9:00 p.m.
Ellsbury has hit a solo HR for Brett. He has 8 points and brings Brett to 45. Lincecum scored 5 for Tief and brings his total to 41. Each can still get points from his RP. It's going to come down to that. Tief gets Farquhar or 6 points from Melencon. Brett gets Grilli or Jansen. His other RP Reed did not play. If none of these other pitchers pitch, Tief will win. Stay tuned.
***10:10 p.m.***
Grilli warming up in the bullpen. Will probably pitch the 8th vs. the Brewers. Seattle goes up by 2 in top of the 9th. Farquhar likely to pitch the 9th for the save. This will wipe out the 6 from Melecon and put Brett up 45-41. This is for all the marbles.
10:12 p.m.
Farquhar in. Fly out by Butler. One out. Brett up 45-42. Moustakis flies out. Two out Brett up 45-43. Ground out. Game over. Farquhar goes 1-2-3 for the save. 8 points. Tief up 49-45. Grilli in. GO BREWERS!!!
10:15 p.m.
Aoki - Base hit. Tief up 49-44. Francisco lines out. Tief up 49-45. Brett needs two strikeouts. Lucroy 1-2 count. Ball. Another ball. 3-2. Foul tip. Ahhhhhh. Lucroy strikes out. One more strikeout and Brett wins. It's all up to Caleb Gindl. Foul. Ball. Foul. You've got to be kidding me. Strikeout. No fucking way. Brett 50, Tief 49.
10:40 p.m.
Congratulatory text messages have been exchanged. Brett will face Willi in the 2013 FNFT World Series beginning Friday night. Preview coming soon as soon as I get the tears out of my beer.
7:20 a.m. Thursday
Postmortem. I miscalculated Lincecum's points. He got 4 instead of 5 so Brett beat me by 2 points instead of 1. But it doesn't change the fact that Grilli needed to strike out BOTH of the last two batters he faced - and he did. If either Lucroy or Gindl would have hit the ball into play - even into a double play - I would have won.
This is the 4th year in a row that the two teams with the best regular season records have won their playoff series and gone on to meet in the World Series. In each of the previous three, the team with the worse record of the two has won the championship.
An email I just sent...(Willi:) "Thanks for the condolences. Brett had sent a text to me yesterday morning congratulating me on my win. I sent him back a great quote that was recently said by actress Valerie Harper (Rhoda from Mary Tyler Moore who has cancer) – “Don’t die until your dead.” Or as Yogi Berra famously said, “It ain’t over ‘till it’s over.” I was sitting there with 98.2% chance (based on Lucroy and Gindl’s strikeout rates) of making the World Series. All I needed is for either of the two of them to hit the flipping ball in play and I would have won. Popout, ground out – ANYTHING but a strikeout. FNFT will break your heart. Good luck in the Series."
A text from Brett last night..."Thank you. Tied I honestly feel horrible but it feels good yet too... I was literally on my hands and knees watching Grilli. Great friggin series."
Everything has a silver lining. I have reaffirmed to myself that in the history of civilization, the greatest of all of mankind's inventions is the game of baseball. Nothing else is even close. Regardless of how you were rooting, how can you not think that what happened last night isn't one of the coolest things ever?
Friday, September 06, 2013
Thursday, June 20, 2013
The Zack Wheeler saga
I am going to make a ruling on something that benefits my own team and that you may think is unfair. But I'm going to do it anyway. I get Zack Wheeler - the phenom starting pitcher for the Mets.
You'd think that after 27 years of running a fantasy league that you would eventually get all of the kinks worked out and have rules to cover every possible situation, but it seems you never do.
The month of June, for reasons beyond the $cope of this discu$$ion, is when all Major League teams promote their top prospects. And these prospects become hot commodities for FNFT teams in contention for the playoffs. By this time of year all of the 'regular' players have been well picked over, so picking up these prospects is a chance to find a diamond in the rough. Whenever Team A announces that they are bringing up Prospect X, there's a very high likelihood that some FNFT team will try to pick up Prospect X within about two hours.
The problem of course is that Prospect X hasn't played any Major League games yet this year and therefore isn't listed in the stats - which is essentially the list of free agents. So to pick him up you have to leave a message on the FNFT MESSage Board - we've been through this.
On Tuesday night, the Mets had called up their other pitching phenom Zack Wheeler to make his Major League debut. I was keeping an eye on the game and after Wheeler made it through four innings unscored upon, I decided I would pick him up. Because afterall, every pitcher who has ever thrown 4 shutout innings at the beginning of his career has eventually been elected to the Hall of Fame.
