Disappointment with Reality and Fantasy

What’s up with the title!? Something horrible happened? Well, no and yes.

Reality: Red Sox.
Fantasy: My fantasy baseball team.

Let’s talk about my fantasy baseball team first. I can conclude how my team did in one word: suck. For the good part of the season my team was stuck in last place and barely got out of it in the final week of the season. And barely able to stay out of last place isn’t much of a consolation. Unlike the previous years my pitching staff this season had sucked so bad the team ranked either in the bottom half or last in most pitching categories. My team ERA was a full run higher than the next team. Keith Foulke and Mark Mulder hurt my team the most with a good number of horrible outings. I had Brandon Lyons at the beginning of the season and thus the team was doing pretty well in saves. But things just fell apart as soon as he went down. It would be even worse if it wasn’t for Carlos Zambrano and *much* later Zack Duke and C.C. Sabathia.

The offense overall was better than the previous years. Having Big Papi and Carlos Delgado on the team sure helped. Michael Young had been a stud throughout the season. He’s definitely my best pick from the draft. I also drafted Carl Crawford with the hope that he would help out in the stolen base department. For whatever reason he suddenly decided not to run as often and there went my hope of a 50-60 steals season. I traded for Scott Podsednik later, but it didn’t help much because he got tired and hurt in the second half. Once again this year I picked the wrong guy at catcher and second base. I picked Victor Martinez very early in the draft he sucked horribly during the first half. I ran out of patience and dumped him and he went on a tear when another team picked him up. His replacement, Joe Mauer, simply didn’t hit as well as Martinez yet (at least in the second half). I had Luis Castillo at 2B hoping that he would give me some SBs. Obviously things didn’t work out. The guy simply got old, became injury prone and lost his speed. I don’t even know why I drafted him instead of Jeff Kent. (Yes, Kent was available at that point in the draft. Pretty stupid of me huh?) The outfield didn’t do that well either with lots of turnovers from the 3 positions. Overall my team’s offense was in the middle of the pack. Unfortunately the abysmal pitching really dragged the team down, BIG TIME.

Coming next season, I really need to do more research and draft better. Mainly stop relying on old and injury prone players hoping that they would make a huge come back. That’s for position players, but I don’t know what to do with pitchers because they can be pretty volatile. My goal is to finish at least in the top 3. Man, I can’t stand getting stuck at last place, and don’t tell me someone has to because it won’t be me!

Moving on to the Red Sox, I’m not going to write another 3-part series to describe their first round sweep by the White Sox. I’m just going to put some of my thoughts of this season in the list below:

• Initially I was pretty mad that the Sox was swept by their white counterpart in the first round of the playoffs. Then I watched the White Sox starters pitched 4 straight complete games to dispatch the Angels in ALCS. At that point I wasn’t upset anymore. With that kind of starting pitching, the White Sox absolutely deserved to win. I even rooted for them to win the World Series and they did it easily.
• This “Co-Division Champion” thing is down right silly. There should’ve been a one game playoff to decide the division winner if they have an identical record. And I like the Sox’ chances in an one game playoff against New York. To be fair though, it was the Sox who got themselves into that situation…
• …Which leads me to bitch about their inability to beat Toronto and Tampa Bay. If the Sox could beat though bums the Yankees wouldn’t be able to catch up to them. I just don’t understand why they had so much trouble against Toronto. The Sox also used to walk all over the Rays, just not during that stretch in late September.
• Curt Schilling came back too early from his ankle injury and it showed. It seemed that he tried to rush things so he could start the season opener in New York against Randy Johnson. He couldn’t make the opening day start and he wasn’t right for the entire season. I wished he didn’t rush things and come back after the all star break instead. That whole thing about moving to the bullpen then went back to the rotation was a mess too. Hopefully his ankle will be completely recovered in 2006.
• Keith Foulke had similar issues. He should’ve listened to the team and had surgery on his knees after the 2004 season. Foulke’s 2005 season was simply disaster. On the other hand, what’s up with all the “outrage” about his “Johnny from Burger King” comment? It was quoted out of context and the media just ran with it. What he was trying to say was while he couldn’t care less what Johnny from Burger King thinks, his poor performance on the mound made it hard for him to face his teammates. He felt that he let his teammates down and he was really frustrated. Seriously, anyone with half a brain can see that “Johnny from Burger King” was referring to the average fans. It was more or less a figure of speech thing, not really an insult to the workers in the fast-food industry. This politically correct crap is just silly. Personally I don’t really care whether Foulke cares what we (the fans) think. I’m good as long as he feels he has a responsibility to teammates to do his job well.
• And don’t get me started about Foulke showing up at the Bruins game. So what’s the problem that Foulke likes hockey more than baseball? Why should we care in the first place, as if his poor performance this season had to do with his love of hockey? Just give me a freakin’ break.
• Mark Bellhorn sucked at the plate this season and it couldn’t be helped that he was let go in favor of Tony Graffanino. I just think that he was treated worse than he deserved. He had a few big hits during the team’s playoff run in 2004 and he was still very good at turning double plays at 2B. I mean, he was no where as bad as Jose Offerman you know.
• Kevin Millar sucked for pretty much the whole season and I couldn’t believe how Francona stuck with him and not play Kevin Youkilis instead. Give the kid (actually he’s not really that young anymore) a chance! Francona really has a tendency of letting “proven” veterans to get out of their slump instead of playing the kids to gain experience. Not too many guys can jump to major league and start to contribute in a big way consistently. Give Youkilis enough at bats and he probably would do better offensively than Millar. Defensively it’s not like Millar is some kind of defensive wizard at first either, Youkilis can’t be that much worse, and they had Olerud as backup too. Millar is highly unlikely to return in 2006 and I hope it will be Youkilis’ turn to lots of playing time next season.
• On the other hand, the pitching staff was in such bad shape that Francona had no choice but to play the kids. Jonathan Papelbon, Manny Delcarmen, and later Craig Hansen were called up to help. All three can throw some serious gas, but Papelbon showed the most promise while Delcarmen and Hansen had some control issues. The thing with Papelbon is that he needs more work with his offspeed pitches (that fastball is great!) in order to be an effective major league starter. He’s developing a splitter so hopefully it will become an effective pitch to complement his fastball next season. Delcarmen needs more work on his control while Hansen was rushed to the majors last year, chances are both will start the 2006 season in Pawtucket to give them more time to develope.
• I’m sick of all these Manny stuff. Can people stop getting “outraged” with every single little things he did? Is puritanism still ingrained in people’s mind after hundreds of years? Athletes are regular people just like us, they are not some of kind of a saint and don’t expect them to act like one. Oh yeah, let me remind those idiots (yes I mean you, the ‘EEI folks, and you too, CHB) when they whine about Manny taking a day off AGAIN: Manny averages 152 games a year over the last 3 years, top among his teammates. Over the last 2 years only Papi played more games than Manny, and Papi is a DH.
• Finally, I was glad that those damn Yankees got their asses kicked by the Angels in the first round. What happened to the 200 million payroll? Heh Heh heh! :-P

~ by haydeé on October 28, 2005.