Every year about this time we get own­ers cry­ing the ” my entire team is on the DL blues ” . Up until now are response as been a some­thing to the tune of “  suck it up princess…that’s part of the fan­tasy game” . How­ever , this year  rep­re­sents an all time high in the DL fac­tor and it is truly effect­ing teams and there­fore leagues. The prob­lem on this is that no mat­ter what a given own­ers opin­ion is they usu­ally are very  strong-willed about this topic and there­fore unwill­ing to accept any deci­sion that goes against there own thought. But in our ever so hum­ble opin­ion its time to at very least revisit the issue and most likely make some kind of adjust­ment.  ( When teams lose to 2 or 3 guys to DL that’s a man­age­r­ial challenge…when they lose 7 or 8 ,  its way more than that).

Your thoughts on this ( either by reply to this blog or via email to TPFS) are more than welcomed.

On a totally sep­a­rate sub­ject: Any day after the Celtics win and the Lak­ers choke one away is a damn good day…so every­one enjoy . At least in the bas­ket­ball world life is as it should be.

M2

As usual on Tues­day we spend some time look­ing at fa wire and try to give folks 5 pitch­ers 5 hit­ters that might avail­able in your league(s) and have the poten­tial of offer­ing value.

Pitchers…1) Fuentes Oak­town 2) Thayer SD 3) Doubrant BOS 4) Bass SD 5) Lowe CLEV.  Keep in mind the FA pitch­ing pool is start­ing to become more of a pud­dle . The days of Lynn Smyly J Sam are long gone.

Hit­ters 1) Inge Oaktown.…yes that Inge 2) Andino BAL 3) Cam­pana CHIC C 4) Pas­tor­nicky ATL 5) Smoak.SEA .he’s avail­able in more leagues than you think.

Dump now..Figgins aka DONKIE.…Volstad aka he sucks.……Valencia…1 for 12 in AAA

M2

Just fol­low­ing up on this after­noons post . Turns out we have over 20 teams for sale that are either 1,2 , or 3rd in their league. These are not lucky for 6 week kind of teams . These are teams built on hard work and knowl­edge of how fan­tasy base­ball works.

If your inter­ested in buy­ing or want to “trade up” let us know . Also if you have a buddy or fam­ily mem­ber you might want to share the TPFS expe­ri­ence with you now would be a good time (sev­eral darn good teams out there).

M2

Apol­gizes  for miss­ing a few days . Every so often life gets in the way and these last few days have been hec­tic to say the least.

By the end of this week we will be the quar­ter mark of the sea­son . This is usu­ally the mark at which fran­chise league teams fig­ure out if they are going for the title or hangin back and putting together their squad for future years. If you decide to go for it this year we would highly rec­om­mend tak­ing a look at what your weak­ness are on the squad and trading/ acquir­ing free agents to fill those needs . While no team is strong across all areas that  doesn’t mean you should’n’t  try. If you decide to try and build for future years you might try using mlb 2012 prospects in a search engine and tak­ing a few pages of notes..or give TPFS a call , we have a good ” lay of the land” on prospects.

Also we putting together a count on qual­ity teams ( first , sec­ond or third) for sale across all 35 keeper league teams , as of right now looks like we have quite a few.

More to fol­low shortly

M2

Just a heads up/reminder .…the MLB First-Year Player Draft is com­ing up June 4–6. While many own­ers com­pletely ignore this event , oth­ers real­ize the impor­tance of the new influx of tal­ent and scoop up a player or two.

M2

After send­ing out yes­ter­days blurb we decided to take a look at the all 36 TPFS leagues and much to my sur­prise found well over  two dozen teams who were cur­rently in third or bet­ter but whose below the line  ros­ter was dom­i­nated by A/AA/AAA type play­ers . Now unless the owner was stock­pil­ing these young ones for a major holy crap type deal ( we at TPFS call that the Bob Williams the­ory) hav­ing all that tal­ent that cant con­tribute in 2012 puts said owner at a huge dis-advantage.

For exam­ple ,  if the off-season starts and you look at your ros­ter and con­clude you have what it takes to win the title and begin set­ting up you bench accord­ingly , it might look some­thing like this going to start of the season

Infante , Melky Cabera ‚  Gar­ret Jones , Fis­ter , Bal­four , Var­gas , Volquez

All 7 of those play­ers were avail­able in sev­eral leagues over the course the off-season.

Now instead say you thought your team was good enough to go for title but you hung on to your young ones and as they always do.…injuries hit and you had to shop­ping on cur­rent fa mar­ket. Good luck with Joe Blan­ton or maybe M Ellis. Big dif­fer­ence between  Infante vs Ellis or  Fis­ter vs Blan­ton when your try­ing win a league.

Like we said yes­ter­day every­one  has their com­fort zone on this type thing.….but

I’m just sayin.….

M2

Most leagues ( includ­ing TPFS) have some sort of bench/reserve spots on their ros­ter . If you play­ing in a full keeper or mostly keeper for­mat , you have a deci­sion to make. Either use these spots as a func­tion­ing bench or use them for stash­ing poten­tial young studs. If you decide to go for the title this year its highly rec­om­mended by us folks at TPFS that you take the func­tion­ing bench approach .  ( If you try to go for title and carry AA/AAA type play­ers  its highly doubt­ful you will win the league…just too many damn injuries). If you decide the cur­rent year isn’t gonna work out and its best to look to the future years then feel free to stash those young ones on bench and ros­ter alike.

Below is our take on han­dling a bench for title contending:

Depend­ing on how many reserves your league has we rec­om­mend about a 50/50 spilt between posi­tion play­ers and pitch­ers and within the posi­tion play­ers maybe one MI one CI and one or two OF’ers. ( Also hav­ing a multi posi­tion guy below the line helps out tons…remember Omar Infante a  few years ago? ) This way when you have some­one go down most likely you will have a replace­ment on hand rather than hav­ing to troll the free agent pool for  Chip­per Jones, Chris John­son or Bron­son Arroyo.

Of course each owner has their own thoughts on all this and will usu­ally end up doing what they feel com­fort­able with . But in our years of expe­ri­ence if  your going for league title the above model is what works best.

M2

OWNERS

Between injuries and poor per­for­mance roughly half of the 30 closers are toast . Remem­ber back not long ago when it was Sut­ter , Smith  , The Eck and if had one of them you were locked in for 40 saves no wor­ries? Those days are long gone..and when all the smoke clears its Fer­nando frig­gin Rod­ney who is the saves king so far in 2012?

Maybe the Mayans are right after all…the end of the world is upon us..: >

Enjoy the week­end all…( Ken­tucky Derby on May 5th..so will they serve Tequila shots instead of Mint Juleps at Churchill Downs?)

M2

Guys

Seems like an odd year.  Usu­ally when we get into May the free agent  avail­able pitch­ing pool more resem­bles more of a pud­dle and you can go pick up a qual­ity out­fielder or CI player with­out much effort. At least in TPFS , 2012 appears to be just the reverse . With Ham­mel Bass Capuano West­brook types being there for the pick­ing , but hardly any good sticks around. Grab those sticks before the pud­dle turns into Death Val­ley TPFS style.

Each year as a dif­fer­ent flow , 2012 appears to be pitch­ing friendly but hit­ting poor.…..who da thunk.

M2

OWNERS

Alot of folks think very highly of Ruben Tejada from the Mets as a ghetto source of pro­duc­tion. Might be worth a go.  Cordero of Toronto and Brox­ton of KC are becom­ing avail­able in some leagues as well. Lastly G Parra seems to be play­ing well enough to war­rant more PT so keep an eye on him as well

More to follow

M2