So I went on the MESSage Board and posted the following, to the best of my recollection: "I am picking up Zack Wheeler (SP-NYM), cut Kevin Youkilis". Then at 5:26 a.m. Thursday morning, I actually made the transaction because Zack Wheeler was now listed in the stats that I had just posted at about 5:20 a.m.
Well the problem is that the message didn't take. You can believe that or not believe that. But if you've ever tried posting more than one or two messages on that thing I'm sure that you can find my claim at least plausible. I telling the truth. I wouldn't make that up. The FNFT MESSage Board is easily the least functional part of the FNFT website. I have trouble with it all the time. I'm sure a lot of you do to. I'd like to have something better, but that too is a different discussion.
Actually, none of this would really be a problem had not one of the leagues other piranha, Bredd posted a message at 8:45 p.m. on Wednesday claiming Wheeler. It came after mine - I swear. His message wasn't there when I posted mine. But because his message is her first tangible evidence of anyone wanting Wheeler, it could be claimed that Bredd should get him.
I'm going to rule in my favor for two reasons:
So I'm keeping Wheeler and perhaps I'll use him against Bredd in the playoffs. I'll fix all of this as soon as I can. OnRoto, our stats service, creates an ID for a player once he shows up on a list of Top 100 prospects. So all of these Zack Wheeler's, Yasiel Puig's, and Wil Myers' all could be included in a Master Players list somewhere and the system could allow you to pick them up from there in addition to from the regular stats pages. I'll add that to my list of things to do.
You'd think that after 27 years of running a fantasy league that you would eventually get all of the kinks worked out and have rules to cover every possible situation, but it seems you never do.
The month of June, for reasons beyond the $cope of this discu$$ion, is when all Major League teams promote their top prospects. And these prospects become hot commodities for FNFT teams in contention for the playoffs. By this time of year all of the 'regular' players have been well picked over, so picking up these prospects is a chance to find a diamond in the rough. Whenever Team A announces that they are bringing up Prospect X, there's a very high likelihood that some FNFT team will try to pick up Prospect X within about two hours.
The problem of course is that Prospect X hasn't played any Major League games yet this year and therefore isn't listed in the stats - which is essentially the list of free agents. So to pick him up you have to leave a message on the FNFT MESSage Board - we've been through this.
On Tuesday night, the Mets had called up their other pitching phenom Zack Wheeler to make his Major League debut. I was keeping an eye on the game and after Wheeler made it through four innings unscored upon, I decided I would pick him up. Because afterall, every pitcher who has ever thrown 4 shutout innings at the beginning of his career has eventually been elected to the Hall of Fame.
So I went on the MESSage Board and posted the following, to the best of my recollection: "I am picking up Zack Wheeler (SP-NYM), cut Kevin Youkilis". Then at 5:26 a.m. Thursday morning, I actually made the transaction because Zack Wheeler was now listed in the stats that I had just posted at about 5:20 a.m.
Well the problem is that the message didn't take. You can believe that or not believe that. But if you've ever tried posting more than one or two messages on that thing I'm sure that you can find my claim at least plausible. I telling the truth. I wouldn't make that up. The FNFT MESSage Board is easily the least functional part of the FNFT website. I have trouble with it all the time. I'm sure a lot of you do to. I'd like to have something better, but that too is a different discussion.
Actually, none of this would really be a problem had not one of the leagues other piranha, Bredd posted a message at 8:45 p.m. on Wednesday claiming Wheeler. It came after mine - I swear. His message wasn't there when I posted mine. But because his message is her first tangible evidence of anyone wanting Wheeler, it could be claimed that Bredd should get him.
I'm going to rule in my favor for two reasons:
- I honestly attempted to make a post claiming Wheeler before anyone else did. Swear. You could say that I should have check to make sure the message was posted, and I should have, but...
- The message that Bredd posted was: "dibs on wheeler Tom". (sic) Well first of all, it's Zack, not Tom. Second of all, saying "dibs" in not a transaction. A transaction is claiming one player and cutting another.
So I'm keeping Wheeler and perhaps I'll use him against Bredd in the playoffs. I'll fix all of this as soon as I can. OnRoto, our stats service, creates an ID for a player once he shows up on a list of Top 100 prospects. So all of these Zack Wheeler's, Yasiel Puig's, and Wil Myers' all could be included in a Master Players list somewhere and the system could allow you to pick them up from there in addition to from the regular stats pages. I'll add that to my list of things to do.
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