who are these idiots?

I had my fantasy baseball draft tonight. As per usual, it was with eleven other people who I have never met nor will ever meet. This is what these morons let me get away with in my first seven picks:

1. David Wright (6th overall pick)
2. Alfonso Soriano (19)
3. Mark Teixeira (30)
4. Brian Roberts (43)
5. Troy Tulowitzki (54)
6. Russell Martin (67)
7. Corey Hart (78)

The league uses your standard 5x5 scoring system, but for some reason these guys were just craving pitchers. One guy's first three picks were Santana, Peavy and CC Sabathia. In a year where pitching is really deep, I can't emphasize enough the idiocy of this strategy. My philosophy: let them have their pitching wars while I commit grand larceny on hitters. Going by my rankings, I got the #4, 14, 17, 30, 31, 34 and 42 hitters with draft selections nearly twice those numbers, as you can see above.

The downside, of course, of waiting until the 8th round to take a pitcher in a league infatuated with them (Tim Lincecum went in the 5th!), is how you put together a decent staff with only leftovers. With my next eight selections, I got: Rich Hill, James Shields, Chad Billingsley, Rafael Soriano, Ben Sheets, B.J. Ryan, Clay Buchholz, and Brian Wilson. That's five starters with #1 type stuff and three closers. Pretty good, I think. Sheets and Ryan are both big injury risks, but taking them in the 12th and 13th rounds made them worth it.

Rounding out my team are: Nick Swisher (somehow still available in 16th round), Evan Longoria, Tom Gorzelanny, Kelly Johnson, Adam Jones, Jonathan Broxton, and Felipe López.

All in all, I'm very pleased with this team. I feel like I can finish first in runs, RBI, home runs and stolen bases, and Swisher might be my only guy to hit below .290. Pitching? Hard to tell, but I certainly think I will "field" a very competitive staff, at least for ERA, WHIP, and K's.

Edit: I forgot to mention that my team name is the FedEx Popes, named after the "worst" character to ever appear on Late Night.


Cheers!