The Juice List

Some guy in a CBS Sportlines message board posted this. He said, "This is unconfirmed, but I've got my sources." Take it for what it's worth.

1. Nomar Garciaparra
2. Manny Ramirez
3. Johnny Damon
4. Trot Nixon
5. David Ortiz
6. Shea Hillenbrand
7. Derek Lowe
8. Pedro Martinez
9. Brian Roberts
10. Jay Gibbons
11. Melvin Mora
12. Jerry Hairston
13. Jason Giambi
14. Alfonso Soriano
15. Raul Mondesi
16. Aaron Boone
17. Andy Pettitte
18. Jose Contreras
19. Roger Clemens
20. Carlos Delgado
21. Vernon Wells
22. Frank Catalanotto
23. Kenny Rogers
24. Magglio Ordonez
25. Sandy Alomar
26. Bartolo Colon
27. Brent Abernathy
28. Jose Lima
29. Milton Bradley
30. Casey Blake
31. Danys Baez
32. Craig Monroe
33. Dmitri Young
34. Alex Sanchez
35. Eric Chavez
36. Miguel Tejada
37. Eric Byrnes
38. Jose Guillen
39. Keith Foulke
40. Ricardo Rincon
41. Bret Boone
42. Mike Cameron
43. Randy Winn
44. Ryan Franklin
45. Freddy Garcia
46. Rafael Soriano
47. Scott Spiezio
48. Troy Glaus
49. Francisco Rodriguez
50. Ben Weber
51. Alex Rodriguez
52. Juan Gonzalez
53. Rafael Palmeiro
54. Carl Everett
55. Javy Lopez
56. Gary Sheffield
57. Mike Hampton
58. Ivan Rodriguez
59. Derrek Lee
60. Bobby Abreu
61. Terry Adams
62. Fernando Tatis
63. Livan Hernandez
64. Hector Almonte
65. Tony Armas
66. Dan Smith
67. Roberto Alomar
68. Cliff Floyd
69. Roger Cedeno
70. Jeromy Burnitz
71. Moises Alou
72. Sammy Sosa
73. Corey Patterson
74. Carlos Zambrano
75. Mark Prior
76. Kerry Wood
77. Matt Clement
78. Antonio Alfonseca
79. Juan Cruz
80. Aramis Ramirez
81. Craig Wilson
82. Kris Benson
83. Richie Sexson
84. Geoff Jenkins
85. Valerio de los Santos
86. Benito Santiago
87. Rich Aurilia
88. Barry Bonds
89. Andres Galarraga
90. Jason Schmidt
91. Felix Rodriguez
92. Jason Christiansen
93. Matt Herges
94. Paul Lo Duca
95. Shawn Green
96. Oliver Perez
97. Adrian Beltre
98. Eric Gagne
99. Guillermo Mota
100. Luis Gonzalez
101. Todd Helton
102. Ryan Klesko
103. Gary Matthews

For my money, this list doesn't look much different than one any of us could have made up given a few hours looking through stats. Sprinkle in a Hector Almonte and Dan Smith here and there to make it look legit, and there you go.

In a Bit of a Pickle

If you haven't checked it out lately, Sports Pickle has a new, redesigned website with daily updates.

"Prince Fielder Achieves Goal of Being Too Fat to Pitch Around"

"Chinese Scientists Hurrying Development of Yao Ming 2.0"

"PGA golfers honor Michael Jackson by wearing one white glove"

That's good stuff.

Who's in the Box?

"When I lived by Jake in 'tosa, he told me he was in a death league. Was anyone else in the league? If so, someone could be kicking ass right now." - Joe Z

There are few things you do in your life that wind up being truly legendary. Things that you continue to talk about and be reminded of for years after they happen. Memories that are etched so deeply that they will be the final remains of your consciousness when you yourself are but a blathering sack of flesh ready slip the surly bonds of Earth. And every time you say, "remember when?" the story is as fresh and intriguing as when it first happened. Perhaps more so, because the passage of time allows you to stand back and witness the true grandeur of that thing - the enormity of which was not apparent to you when it was happening in real time. For those of us who played in it, the Celebrity Death League certainly fits into that category of things. Every time there is a run of celebrity deaths, someone, somewhere, without fail, will remember that league.

