team points for the year.

TRACKING RP'S

If the FNFT season ended today (and thank God it doesn't), there would be 20 batters, 12 starting pitchers and 3 relief pitchers in the auction.  One of the relief pitchers would be Matt Thornton who seems quite likely to fall off the list.  The top scoring RP so far is Brian Wilson who ranks 20th in player points.  This new scoring system is working exactly like I told you it would.

RECORD POINTS PER GAME

I was looking through the the history database to see where Hick's 105-point game ranks all time.  I remember way back in the early days of FNFT, a 100-point game was almost an unreachable height.  Now, it happens about twice a year on average.  Hicks's game ranks 13th.

Urban Shockers hold the single game record at 136 points.  Two other teams scored 118.  That's quite a gap from the top spot down to second place.  Makes me wonder if that mark will ever be broken.  Oh wait - with the new scoring for relievers, it almost certainly will.

In the record setting game for Max, Albert Pujols went 0-for-4.