By Spezzal Teams Playa
The year was two-thousand-and-nine. October.
The Minnesota Twins had just beaten the Detroit Tigers in a one-game 'play-in' to reach the post-season. A loaf of bread cost $2.79. And Michael Buble's Crazy Love dropped as the number one album in the U.S.
Those were heady days, indeed. And you know what they say, "If you can remember the Fall of '09, you probably weren't there". Well lucky for you folks, this little article should help jog your memories a little.
Now I know that you can just click on the '2010' drag-down box on the league page and get all this same information, but I wanted to re-package it here, complete with adjustments made for defunct teams. So first, let me show you the complete standings, as seen in the image above. If you click on it, it gets bigger (that's what she said).
1. trader dick's team (defunct)
2. Dakota Magic (Eastside Slammers)
3. Chesapeake Abyss
4. Charlestown Chiefs (defunct)
5. St.Louis Redbirds (Billy Stevens)
6. Fowl Play
7. Obama's Teleprompter (defunct)
8. Sunnyvale Shithawks (Toronto Maple Leafs)
9. CT Defenders
10. Muff Divers (Clubhouse Chemistry)
11. Stittsville Two-Phors (Nepean Hotspurs)
12. Hell Lions
13. Sierra Menace (defunct)
14. Beantown Blackouts (defunct)
15. Gloucester Expos (defunct)
16. Perrysburg Pain (Phungus)
17. Odds-On Fav (relegated to AAA)
18. Funky Cold Medina (relegated to AAA)
19. Montreal Royals (relegated to AAA)
20. Portland Sea Dogs (relegated to AAA)
As you can see, we lost a bunch of franchises to bankruptcy over the winter months, including the Defending League Champion, trader dick. In total, we only have ten of last year's twenty managers returning, but as I pointed out in a previous article, all 20 of us are Sports Talk Pool veterans from at least one of the 9 officially recognized STP leagues.
A few of us (Koo Koo Roos, Dallas All-Stars and Oregon Lightning Bolts) earned promotions from last year's AAA leagues, like the deep Hitters-Only League or the ill-conceived Fielding-Only League, bringing to 13 the number of us who played STP baseball last year. The other seven managers are all veterans of the other sports leagues.
So if we take out the ten defunct franchises from last season, we can head into this new year with the following adjusted Final Standings:
1. Dakota Magic
2. Chesapeake Abyss
3. St.Louis Redbirds
4. Fowl Play
5. Sunnyvale Shithawks
6. Connecticut Defenders
7. Muff Divers
8. Stittsville Two-Phors
9. Hell Lions
10. Perrysburg Pain
When you look at it this way, we all did a bit better. I know I'm happy with 8th place.
Hopefully I can end my streak of being a very hot team through the first half only to fade into oblivion and limp into the playoffs.
ReplyDeleteIf I dont count my AAA experience, I have a pretty mediocre streak going myself.
ReplyDeleteWell, AAA baseball as well as my basketball league title from 11 months ago.
STL Birds here...
ReplyDeleteI'm still curious to see which drafting theory plays out here with the new pitching roster. From what I can see most went with one of the following:
1. Ignore pitching and get good bats.
2. Ignore RPs and get decent bats and deep SP.
3. Good bats and shitty pitching all around.
All viable....just hard to predict. I read yesterday about this Yahoo! commenter who got invited to the Friends & Family Auction Draft who developed his own drafting theory....pretty interesting...it's an older post but you'll get the point. Basically only draft SP and SB. Therefore, you win all pitching categories every week + SB's. Also, it evens out the league standings because, with a lack of good SP on everyone else's teams, all other pitching matchups end up tied so the final standings are tight. His claim is that this theory basically guarantees a playoff spot and then you can run on it.
http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/fantasy/article/head-to-head-thoughts-and-strategy/
That is one unorthodox strategy, but give Derek Carty credit - if you only need to win 6 of 10 categories, it makes a lot of sense.
ReplyDeleteI just hope I can find a nice spread of SPs so that I have an option to dress one every day.
Unbalanced strategies like that would be very effective in trade leagues.
ReplyDeleteA trade league is, I assume, the same thing as a swap league?
ReplyDeleteI wanna start one of those in June, when Yahoo lets us have another 4 teams.