I would imagine that in some computer archive somewhere I've got the spreadsheets with everyone's 'rosters'. I can't even remember how long ago we played. I do remember that for the duration of the league, there was "still Hope." Bob Hope died in 2003 at the age of 100, so it was at least that long ago.

For the past number of years I've actually been kicking around an idea in my head for a new kind of Celebrity Death League. This is odd to say now, but the major flaw in the old league was that is was so boring. We got together and drafted a bunch of famous old people and then just sat back and waited for them to die. When one of them actually did, it was a big deal, especially for the 'owner' of that celeb, but otherwise there really wasn't any active participation - no trades, no weekly lineups. It just sort of sat there.

My idea for the new league is that it would run more like the stock market than like a draft-and-hold league. You would start off with some number of 'points' - say 100. You would use those points to buy contracts on living celebrities. When a celebrity dies, the contracts would pay out at a rate of 100 minus the celebrity's age. The younger the celebrity, the more valuable the payout. Then, when one of your celebrities dies, you can use the payout to buy contracts on other celebrities or keep the points in your 'cash reserve.' In the mean time, you can buy and sell contracts with other players in the league. For each contract you own, you would be required to post an 'asking price'. Any other owner could then buy that contact from you for your asking price - first come first served. If you need to free up some points and you can't find someone to buy your contracts, you can dump them for half of what you paid. The winner would be the owner who through either celebrity deaths or shrewd trading, accumulates the most points by the end of the year defined by the value of his cash reserve plus the value of the contracts he owns.

You could still have a draft, but instead of taking turns selecting celebrities, you would nominate them in a series of IPOs. There would be a bidding process for the contract on each celebrity. Over the course of the year, new celebrities could be nominated through a similar IPO process. One owner might say, "I offer to buy Woody Allen for 3 points." There would be a 1-week period in which any other owner could then up that bid. At the end of one week whoever has the highest bid now owns the contract on Woody Allen. Let's say he sells for 5. You would then post him on your roster and post an asking price for his contract - maybe 8. If someone comes along and buys his contract from you, you profit 3 points. If Woody Allen dies, the owner of the contract gets 27 points (100 minus his age of 73). One of the reasons for keeping the bidding process open for one week is that you couldn't quick buy up a contract of someone who was in a car accident this morning, hoping for a quick profit. If you do, and that celebrity dies before the bidding period is over, whoever has high bid will wind up buying a contact with no payout.

There would obviously be a lot of details to flush out and cans of worms to close, but the rules could evolve as they do in any league. With the Internet, this could obviously all be done online. Wha-da-ya say? You in the box?

Tief, Phone Home

Just as an FYI to everyone, we have gotten rid of our home phone (262) 628-1102 and have gone cell phone only. My cell phone number is (414) 587-8391 in the event you ever need it. You are also welcome to call the office at (262) 502-7003.

Please make a note of it.

Turning 1000

Just after 12:00 noon on Friday the FNFT roster system registered it's 1,000th login since the system went live on the night of the draft. Joel hit the milestone at 12:12 p.m. Granted, almost a third of the logins are me either doing my daily check that the system is working or trying to fix my pathetic team, but still...

From my perspective, the system is working better that my wildest dreams would have imagined for a first-year effort. I hope you all feel the same.

The Jake and Joe Rule

I'm going to create a new rule next season that says you (Jake and Joe) can not start making pickups for the next FNFT game until the day after the previous game starts. In FNFT-speak, that means you (Jake and Joe) must wait until Saturday after a Friday game or Wednesday after a Tuesday game to make your next pickup. It can be one minute after midnight the next day, but it must be the next day.

Right now I when I pull down the lineups I manually reset the "Next Game" number. Next year I'm going to automate all of that and it will be much easier to deal with only dates (i.e. pickups made on June 12 count for Game 14 - pickups made on June 13 count for Game 15) rather than dates and times.

It's not that it ever bothered me that people people (Jake and Joe) started making pickups on Friday afternoon for the next game and I had to make mental note of it so that I didn't include those pickups in the game that I was currently working on and then half of the time that I would forget to post the pickup in the next game. Wasn't any of that. Because now with the new system it's easier to keep track of those things. It's that right now, I sort of dictate (to everyone except Jake and Joe) when you can start making pickups for the next game by when I update the site. This gives me an advantage in that I get first dibs on pickups (even though some people [Jake and Joe] will just make their next pickup anyway even though I haven't update the site yet.) With an automated system based on real time rather than when I get around to it, it puts us all on the same level playing field and make my job of running the league that little bit easier.

