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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