If you want to start practicing the new policy this year, that would be great. But know that Jake or Joe will probably get the guy you wanted if you wait.

DL

Does anyone besides me think we should have a DL? I have 4 players on the DL right now and 3 of them are too good to cut.

I think I'll propose that for next year - maybe a 2 player DL. You can only put players on who are on the MLB DL. Would you get an extra pickup then if you put a player on the DL? Or just get your regular weekly pickup but not have to cut anyone?

We had a DL back in the day and it was kind of a pain. It allowed teams to basically hoard players by putting them on the DL and then never take them off. Let's say I put my shortstop Cabrera on the DL. If my other SS is playing better, I could just leave Cabrera on the DL until I need him and when I do I essentially get a free pickup. I think we had a rule saying that once a player is off of the MLB DL you had to take him off of the FNFT DL, but that was very difficult to police.

Then if we had a DL I would have to figure out how to program it into the roster system - I don't know - maybe I just talked myself out of it.

Beside the Point

Just a little thing... I don't know if nobody noticed or if everyone noticed but nobody said anything, but on the roster view pages, the FP/G column always ended in zero (e.g. 4.20, never 4.23). I've fixed that.

Back Home Again

Back Home Again in Indiana

As most of you are aware, it's getting close to the time when the FNFT Commissioner's Office shuts down for a few days while Tief and Jacob go to the Danica Patrick show.

I will post the usual web updates (daily stats) through Wednesday this week, but after that... who knows. I am on a free trial of GoToMyPC courtesy of my Rush Limbaugh promotional special offer. I am taking my ASUS mini-laptop along (whose value has diminished to the point where I feel comfortable bearing the risk of it being stolen.) I have tested the laptop with GoToMyPC and while clumsy - it works. In fact, I did yesterday's web updates from the comfort of my patio while enjoying a cup of coffee and a scone right after my schvitz. I am going to try to make regular web update from Indy. I don't believe there will be Wi-Fi access where we camp (there wasn't last year), so that means I'll have to drive somewhere to make the updates.

Worst case scenario is that I won't make any updates until I get back Sunday night or Monday. Best case is that you won't notice that I'm gone. The likely scenario is somewhere in between. If there is no Wi-Fi where we camp, I wil certainly not be able to make updates on Sunday morning as it is impossible to drive anywhere in Indianapolis on race day.

As per usual, if something gets f-ed while I'm gone, just default to email and I'll sort it all out when I get home.

Follow the Walks

I've made an interesting discovery. I clicked open Grady Sizemore's Game Log this morning and saw the following:

Sizemore started the season hot but has been in a slump the last couple of weeks. If you look at the chart, you can see exactly what's happening. He hit 4 home runs in the span of eight days from April 16-23, probably thought he was all of the sudden Babe Ruth, and since has been swinging at every pitch he sees. You know that because of the walks. He had 11 walks in the bottom 12 games on the chart and only 4 in the most recent 12 games.

It strikes me that players probably score more points in games they draw walks than in games they don't - that walks are a leading indicator of success. But it doesn't take Einstein to figure that out. That's not unlike saying that players score more points in games they hit home runs than in game they don't. Duh.

So I did a little study to see if I was right. I pulled the game logs for all of the batters so far this year into Excel. I kept the games in which the batter had at least 3 plate appearances. I split them into two piles: games in which the batter had no walks and games in which he had at least one walk. There were 4,523 games in the first pile and 2,342 games in the second pile. Then I averaged the FNFT Points (FP) for each of the two piles of games, except in the "walks" pile I subtracted the number of walks from the point total - I wanted to only consider other plate appearances in those games; the ones where the batter didn't walk.

The "no-walks" group averages 3.43 points per game. They average 4.18 plate appearances per game for a ratio of 0.82 points per plate appearance.

The "walks" group averages 3.67 points per game (again, excluding the points from walks) in 3.25 non-walking plate appearances per game - a ratio of 1.13 points per plate appearance.

So, even eliminating the points from walks, batters score more FNFT points in games they draw walks than in games they don't. In fact, the average number of points per non-walk plate appearance is 38% higher in "walks" games than in "no-walks" games. That's a lot bigger gap than I was expecting.

(Running late - gotta get ready for work...)

Executive Decision

Now that the FNFT roster system is up and running, I have a handful of ideas for enhancements. As I've previously mentioned, I have an idea for a process to post trades. I'd like to show a notice about how many new messages there are since you last checked them. I'd like to enhance the message editor to allow for more formatting, links and what not. In the game logs, I'd like to highlight the FNFT games in bold. All of this stuff.

When I make updates to the system I do so by writing some computer code, posting it (called 'publishing'), then log on to the system and see if it works. Usually it bombs about 15 times before I get it right.

Well if it bombs for me, it's going to bomb for you too if you try to log in. I have also lost some data in the trial and error process (dates of a few of the early messages). Because of this, I have made an executive decision to not make any more changes to the system during the current baseball season. I'll save them all for the off-season and make them when system uptime isn't as important.

That means that I will continue to post trades manually. I'll program the trade posting system in the off-season and perhaps figure out how to make it better.

(Unless, of course, I change my mind.)

Feedback Needed

I've been working on a way to allow all of you to post FNFT trades without my involvement. I can only devote about 20 hours per day or so to FNFT. If someone wants to post a trade during the 4 hours I'm unavailable, there is no way to do so. As another example, I'm going to be heading down to Indy in a couple of weeks for the race. This new system add-on would allow you to post trades while I'm gone. (What are trades, you ask? Well, back in the day...) I'm hoping to get some feedback as to whether you think this would work.

Here's my idea. Trades would still be hammered out the old fashioned way - in person, over the phone, through email, through the message board, etc. Then, once a trade is agreed upon, you can post it to the system. Somewhere on the main roster page there would be a button or link or something that says "Trade Players". If you click it you will get the following screen (with YOUR roster):

(Click on image for a larger view.)

The pull down boxes would show all of the FNFT owners (as shown). There would then be a "Submit" bottom at the bottom to complete the move.

What you are doing here is moving a player or players from your team to some other team - the team you are trading with. The person you are trading with would have to do the same thing as you - log on and transfer the players he is trading to you. Once both players have done this, the trade is complete. Follow that? Both owners would have to do the same thing for the trade to go down.

Is this workable?

There are some obvious drawbacks. The players would move immediately so you might be waiting a bit to get your players if the other guy is slow. The other issue is that like the rest of the system, this will allow you to do things that your not supposed to (like send players to the wrong team) and cause me a lot of headaches to fix. But I think were all good on that. So far I haven't had to fix anything in the database brought on by clumsiness or skulduggery.

I still need to do some programming to do all of the behind the scenes stuff like posting the trades to the transactions table and what not, but I could probably have this up and running sometime next week.

Let me know what you think.

Emailing Joe

I got in fine after you posted the message that the problem was resolved. Prior to that, I was having problems. I believe I did manage to get in once during the period you were diagnosing the problem.

I think Max may have said something to you about an issue we have at work. I’m quite sure were firewalled somehow but I just find this strange. We can gain access to fnftbaseball.com. We can open all links on the page except the LineUp/Pickups. I get an error message stating this web page is currently not available. It’s a conspiracy theory. Someone does not want me picking up players one minute after the first pitch thrown on Tuesday or Friday afternoon games.

Joe

Glad you got in. I’m pretty sure I know the reason you can’t get in from work. The FNFT website itself is hosted by a 3rd party Internet hosting service called HostMonster. I purchased the domain name fnftbaseball.com and that domain is hosted by HostMonster. The roster system however runs off of my home PC. They are really two completely separate websites. The reason you probably can’t access it from work is that my home PC is not set up as a domain name server (DNS). What that means in English is that instead by reaching the site via a normal web address (http://www.something.com) you access it by my computer’s IP address (http://69.29.23.10 or some such thing). The IT departments at many large companies block sites that are referenced only by an IP address because many of them are run by schmucks who are trying to do something much more deviant than run a fantasy baseball league. The solution (perhaps) would be for me to host the roster system on a 3rd party service as well. I’m hesitant to do that because the cheapest one I can find is $169 for the season and there would be no guarantee that your company wouldn’t block that either – that would lend credence to your conspiracy theory. It would also be a bit more cumbersome for me to run everything in that I would always need to be posting all of the files to a different site rather than just copying them to my hard drive. I may do that at some point anyway - it would probably work for you if I did. If I go through another few days like the last few, it would be worth the money to me to have the guaranteed up time that a 3rd party service would provide.

Tief

Game Tuesday

The first Tuesday FNFT game is this week on April 28. In Tuesday games, you are playing against only the teams in your own division.

In the 5-team division, one team goes 4-0, one goes 3-1, one goes 2-2, one goes 1-3, and the last goes 0-4. In the 4-team divisions the top team goes 4-0, the bottom team goes 0-4. The second team goes 3-1 if their score is closer to the top team or 2-2 if their score is closer to the #3 team. The record for the #3 team is the mirror image of the #2 team.

Tuesday games will be played every other Tuesday from here until the end of the season with the final Tuesday game being on the last week of the regular season.

FP Revisited

Most of you will find this to be minutia, but I've slightly changed the formula I use to display "FP" or 'year to date FNFT points'. The FP score is based on the year-to-date cumulative stats rather than summing each players' individual games (which would me much harder to program). Therefore it's an estimate and not an actual sum. The basic formula is the same as our single game scoring formula:

R + H + 2*RBI + 2B + 2*3B + 3*HR + BB + SB

The part that FP doesn't take into account is the bonus for getting at least one run, hit and RBI in a game. To account for this I've always added:

min(R,H,RBI)

to the score - or the lowest number among runs, hits and RBIs.

I've dumped all of the game-by-game stats from 2008 into a database and based on this figured out that the formula for FP would be slightly more accurate if I instead added:

0.5 * min(R,H,RBI)

So that's what I've done. If you've noticed that the total points (FP) for some of your hitters has gone down by one or two, that's why.

Like I said - minutia. I'll probably do something similar for pitchers to account for 10K games although that will be a much less noticable adjustment. I'll let you know.

Make The Call

I've gotten a request from Bill Hicks that I send him a list of everyone's phone number. He'd like to "make some deals." I'll leave it up to everyone's own discretion whether you want me to give him your number. He obviously has mine. The telephone is his only lifeline to the league. Imagine if that was you.

I'm not even 100% certain I have everyone's current phone number or the number at which you'd prefer to be called. I've taken phone numbers off of the FNFT directory on the website for security purposes. His phone number if (414) 456-0534 if you'd like to call him and work out a fair (and I'll be watching) trade. He doesn't have an answering machine. Either he or his brother will answer and it's easy to tell who's who.

Drop me an email or comment with you number if you'd like me to forward it on.

I've Gotta Get a Message To You

By popular demand, I've added a simple and crude message board to the FNFT roster system. You'll find it listed on the main menu as "Messages". You have very few formatting options. It's mainly just for text.

You can use it for whatever you want - propose a trade, gossip, jokes, or to leave me a note letting me know how cool you think the new online system is.

Enjoy.

FP

I've made a few small tweaks to the FNFT Roster System. Most notably, the columns for FNFT points and FNFT points per game which used to be abbreviated "FNFT" and "FNFT/G" are now abbreviated "FP" and "FP/G" respectively. It saves a little bit of space. I've also rounded all of the decimal numbers like FP/G and ERA to the same number of decimal places so that they all line up.

Amazing Grace

Before anyone asks, I'll answer.

The grace period for changing you mind on your weekly player pickup is 15 minutes. If you pick up a player and then decide to pick up a different player instead, you have 15 minutes to submit the new pickup (by cutting the player you earlier picked up.)

Today Avery picked up Orlando Hudson and then cut him and picked up Scott Rolen 14 minutes and 16 seconds later.

So he's good.

Rule Change

Unless most of you have an objection, I’d like to make a rule change. I thought of this last year but forgot to bring it up at the draft.

I’d like to rescind the Craig Haralson rule which states that once you cut a player you can not pick him up again for one month.

My recollection is that the rule was written before the dawn of the Internet – back when you waited for your results in the mail. One crafty owner made a habit of effectively having a 24 or 25 man roster by shuffling players on and off of his team before anyone else even knew they were cut. Today, everything is right there. Once a player is cut, everyone knows. The rule was also written before we started limiting pickups to one per game and before we had a 24 hour waiting period before a cut player could be picked up. With these other two rules in place, I really don’t see a whole lot of point in keeping the Haralson rule.

Another argument against the rule is that the FNFT schedule is much more compact than it was back then. Today, one calendar month is almost one fourth of the FNFT schedule. That’s a long wait. Finally, it would let me scratch one thing off of my to-do list since I don’t yet have this programmed yet in the lineup system.

Comments welcome.